We live in a fast moving and ever evolving time. A report authored by the Institute For The Future (IFTF) and a panel of 20 tech, business and academic experts from around the world states that 85 percent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't even been invented yet. As so, a significant change in education is not only necessary but also urgent and conceived in ways where we can prepare our students for a world we do not yet know. Mainly, a trend is set where schools in the 21st century are no longer seen as a huge information conveying system, but as a competence building system, where students acquire a diverse set of competencies that will allow them to become active and productive citizens of the future. At the core of many different sets of 21st-century competencies acknowledge by up-to-date educational literature, one can find the 4Cs: Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication, and Creativity. These will lay the basis for this project. On the other hand, when building our future, we must be aware of our past. That claims for a critical knowledge of our cultural heritage, where we will find answers and solutions to the problems History challenged our ancestors with. Combining both Past and Future, the objectives of this project are to bring students closer to the common cultural heritage of Europe, through a wide and diverse set of activities thought to build in our students core competencies for the 21st century, namely the 4 Cs. With this project, we intend to create a more appealing school reality to prevent school failure and early school leaving. Using English as the communication language and mobilizing intensively ICT tools, we also aim at reinforcing the European citizenship in our students and our communities. The core goal of the project, however, is to produce a central shift in our schools' practices: from conveying information institutions to building competencies organizations. This partnership was established with a very diverse set of schools, that developed different competencies and strengths as a result of their history, background and school practices. With this project, we will highlight and endorse the best in 4Cs' related everyday practices of each school to benefit the rest of the partner schools. We also aim at training teachers in new and innovative approaches to competencies' building. At the end of this project, an open digital "Handbook on Building The 4 Cs" will sum up our achievements and will be widely available: it will explain methodologies, required materials, target groups, and assessment strategies. This will be not only a strong dissemination tool of all the work carried out on the course of this project but also a powerful mechanism to help train other students and teachers in these learning and teaching approaches. With this project, we expect to reach 800 students, either taking part directly in mobilities or by indirect contact through the effective changes we envision this project will bring about into each partner school. To achieve these goals, we foresee activities such as group dynamics, art performances, drama play, storytelling exercises, brainstorming practices, mind mapping, robotics, among others, which will train our students in each of the 4 Cs. The final products of the project, besides de Handbook, will include websites, flyers and touristic guides, art projects, online quizzes, drama plays, and other similar resources. By the end of this project, we expect all students directly involved to have improved not only their Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Critical thinking competencies, but also to have learned and used a diverse set of ICT tools. At last, but not the least, we aim at a long-lasting and effective change in our schools and in our teaching approaches to welcome the future with our students.
This project was made with great expectations from all the partner schools. The investment on 21st century competencies and in the 4Cs –was supposed to be a learning environment game changer in all the partner schools and we started the project with a lot of enthusiasm, considering all its potential. Our goal was to take the first deliberate steps in our schools to join the school system shift from an information conveying system to a competence building system. And we were going to do that by highlining the 4Cs in education and, at the same time, taking advantage of all the major cultural assets in our surrounding areas, namely those listed in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, like Auschwitz, Mont Saint-Michel, the Acropolis and Angra do Heroísmo. The project was assigned to specific groups of students in all the partner schools, which were, in some schools, specific classes or grades, and we made a transdisciplinary approach to it, involving all the curriculum subjects and teachers working with those students. Following the lead of the project’s challenges, the partner schools started to pay attention to a completely new set of features in learning and in student’s assessment: classes were organized in teams and teamwork became the standard in the learning environment, instead of an extraordinary methodology; oral presentations became instruments for assessment, and a criteria-based assessment was replaced by a competencies-based framework of evaluation. These changes come hand in hand with some other changes in the classroom and in the challenges proposed to the students, minding the 4Cs we were involved with in the project. So, communication, cooperation, creativity, and critical thinking became part of our daily practices, in the project as in the classroom. We got an amazing response from the students, and we saw evident progress in the direction we are working on. This enthusiasm led to an increased rate of mobilities, and, in the end of the project, all partner schools have involved in physical mobilities more students than they applied for. As planned, each partner school paid closer attention to one of the Cs, preparing activities for the mobilities and for schoolwork in-between mobilities. The mobilities involved always specific work (presentations, drama, performances, games) about the C we were dealing with, and trips to the surrounding area to feel the atmosphere of the historical sites and how they can help us to build the future. The highlight of all the project, bearing in mind this connexion to the past, was to watch, in Torikos, an ancient Greek theatre, a group of Greek, Polish, French and Portuguese students reciting, in the original Greek text, the first two verses of Homer’s Odyssey. The mobilities’ timetable also took into account small teacher training events, based on the C we were dealing with. The pandemic situation we have been through since 2020, and the distance learning methodology that was imposed on us, made an abrupt cut with all these innovative practices. Despite these difficulties, we felt that this project provided us, teachers in the partner schools, and our students alike, tools to cope with the challenges of this new reality more successfully. In the return to school, after the lockdown, we dealt with new setbacks, like single and isolated desks, and the use of masks, which were solid obstacles to cooperation and communication in the classroom. We felt it as a setback, if not in the project’s goals, at least in the new path the partner schools were following along with the project. The project was postponed for one year and like all the schools in Europe we were only trying to cope with the situation and, with all the difficulties we were facing, we couldn’t reach the project´s strategies and aims as we intended to. Only by the end of the school year, and after we got used to the new reality, were we able to promote a virtual meeting, where students were expected to be actors and not spectators. However, the students originally involved in the project had already progressed to other schools and a part of the teachers had also changed. Thanks to the efforts of the coordination, we were successful in an extraordinary four-month postponement which allowed us a closure to the project, in the shape of a physical mobility to the Azores. Unfortunately, the Greek partner was already out of the project and was not able to take part in this final mobility. All things considered, we can say the project was successful and has been an added value for both students and teachers and was a solid contribution to relocate the school in the path of innovation. The most important result was a Handbook on Promoting the 4Cs, which will be available online.