The first question we should pose is to explain what we mean by educational innovation. In our concrete case, innovation is the search of solutions at an educational, academic and scientific level from a teaching and learning approach in classrooms at schools.
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The search for solutions is linked to a real problem. It is a problem that affects the three previous areas mentioned before. There is a real problem, the rural depopulation in the region of Albacete. There is a widespread lack of knowledge among our students about the way of life in the rural areas, and there is a problem of moral values. If they are not well known, they cannot be understood and therefore these situations cannot be fixed.
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This is the way we started to shape our problem-based educational innovation project.
Repopulating the future in the region of Albacete, is the title of the hereby project that was taken up by a group of students and teachers from IES Amparo Sanz in the 2016/17 academic year. A project that while ambitious, it has nothing particularly extraordinary in it, this topic is in fact being analysed through doctoral thesis at Universities, academic meetings between autonomous communities and workshops for the rural areas. Depopulation is a matter of great concern in communities such as Castilla – La Mancha, Aragón or Castilla – León. The exceptional nature in our case, is that the research and working project is being implemented by 55 sixteen-year-old students from 1st year of Bachillerato.
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The objectives we try to accomplish cover the three issues that we are worried about, to make an exhaustive and complete review of the target districts, to contact/visit the different villages to find out their needs and daily reality, and from that point, to make repopulation projects and proposals. The projects and results will be disseminated through the website that has been designed for that purpose, and they will be published at the same time. Our intention is that the rural world can be viewed and lived by the students from another perspective, the one that they have known through their research and their fieldwork in the already visited districts. Our students assume new values such as empathy, respect, tolerance, appreciation of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage, desire for learning and knowledge, improvement of the environment, integration and social coexistence.
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This project adopts, at the same time, a solidarity profile, along with the cooperation and integration of minorities and marginal groups, and the defence of the rural schools threatened with closure.
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The project has guaranteed financing for its execution, which include resources for PIE of Consejería of Castilla La Mancha and the collaboration of the Excma. Diputación of Albacete.