Beyond the Curriculum: Towards a radical and inclusive Pedagogical Paradigm Shift

Abstract

The curricular question has regained a central place in international educational debate. It calls for a reconsideration of the models that guide pedagogical practice and a clarification of the possible directions of contemporary education. Within this landscape, it becomes necessary to analyse the diversity of approaches that shape the field and to explore their potential to expand what counts as educable. The aim of this article is to offer a broad theoretical reading that positions the Radical and Inclusive Approach (RIA) within the contemporary curricular field, clarifying its foundations, genealogy and its capacity to widen what is considered educable through a critical dialogue with existing traditions. The analysis explains why this approach constitutes a fertile pathway for reorganising the curriculum from a more complex, conscious and humanly meaningful understanding of education.

The study adopts an essayistic, genealogical and analytic‑interpretative methodology, centred on the critical reconstruction of the main curricular rationalities and on the exploration of the place occupied within them by the radical dimension of education. It distinguishes their epistemological, ontological, axiological and methodological foundations, and examines their scope in order to show how they have shaped both the limits and the possibilities for deepening the understanding of what may be educated.

The analysis reveals persistent tensions among models oriented towards performance, dialogical approaches rooted in practice, critical perspectives of emancipation, postmodern views linked to subjectivity, religious‑cultural frameworks attentive to transcendence, holistic approaches integrating body–mind–community, and complex perspectives shaped by uncertainty and the human condition. It also identifies convergences, ruptures and blind spots that continue to characterise the curricular field and that demonstrate the need for broader and deeper interpretative frameworks.

This theoretical reading positions the Radical and Inclusive Approach as an exceptional proposal aimed at integrating radical dimensions—ego, consciousness, essential self‑knowledge, meditation, prenatal pedagogy, love, death, widespread social immaturity, human stupidity, among others—systematically excluded by contemporary globalised education. Its principal contribution lies in proposing a profound reorganisation of General Didactics based on the ego–consciousness dyad as a formative vector, within a framework that transcends curricular fragmentation and the epistemological limitations of prevailing models. Taken together, the findings clarify the singularity and relevance of the Radical and Inclusive Approach and demonstrate its capacity to reconfigure what is essential in contemporary education by expanding the meaning and scope of the curriculum.