Maker Education and semplexity. Rethinking education to address emerging complexity

Today’s educational systems deal with several elements of complexity resulting from the rapid transformations of contemporary society. Employability and professional skills have evolved considerably since the beginning of the 21st century, with an emphasis on creativity, design, and engineering processes. Teachers are therefore required to redesign teaching and learning pathways, emphasizing flexible and microlearning-oriented design and competence-based didactics that effectively integrates technology. This paper aims to reflect on the contribution of Maker Education within the emerging complexity, analyzing an experience conducted in light of three fundamental principles of Berthoz’s theory of semplexity: modularity, redundancy, and deviation. The experience provided teachers with the opportunity to revise their own practices and posture towards new technologies. At the same time, the experience allowed us to impact on the students’ life skills by soliciting the three competence areas outlined in the 2020 LifeComp Framework.