The future of education at stake: unanimous criticism of the White Paper on the Primary Education Teaching Degree

2025-10-29

The five scientific associations—ÁPICE, AUPDCS, SEA, SIDLL, and SEIEM—express through this joint press release their shared position of rejection of the draft White Paper on the Primary Education Degree published by the Conference of Deans of Education (CoDE) in September 2025.

Spanish Societies of Specific Didactics Warn of the Impoverishing Drift of the Draft White Paper on the Primary Education Degree

The representatives of the five national scientific associations—ÁPICE (Didactics of Experimental Sciences), AUPDCS (Didactics of Social Sciences), SEA (Artistic Education), SIDLL (Didactics of Language and Literature), and SEIEM (Mathematics Education)—publicly express our rejection of the draft White Paper on the Primary Education Degree promoted by the Conference of Deans of Education (CoDE), which we consider lacking in technical rigor, unbalanced, and incompatible with the scientific, pedagogical, and regulatory principles that should guide initial teacher training.

As associations representing over 80% of university faculty linked to specific didactics, we declare our deep concern about the direction of the proposed reform, which marginalizes disciplinary-didactic knowledge and replaces the essential connection between disciplines and their teaching with generalist pedagogical approaches.

Among the most concerning aspects are:

  1. Omission of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), an essential framework with over forty years of scientific development that structures teacher training at the intersection of knowledge and didactics, replaced by vague descriptions of general pedagogical knowledge.
  2. Invisibilization of specific didactics of various curricular areas (sciences, mathematics, languages, social sciences, and arts), reduced to mere applied methodologies.
  3. Disregard for the current legal framework, ignoring the specific competencies of the LOMLOE (RD 157/2022) and mistakenly attributing the regulation of teaching specialties to RD 1594/2011 instead of RD 1440/1991.
  4. Relegation of knowledge areas, such as Natural and Social Sciences, Language and Literature, Artistic Education, and Mathematics, to residual mentions without competency development.
  5. Unilateral introduction of a 4+1 model (generalist degree plus a master’s in specialties), neither debated nor agreed upon, with serious implications for the quality and accessibility of teacher training.
  6. Lack of dialogue, consensus, and transparency in the process followed by CoDE, which disregards contributions from specialized working groups and over 700 documented amendments submitted by faculty.

The undersigned societies demand, as a claim:

  • Withdrawal of the current draft and the initiation of a new, genuinely participatory, and representative review and dialogue process.
  • Full incorporation of scientific and didactic contributions made by specialists in the various areas.
  • Respect for the current regulatory and curricular framework, particularly the LOMLOE competencies, as an essential reference for designing university training.
  • Guarantee of balanced, professional, and coherent teacher training that prepares future teachers for the comprehensive teaching of all curriculum areas.

We reiterate our full willingness for constructive dialogue with the CoDE, the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, and other relevant institutions, convinced that only through consensus and respect for disciplinary diversity can a White Paper be developed that effectively contributes to improving the quality and coherence of initial teacher training for Primary Education in Spain.

Signed:

Rut Jiménez Liso (ÁPICE), Neus González-Monfort (AUPDCS), Amparo Alonso (SEA), Josep Ballester Roca (SIDLL), Núria Planas (SEIEM).