Education in Action: An Engine of Change, Creativity, Innovation, Leadership and Social Commitment

Venezuela, like other Latin American countries, embarks into the 21st century while confronting realities that require changes in its learning and education systems.

The purpose of Venezuela’s education system is to generate social renovation and economic development. It seeks to achieve this through improved educational quality, increased access, and systemic modernization. Since 1999, there have been efforts to address the quality and comprehensiveness of education in Venezuela, targeting various levels in the formal education system (Rodríguez & Polo, 2009). These initiatives have focused on primarily on preschool, basic education, and vocational education offering (ISCED, 2012).

Over the past 12 years there has been a measurable growth and expansion in the scope of Venezuelan educational services for the general population, measurably impacting UNESCO’s (2011) education indicators for the country. This expansion has been especially evident in maternal education programs and formal school systems (both public and private). The overall reach of education has grown considerably in the last 12 years: Bravo (2011) reports that in 1999 approximately 30% of the Venezuelan population was enrolled in some type of educational service; By 2009 total enrollment had increased to 37.5% (UNESCO, 2011).

Moving beyond the construct of strictly traditional formal education model, the Venezuelan educational system has sought to promote the concept of an educational environment that reaches beyond the classroom into the streets, the neighborhoods, and the community. Within this context, the teacher is not the only agent for promoting learning (Rodríguez & Polo, 2009). Nevertheless, the teacher’s role is recognized as vital in facilitating and generating creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership in future generations.

The challenge, then, facing educators in Venezuela, is to interact with and respond to the unique difficulties of a complex and changing Latin American context. Bos, Cabrol, and Rondon (2012) summarize this as the three roles of the teacher:

Presented with the exceptional opportunity to learn from a leader in educational innovation and instructional design, we travel to Caracas, Venezuela, the home of Abraham Zalzman. This fascinating and multifaceted professional is founder and director of INESTED, and has dedicated the last 35 years to meeting the challenge of creating and maintaining an organization dedicated to train hose who train teachers and facilitators for the Venezuelan education and entrepreneurial context. He has focused on working through the private sector in strategically and systematically meeting the needs for training and professional development of teachers and trainers. Furthermore, through INESTED, he has worked beyond the Venezuelan context, helping clients and partners define and meet learning and development challenges through a variety of creative strategies and sustainable solutions.

Meeting Abraham Zalzman, we are presented with the prospect of learning unique lessons about motivating and impacting those around us, for the purpose of improving the quality of life. Zalzman was born in Pereira, Colombia. Professionally and academically, Zalzman established himself through a creative trajectory aligned with the art and practice of education. He graduated in 1959 with a degree in Psychology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Zalzman dedicated part of the next decade to further pursuing his studies and building his technical skills: He worked for Colombian national television as an assistant for dramatic programs and simultaneously developed a career as theatre director, winning several prizes at the National Theatre Festivals.

In the early 1960s Zalzman won a scholarship and went to Paris where he studied Film Directing (with a specialization in Film Editing) at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques. He stayed in France for working for the Organisation de la RadioTélévision Francaise as a producer of art films for television and a writer. His publishing included film reviews for the French magazine Positif and several books on films, including an analysis of the works of Joris Ivens, the “Flying Dutchman” documentary artist.

Returning to Colombia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Zalzman established himself in Bogotá, where he was named the head of television at the Instituto Nacional de Radio y Television (INRAVISION), the Colombian organization responsible for daily national television broadcasting over through three different channels. His tenure at INTRAVISION extended over five years, and during this time he was, among other things, in charge of national and international programming, client relations, and local talent development.

Pursuing academic goals, Zalzman subsequently accepted an offer from the Organization of American States (OAS) to study instructional systems at Florida State University (United States). Concurrently, he leads an international team to develop instructional materials for curriculum development, using the Florida State University-fostered Educational Technology Model that the OAS was interested in applying to the educational systems of Latin-American countries.

He spent the better part of the 1970s (until 1980) working for the Organization of American States (OAS), splitting his time between Washington, D.C., Caracas (Venezuela), and other five cities in Latin-America (Mexico City, Bogota, Recife, Buenos Aires, and Santiago de Chile). He worked as senior specialist on the OAS’s Multinational Educational Technology project. It is at the end of his work with the OAS that Zalzman began to lay the foundation for operationalizing INESTED, the company that is today Grupo Inested International, of which he remains the director to this day.

Zalzman’s professional productivity has left a trail of more than 100 courses, seminars, and workshops, distributed across geographical, social and political contexts, spanning South America, Central America, Asia, and Africa. He has worked particularly intensively in countries like Colombia, México, Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Curacao, Argentina, Japan, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique. His profound and empathetic personality is evident in the many roles he fulfills (designer, trainer, professor, and motivator), and has impacted his audiences, collaborators, and clients (in both public and private sector settings).

The Institute of Educational Technology was founded in 1980 in Caracas, Venezuela as the result of a collaboration of specialists from the aforementioned OAS’s Multinational Educational Technology project. In 2012 the company, now called the Grupo INESTED Internacional, celebrated 33 years offering instructional technology and human development expertise and services.

INESTED has nine business units. The first unit, called the Coordination Committee, acts as the board of directors and functions as regulator between the organization’s core and support units. The remaining eight core units are: (a) INESTED International (b) Project Headquarters, (c) New Products, (d) Within Company Programming, (e) Inter-company Programming, (f) Social Action: Being an Entrepreneur, (g) INESTED—Regional (Central, Western, and Eastern Venezuela) and (h) Publishing: Print & Internet. The support units include: finance, administration, logistics, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the team of consultants, advisors, and facilitators.

