The main elements of Lumiar’s Pedagogical Proposal are described below.

A. The Education Perspective

Lumiar conceives education as a development process through which human beings, who are born incompetent, dependent and incapable of taking charge of their own lives, become competent, autonomous and accountable people and, in due time, make achievements both personally, professionally and socially. This is an indispensible process for the non-parasitical survival of human beings – but it reaches beyond that. Human nature is relatively open-ended, which allows defining, to a great extent, what they want for life, that is to say, what they want to become as human beings. That is why human beings may define or choose life projects and find fulfillment which extends far beyond their sheer survival.

Even though they are born incompetent, dependent and incapable of talking charge of their lives, human beings have a high inborn capacity to learn: this is what makes education possible.

Education takes place out of school, throughout a child’s lifetime. However, school can be an important learning environment if it is organized in accordance with the principles described below.

B. The Learning Perspective

Learning is not simply gathering and accumulating information: learning is to become able to do what one was unable to do before. This perspective makes learning an eminently active activity (interactive, collaborative, etc.) which is, above all, related to the act of doing – not doing mechanically, in other words, when only the body performs and the mind has no role, but rather doing things intentionally and guided by purposes which were freely chosen.

In this perspective, learning, in a school context, is not something imposed on the students by the teacher, but a savoir-faire actively built by the students – admittedly not alone but rather from an interaction with teachers and the environment and from the collaboration with their peers.

C. Curriculum

Curriculum is the set of content that the students should or could learn at school.

This formulation, which contains two verbs which clearly are not synonyms, provides a glance that the term “curriculum” has, in the context of the pedagogical perspective of Lumiar Institute, a double meaning.

On the one hand, the curriculum, in its strictest sense, contains a vast list organized by “mega-competencies”, of the competencies, with their related sub-competencies and skills that the school, as a formal and structured learning environment, hopes to assist students in the development throughout the years they attend the school. In this broadest sense, curriculum is a content set of what the student may learn at school.

It makes no sense to expect that all students - or even that some of them – should learn everything that the school, as a rich and flexible learning environment, offers. It does make sense, however, to define some of the things that the students should learn – and even that all students should develop some competencies is all areas (mega-competencies) around which the competencies are organized.

On the other hand, based on what has been previously described, the curriculum, in its strictest sense, is a sub-set of competencies, sub-competencies and skills that each student, duly guided by his/her parents and by the school advisor, and in view of his/her interests, talents and, in due time, their life project, must develop. Considering the individual differences in talents and interests, the possible and actual diversity of life projects, the sub-set of competencies on which each student decide to rely may the unique for each of the students. This will move away from the “standardization” of the personal curriculum and introduce choices and, as a consequence, freedom in the curricular structure.

D. Methodology

The learning methodology that Lumiar adopted is active: Lumiar is based on the supposition that the best way to learn is by doing, performing, solving problems, turning projects into reality. This is how we learn to live – that is, to turn a life project into reality. Lumiar’s methodology is, therefore, a methodology which is centered in problem solving by means of learning projects.

This methodology is grounded on the principle that there are many ways to learn what needs to be learned. A child learns to speak, in general, at preschool age without having to attend any classes that teach her that speaking involves producing sounds which are identifiable through meaningful words, that sound emission is carried out by controlling the passage of air through the mouth (and partially through the nose) and that there are lip, dental, guttural, nasal sounds, etc. A child learns to speak by doing other things, that is, by getting involved in projects in which speaking is essential or important. She observes adults and other children speaking with one another and concludes that speaking must be “fun” and then decides that she will speak, too, and starts by miming some sounds adults make and creating others of whose meaning she is the only one who knows, and although she is assisted and corrected, she receives support and incentive all the time – until she manages to say a number of things she considers important, firstly imperfectly -  requiring extremely goodwill from adults to understand them, but, in due time, become more and more refined.

The methodology of learning projects is also based on another principle: that the best project is the one in which the child is interested and pleasurably engaged. This does not mean that children only learn when they are having fun. It does mean, however, that the child needs to see meaning in what he/she is expected to do and understand the contribution that that activity has for his/her learning and development. Children can concentrate their attention on very difficult and even tiresome activities when they understand that those tasks can contribute to learning something they consider important. All we need to is to observe a child learning how to swim, or ride a bike or master some ballet steps, or to play the piano or the violin to conclude that the child is able to perform impressive learning feats through difficult and painful processes and activities – provided that the child is convinced that those means will lead to the goals he/she is trying to achieve.

