Where do we want to go? What do we want to achieve?

Change is difficult to achieve if we don't know what do we want to change? It seems obvious and however it is still an issue for policy makers. Before we can really produce changes, we need to know what to change... Thousands of studies, researches and projects haven't been useful enough according to some policymakers to tell us what we have to change.

Shall we change the way we learn, what we learn? Do we believe that the cognitive approach has to be modified? Will we go on studying the same authors, Kant or Shakespeare? All these questions may seen counterproductive if we consider the need for change, the timing for change and the lack of commitments for change. Any global question regarding the goals may be seen as a step back.

In fact goals are quite clear: new skills and competences have been defined.

Do we really think that teachers involvement is THE issue? Do we think that contents are THE issue? According to some, what we really need is a radical review of what is a school and what is the role of schools in education.

The absence of sustainability is a major problem. Systems in place - nationwide or europeanwide - don't enable sustainable changes. Projects' leaders believe that a lot of innovative projects have to be stopped because funding is removed. Is it a sign of a lack of sustainability of the change process or a sign of a lack of sustainability of the project itself. What means funding in an educative environment? What means "fantastic project" and why should we go on funding a project from the outside as if it was a pilot project for ever? It is certainly a good moment to think upon the lack of permeability of our systems to innovation, the lack of skills of the innovators themselves to disseminate their innovative practices all around.

We go back once again to the role of systems to promote - or prevent - sustainable changes. It looks like no one wants to take the risk to provoke in-depth changes. Going back to the paradigm of educative ecosystems proposed by Markku Makkula from Finland, we may envisage a solution for sustainable changes based on genuine partnerships involving public and private bodies and envisaged at the spatial level, i.e. making changes visible in the territory.