INESTED houses a profound and expansive range of learning opportunities. During its years of service it has offered over 128 “tailor-made” learning experiences, designed to meet specific client needs. The company prides itself on having trained more than 9,500 people, through eight different delivery modalities, for 76 different customers (both within and outside of Venezuela). Serving businesses in particular, INESTED has developed 85 instructional packets (or “packages”) with proprietary technology, as well as an exemplary program of social responsibility.

INESTED offers 39 behavioral tools from within the eight different product lines (course, workshop, intervention, coaching, cine-café, “follow-up” for transfer to the job, organizational interventions, evaluation, and consulting). Clients can select, in consultation with INESTED, which of these tools are most appropriate to their needs and context, to form the basis for a specific solution or interventionbased program.

INESTED’s product line makes up these areas of work, outlining an educational model of innovative social and cultural commitment to improving quality of life (see Figure 1)

INESTED’s educational and training approaches are informed by the contributions of Gagné, Briggs, and Wager (1992), Briggs, Gustafson, and Tillman (1991), and Brown and Green (2011). This is particularly evident in the steps followed in INTESTED’s methodology with providing care to client organizations. Not only does it align with the curriculum and programs INESTED offers, but also to what McArdle (2010) refers to as the six stages of instructional design training in organizations: (a) Business justification (identifying needs and determining the training solutions, as well as estimating the return of investment for the program); (b) Analysis (identifying needs of participants and developing job tasks); (c) Design (preliminary budget development, preparing learning objectives, weighing out learning theory considerations); (d) Development (curriculum and lesson planning, selecting learning strategies and resources, budgeting and legal considerations); (e) Implementation (preparing the training program, organizing presentations, managing the audience); And, (f) Evaluation (review the program with organizational management).

The INESTED methodology begins with the determination of needs arising from the difference between actual and desired (ideal) performance in the organization. Following the initial diagnosis, relevant potential solutions are generated, and requisite materials and products are designed in accordance with an analysis of the characteristics of the participants. Once strategies and modalities are selected and implemented for each solution, an evaluation is conducted of “lessons learned,” taking into consideration transfer and application of learning in the work environment. In addition, and significantly, an organizational impact of the intervention is conducted.

As part of its methodology, INESTED furthermore promotes a stage of ongoing (permanent) training and professional development, guided by specialists in educational technology. The goal of this stage is to achieve the transfer of corporate improvement processes, as part of the value added for the human potential of each organization or company that is served.

The INESTED philosophy encompasses the development of specific dispositions and attributes as part of training of facilitators and evaluators. Zalzman notes that this is a distinguishing feature of his company. Facilitator training focuses on fostering a sense of closeness and warmth, developing a sense of empathy for the needs of INESTED’s clients and learners, involving the facilitators with the participants to respond to the needs expressed, arousing passion for those solutions which are identified and implemented within the organization, and building a legacy in the teaching and learning processes which take place.

The training of facilitators at INESTED, guided by the actions and vision of Zalzman, is consistent with what Collins (2006) refers to as training and preparation of successors with a vision of excellence. According to Collins (2006), a key decision point for successful companies and their leaders is determining “who” before making the decision about “what,” whereby the choice and training of the personnel in charge of the projects is vital to ensure success.

Among the approaches that the business encourages amongst its staff, as well as in its facilitator training, are modules with workshops, where experiential activities play a vital role. Such experiential activities involve constructing concepts, reflection time, deriving and deducing the learning that was achieved, and personal commitment of the participants to applying learning using applied skills.

Zalzman emphasizes the value of lived experience, building on Kelly’s (2012) guidance to “treat life as experimental.” This is an opportunity to learn from successes but above all to be prepared that not everything will go as expected, a notion far from failure.

On the other hand, INESTED strengthens the monitoring of processes such as the quality assurance cycle. The role of consultants and advisors is to facilitate. Building on adult learning theory, the role of the participants is one of being fully active in the process.

To Zalzman, director and founder of INESTED, the word entrepreneur has a greater meaning than simply focusing on building small businesses. For Zalzman and the company he heads up, entrepreneurism is a disposition toward change, and creativity. It is guided by the desire to bring about change in the very environments in which human development and learning take place.

As Vygotsky (Driscoll, 2005) has argued, learning takes place in context and cannot be divorced from reality or from the needs of the learners if it is to promote creativity in search of solutions. The entrepreneurism project conducted under INESTED’s consultation demonstrates that ideas and solutions must come from those involved and affected by current problems and challenges, both small and large.

It is undeniable that the vision of a leader in education can permeate, through his or her influence, many areas of action. Under Zalzman, INESTED has benefited from the leadership of an individual who has the leadership characteristics mentioned by Collins (2006). Through his talent, knowledge, and skills, Zalzman, working together with the leadership team he has built in the company, promotes teamwork, planning of team objectives, and the organization of people and resources. By these means the company promotes in its partners (internal and external) commitment and passion in the developed projects, both current and future.

As Zalzman put it,

Kelly (2012) affirms this perspective, suggesting that creativity should indeed be nurtured as a kindergarten, and replanted or reforested because through it, one feels sufficiently nurtured or safer to make changes in ones context or environment.

Once again this affirms the important role of education as an engine of change in the attitudes of people, in our productive efforts, in the development of leaders, in creativity and innovation, and in teaching and learning for social change and human development.