by Leire Escalada
A forum for sharing experiences and projects focused on meaningful reading in the classroom. This was the third edition of the ‘The Challenge of Reading in the Classroom’course, held at the University of Navarra campus in Madrid on 27–28 August. Organized by the Center for Civic Humanism at the Institute for Culture and Society of this Spanish university, the event brought together more than one hundred teachers, from primary education to higher education, to discuss the transformative power of reading and gain first-hand experience of the Great Books Seminar methodology. Several REMAP researchers took part in the event, presenting the project to the teaching community.
Álvaro Sánchez Ostiz, REMAP researcher and professor at the University of Navarra, introduced the project together with Ana Sánchez Ostiz, children’s author, Language and Literature teacher, and adjunct professor of Education. In their session, entitled Meaningful Reading: From Primary Education to University, they emphasized the importance of fostering transformative reading at every stage of education. The REMAP researcher outlined the objectives of this Erasmus+ project and highlighted the value of working within an interdisciplinary team of experts from four countries: Latvia, Slovakia, the Netherlands, and Spain.
Likewise, Beatriz Gómez, REMAP researcher and professor at the University of Navarra, focused her presentation on the Reading Mentors programme, one of the cornerstones of REMAP. This initiative is based on peer mentoring and aims to promote reading for pleasure and meaningful reading—reading that contributes to transforming the lives of university students. More than 700 students have already taken part in the programme, which has just begun a new academic year. During her presentation, Gómez explained the programme’s origins, methodology, and outcomes, highlighting the importance of students’ commitment and enthusiasm in ensuring the initiative’s success.
The opening keynote was delivered by José Ángel Torijano, Headteacher of IES Lucía de Medrano (Salamanca, Spain), who described the profound transformation this public secondary school has undergone in recent years, with reading serving as the cornerstone of that change. The programme also featured the panel discussion “Paul Ricoeur and Personal Transformation through Reading”, with José Manuel Mora-Fandos, Professor of Literature at the Complutense University of Madrid, and Jorge Valero, Philosophy teacher at Stella Maris College, who shared the educational approach adopted by his school.
The course also featured presentations on the Argos Project, implemented in 11 secondary schools and coordinated by the University of Navarra; the Pascal Institute (the Netherlands); and the Master’s Degree in Great Books, organized in collaboration with St. John’s College. Participants also took part in seminars on literary classics, including Persuasion (Jane Austen), Confessions (Saint Augustine), The Republic (Plato), The Road (Cormac McCarthy), and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy), among others. These sessions allowed participants to experience the Great Books Seminar methodology as readers themselves, exchange experiences, and learn strategies they can apply in their own classrooms.