“FA.N.T.A.S.I.A. - Entrepreneurship and soft skills through FAiry Tales: an iNnovaTive Approach to entrepreneurShip educatIon in primAry schools” is an innovative project leaded by CREATE Partnership Trust, in cooperation with 5 other primary schools from Italy, Romania, Turkey, Lithuania and Portugal, two entrepreneurial education experts from Greece and Lithuania, one ICT expert PONTO PR and one QA partner, ProMETEUS Association, thus ensuring a wide European impact and a deep integration of competences. The development of the entrepreneurial capacity of European citizens and organisations has been one of the key policy objectives for the EU and Member States for many years. Fostering and developing these skills from primary school promotes an entrepreneurial mindset and creates a foundation of skills that support both entrepreneurship and employability. For this reasons, partners designed the FANTASIA proposal tailoring it on the needs of early primary students, aged 6-9, and those of their teachers. Educators need to develop capacities aimed at promoting entrepreneurial competences for the target age. General aims: - to foster the entrepreneurial mindset and knowledge of transversal and entrepreneurial skills of primary students aged 6-9 through an innovative software based on fairy tales. - to foster the training of teachers in the assessment of transversal and entrepreneurship skills of primary students through a user manual and training course for teachers/coaches, also available in eLearning mode. Specific objectives: - Design and create an innovative software that fosters entrepreneurships mind-sets and skills thanks to the help of fairy tales characters. Through the FANTASIA software, students will increase their sense of initiative an entrepreneurship and acquire a better understanding of their own skills and competences. Thanks to the use of avatars, students can explore the world of business by putting themselves in the shoes of different fairy tales budding entrepreneurs characters and responding to what they would do in certain scenarios. - Make an impact study of FANTASIA software use (based on the pilot actions) - Publish and incorporate a manual for teachers and guidance practitioners to support them in using the software with their students and incorporating it into curriculum and classroom activities. - Elaborate online learning modules for teachers/coaches available on the FANTASIA eLearning platform. The project foresees the creation of 3 Intellectual Outputs. The first one is the FANTASIA Software (IO1): directly involved teachers, under the guidance of expert partners, will adapt the fairy tales - chosen among the most popular ones by their pupils – to make a business oriented story. Fairy tales characters chosen, in a scenario consistent with their native fairy tale, will act in order to start running a business: our young pupils will have the chance to test and improve their entrepreneurial skills in the shoes of their heroes. Before starting the research, these teachers will attend a preliminary training in Athens, organized by AKEP in collaboration with THPI. They will be equipped with the necessary competences and tools to face future activities: the main entrepreneurial education topics will be tackled both at formal level (i.e. the EntreComp framework) and practically (strategies to foster entrepreneurial skills among primary students, how to detect and sustain entrepreneurial skills in young pupils). Once the FANTASIA Software will have been built, the second step of the research will start, giving birth to our IO2: a user manual will be created, together with training modules to be uploaded on the eLearning platform. Thanks to it teachers/coaches will interiorize which skills are enhanced in the different tasks of the fairy tale/business development, how to support the pupils in acquiring awareness of those skills and develop them through the software. Finally, teachers/coaches will have to be able to train other teachers non directly involved in the project on their turn. Once both software and training contents will have been fully ready, it will be time to train our “FANTASIA ambassadors”. For this, a second joint staff in Kaunas, organized by THPI in collaboration with AKEP is planned. Back home, trained teachers from partner schools, together with our trainers from the expert partners, will spread the message and train 50 other teachers non directly involved. This will multiply the impact of the project. After having been trained, teachers will simultaneously deliver the Software to at least 180 6-9 years old pupils will last 60 hours and train the 50 teachers as explained in WP2. Finally, once the test will have ended, the Impact study (IO3) will be launched. All products and learning outcomes and highly sustainable and will produce long term benefits at EU level, given the breath of the partnership and the high transferability of the tangible outputs.
General aims were: - to foster the entrepreneurial mindset and knowledge of transversal and entrepreneurial skills of primary students through innovative software based on fairy tales; - to foster the training of teachers in the assessment of transversal and entrepreneurship skills of primary students through a user manual and training course for teachers/coaches. Specific objectives were: - Design and create innovative software that fosters entrepreneurship mindsets and skills thanks to the help of fairy tale characters. Through the FANTASIA software, students increased their sense of initiative and entrepreneurship and acquired a better understanding of their own skills. Thanks to the use of avatars, students explored the world of business by putting themselves in the shoes of different fairy tale budding characters and choosing to what they would do in certain scenarios; - Make an impact study of FANTASIA software use; - Publish and incorporate a manual for teachers and guidance practitioners to support them in using the software with their students and incorporating it into curriculum and classroom activities; - Elaborate online learning modules for teachers available on the FANTASIA platform. Every objective was reached.
The development of the entrepreneurial capacity of European citizens and organisations has been one of the key policy objectives for the EU and the Member States for many years. Fostering and developing these skills from primary school promoted an entrepreneurial mindset and created a foundation of skills that support both entrepreneurship and employability. For this reason, partners designed the FANTASIA proposal tailoring it to the needs of early primary students, aged 6-9, and those of their teachers. Educators needed to develop capacities aimed at promoting entrepreneurial competencies for the target age. Entrepreneurship education is a clue also at the national level, in the UK and in all partner countries. In the UK, it fits within the KS2 core theme 3 ‘living in the wider world- economic wellbeing and being a responsible citizen. Schools are encouraged to give pupils the opportunity to learn about enterprise and the skills that make someone ‘enterprising’. In the British national curriculum, topics like: - where the money comes from, keeping it safe and the importance of managing it effectively - how money plays an important part in people’s lives - basic understanding of enterprise are considered highly relevant.