Future Makers

Project summary

In order to prepare our pupils to become an active member of society we try not only to teach them the academic part of school (learning languages, Math and History for example), but we also emphasize the so called executive functions. With executive functions we mean planning and organizing our work, have a flexible mindset and be creative in problem-solving. These functions are also known as 21st century skills. Our ever-changing society becomes more and more volatile and it's hard to keep up if you don't develop your skillset as a youngster. We don’t know what types of jobs our future will hold for our youth, but we do know if we don’t prepare them by strengthening these skills, they will have a hard time managing themselves. Not only our youngsters have potential trouble adjusting to future society, also our teachers find themselves in the dark when it comes to recognizing potential in this area or are lacking expertise in training these skills. Reason behind this knowledge gap is that they didn’t learn these skills during their own educational paths, but are expected to teach these skills to our pupils at school. When trying to find the best course on learning teaching methods we found out by experience the best source are the pupils themselves and talking to the working environment they are going to work at. Companies and businesses can be found in a similar slipstream like our pupils and teachers. They know what they want from their future employees (namely 21st century skills), but are having trouble finding and binding their new employees, since they tend to change workplaces like their clothing: staying put at one company doesn’t really fit in this new mindset. To sum up: we noticed some trouble along the path of the 21st century skills: our future employees want their future employees to have them, but don’t know how to stay interesting for them. Our future employees knows they need them, but have trouble obtaining them and our teachers know they need to teach these skills but have trouble finding the right way of teaching them. This project will contribute by creating a full circle learning trajectory by having pupils work together transnationally in projects with selected companies, in which they have to explore five topics using 21st century skills. The companies will use these trajectories to find out how to find and bind these youngsters to their company whist working with them on their projects. Involved teachers will guide these pupils during their project and derive input for a teacher’s course on how to teach 21ste century skills in a company based learning environment. By conducting this project we will achieve the following objectives and concrete results. Objectives: A1: Awareness of pupils regarding future workplacements (what is expected of them; what types of careers will be there?) A2: Preparation of pupils on 21st century skills in order for them to have success in their future A3: Insight for companies on how to find and bind youngsters to their companies A4: Increased capabilities of teachers on how to teach 21st century skills amongst involved teachers Results: A5: Teacher course on 21st century skills derived from input from pupils’ projects with selected companies A6: Developed projects on 21st century skills to be carried out transnationally (blended mobilities) by pupils and selected companies. Other schools will be able to use these projects in their own schools. Linkage to selected priorities Priority 1: Strengthening the profile of the teacher profession By contributing to teacher’s development on teaching 21st century skills the profile of the teacher profession will be strengthened. There are many courses on 21st century skills, but after searching through the offers there were no specific offers like ours. We would like to contribute another way of teaching 21st century skills, namely by transnational projects with companies. Priority 2: Social Inclusion Executive functions or 21st century skills can be taught from a very young age by parents. Just by showing the right example on how to manage oneself and a family is enough for a good start. Unfortunately not all have the right example, since it’s becoming more and more difficult in our volatile society to stand still and reflect. Also our future jobs expect a more advanced skillset then our parents nowadays. By focusing on these skills during the project our pupils have a similar basic set of skills to go the next step in their lives. Therefore we chose the topic of social inclusion as well. We know it shouldn’t but background does matter in these types of arenas. Activities There will be four exchanges: October 2018: Finland; March 2019: Netherlands; October 2019: Finland; March 2019: Netherlands in which 15 pupils will travel each time. In between the exchanges pupils work together online on the project.