In addition, the methodology of learning projects is also based on a third principle: when learning something, we often learn other things. For some time (some weeks or even some months), a child may devote him/herself to the learning of something very specific, for example, the question of whether or not there is homosexuality among parrots. In order to answer this question, the child observes parrots and other similar birds (macaws, maritacas, parakeets), read everything he/she comes across about the topic, talks to other people, especially with biologists and veterinarians, thinks over and reflects and eventually comes to a conclusion. At the same time that the child is devoted to this specific question whose answer is unknown, he/she is learning to: collect information, organize information, analyze and assess information, infer other information from a given set of information, come to conclusion, submit their conclusions in an orderly and persuasive fashion, that is to say: working on a project about “Homosexually in birds” or even on a more detailed project, “Can parrots be homosexual?”, the child develops a number of competencies and skills which will be extremely useful for them for the rest of their lives.

Lumiar is not a libertarian, laissez-faire school that leaves students to fate when they are to choose the projects they are going to pursue. It is proactive and offers students a number of projects at a minimum frequency of every two months. These projects are defined based on the students’ interests and have specific focuses. In all of them, however, the students can learn much more than the specific scope established for each project. For instance, the specific focus of a project may be the creation of clay models. However, the project is carried out by creating a clay model in the region where the school is located and, as a result, the students have to learn to observe and get to know their physical environment, measure it and represent it in three dimensions, etc. Another project may have gastronomy as its specific focus. However, in order to carry out such project out they must prepare dishes, understand the role of measuring ingredients and understand the importance of condiments and spices, and learn why some foods spoil easily… In addition, the project enables the students to appreciate cultural differences and understand why different regions in the country and in different parts of the world have different eating habits, etc.

As previously mentioned, there is more than one way to learn something. Therefore, there is reasonable redundancy in the competencies and skills that may be developed in different projects. And this is why it is possible to allow students to choose the project they will take part in – but they do not make such a choice alone but rather with the help from their parents and school tutors. The record of their learning journey – its Learning Portfolio – will always show the gaps which need to be filled in their learning and based on them, parents and tutors will engage in an educational activity of showing the students the importance of learning this or that, always aware that there are many different projects through which the students may develop the competencies and skills they still lack.

As in the case of the Curriculum, in this case there is also a list of projects that the school provides the students with as well as a much more limited list of the projects that each one participated in or intends to participate.

E. Assessment

The ongoing, permanent assessment of students is an essential element of the activities of the school. Students are assessed the moment they join the school, at school they are assessed on a daily and weekly basis (the aim of the “Circle” is both evaluative and educational), they are assessed during the projects, every two months, and by the end of the year. And based on the assessment, it is found whether or not they are learning and developing the multiple aspects which make up their progress.

F. Education Professionals

In addition to the school managers, the support staff and trainees, Lumiar has two types of professionals whose functions are clearly pedagogical: the tutors and the masters.

Tutors work full time at the schools, coordinating and supervising students. Each tutor is assigned the responsibility for a given number of students, in relation to such students, they work as an advisor, mentor, and tutor. The tutors are in charge of conducting the general assessment of each student under his or her responsibility by the end of every two-month period and by the end of the year.

Masters are in charge of the projects and coordinate their execution. They are responsible for matching the projects with the Competency Matrix and for evaluating the students who decide to conduct their projects.

G. A Forma de Gestão

Lumiar School defines itself as a democratic school.

First of all, one must make a clear distinction of what a democratic school is and what a libertarian school is. In most of the schools which are defined as libertarians (Summerhill, Sudbury Valley, etc.), there are:

• a number of rules and regulations which are clearly accepted by the community as a whole in a general  meeting and which control everybody’s behaviors: those of students, teachers and staff alike;
• The rules and regulations are only approved if they are coherent with the principle that everyone’s freedom of action is preserved to the largest extent possible and the only actions vetoed are those which harm third parties or violate their right to egalitarianism and freedom.
• Any presumption of damages to third parties or violation of rights is considered in a general assembly or a students’ assembly and those held accountable are duly punished.
• As for learning, there is freedom to learn, which includes the freedom of not to learn (a particular set of competencies, in a certain moment, in a specific form);
• The school masters and staff only intervene in students’ learning when students specifically require them to do so;
• The school management is carried out collectively, in general meetings attended by all students (including the youngest ones), teachers and staff, all taking part as voting members.

• A curriculum, namely, the Competency Matrix;
• A methodology, namely, the Methodology of Learning Projects;
• A team of professionals, the masters, who propose learning projects through which students can develop their competencies and skills;
• A team of professionals, the tutors, who actively participate in students’ lives, providing them with guidance, advice and serving as their mentors;
• The possibility of having the students’ parents (together with the tutors) participating in helping their children to choose the learning projects in which they will engage;
• Systematic mechanisms used by masters and tutors to periodically assess students based on the student’s individual Learning Portfolio.

H. The Role of Technology

At Lumiar, technology is seen as a tool for student learning, not as supplementary aids for teachers. Its use by students is not focused on handling and mastering the tools from the technical point of view: the “digitally born” students of today accept technology as second nature. The focus is on relying on technology in the process of solving problems based on the students’ interest, that is, employ it in order to improve the quality of their learning outcome. In a nutshell, the focus is not on learning how to use technology, but rather on using technology to learn.