Understanding and redirecting consultancy practice

Abstract

Educational consultancy is a controversial professional practice, still under construction, with multiple developing possibilities. It is going through a complex period full of changes, re-significations and reconsiderations. In this sense, the present paper presents a series of critical elements and red flags in order to correctly guide the debate. In order to improve education, committed learning communities are needed. In their bosom lies the key to better learning processes for everyone, teachers’ professional development, support and counseling. However, not all consultancy models are fit. Consultancy must take place in a democratic relationship, in a scenario of professional collaboration, through a process and with an ethical purpose, having in mind that each process must adapt to the corresponding context and culture, in order to transform it from the inside. Ethics, techniques and emotion must be combined dialectically in order to facilitate authentic involvement, the creation of shared meaning and professional commitment. With this purpose, each system, and each supporting system, must do its own journey on its own path, at its own pace. Simple, direct, decontextualized transfers are of no value at all.