Human formation in higher education: Edith Stein's onto-anthropological and theological approach

Abstract

The article reflects on the current context of Higher Education and its challenges in the formation of new teaching profiles. Here, we chose to phenomenologically inquire about teachers’ education in a confessional institution in order to perceive, in the pulse of the experiences of undergraduate students, the place human and conscience formation occupies in academic trajectory. Following this lead and dialoguing with professionals and students, we realized the need for a deeper understanding of education anthropological-philosophical assumptions. Based on that and stemming from the conceptions of knowledge and education in the dialogue between two great thinkers, Edith Stein (1981-1942) and Edgar Morin (1921-), we counterpoint reductionist and complex models. The results reaffirm the need for a multi and transdisciplinary dialogue in teachers’ education programs, as well as the need to think about human education from the complexity paradigm, linking together knowledges that may foster the renovation of thought. Human-integral training requires projects that include all dimensions of the human being. In this way, the educational act, teaching and learning, assumes proportions that may go beyond classroom experience and persist in their formation. This reflection made the challenges of our time emerge with greater clarity: a rigorous thinking about the “human” and its formation in an onto-anthropological perspective that is based on a vision of the world, of human being and of transcendence that is committed to values guided by the idea of a “common house”.