The present project aims at the development of innovative, future-oriented processes, tools and methods that will foster personal and professional development among European University students, Early Stage Researchers and high school students, including also those that aspire to enrol in University. There is a growing consensus regarding the importance of high-quality adaptation skills as a means to support individuals in acquiring and developing key competences. Conversely, a major part of these transversal competences and “soft skills” is the development of integrated and innovative ways supporting personal development, resilience, adaptation and critical thinking. As Futures Literacy increases individuals’ capacity to ‘use the future(s)’ to explore the present, the project aims to adopt such methodology also to foster professional development. In other words, the training materials developed in the project will empower individuals to realize that their images about the future (anticipatory assumptions) have a significant bearing on (limit or open up) their actions and choices today. The objectives of the project include: - Conducting research on the interconnections of distinctive areas - namely future literacy, foresight, personal and professional development and theatre arts; - Identify skills gaps and shortages, regarding futures literacy skills, common to the partner countries which are preventing students from reaching their full potential, from a personal and professional point of view; - Contributing to innovation by developing, adapting and testing foresight tools and methods (including future-oriented performance-based pedagogies) pertinent to personal and professional development; - Strengthening the exchange of knowledge and practices about foresight and futures literacy amongst key organisations, promoting lifelong learning and counselling for the personal and professional development of young people; - Facilitating increased recognition of futures literacy skills at the European level within the communities concerned. The proposed project calls for the establishment of a well-grounded partnership, consisting of experts and practitioners in the fields of foresight, futures literacy, theatre arts and personal and professional development that will assume the following project activities: Research activities, development of two Foresight Toolkits, one for University students and Early Stage Researchers, the other for high-school students. These toolkits will also include Training Manuals so as to enable other teachers and counsellors to replicate the contents of the training courses designed. All the course contents will be piloted in the 4 countries (Poland, the Netherlands, Greece and the United Kingdom) and will be then revised according to the feedback received from the participants. The methodology to be used in carrying out the project involves: - The implementation of research and evidence needs analysis; - The design of skills development material and tools (toolbox); - The implementation of multiplier events to disseminate the research findings and the toolbox. The project will undertake comprehensive research to contribute to a greater understanding of futures literacy skills, and on how to use foresight to anticipate changes and to improve personal and professional development. The project is expected to have concrete results regarding the research and practical outputs which will cover theoretical, practical and design aspects. The project is expected to have a strong impact for the involved communities at local, national and European levels, from various perspectives. The desired impact could be summarised as the aim to disseminate a novel approach and innovative methods for Futures Literacy and Foresight techniques resulting in personal and professional development.
The project aimed to develop participants' capabilities to 'use the future' in the present and therefore rationalise educational and career choice paths of high school learners, students and early stage researchers in the face of unpredictable environment. This has been achieved by combining pragmatic (foresight) and experiental approaches (Futures Literacy, performance techniques) to imagining personal developement and professional career paths. The intention of the Project Consortium was to develop training courses aimed at interpreting and imagining professional futures and providing young people with tools that extend their ability to embrace futures of the labour market. The specific objectives of the projects were (i) to define a set of design principles for a future-oriented training programme, ii) to increase the personal resilience (learn how to embrace uncertainty), (iii) to present how to understand how the professional environment relates to their personality ( their vision) and how they can interact effecively with if (their values) and (iv) to demonstrate to academic and high school teachers, career counsellors how to use FUTURES workshops as guiding principles to keep on adopting the training methodologies.
The Consortium aimed at developing methodology for interpreting, imagining personal and professional futures of young people (high school learners, students and early stage researchers) that would help them to embrace the uncertainty of the constantly changing and unpredictable labour market. The main reasons for undertaking the proposed project were i) poor quality of career guidance in Europe, often not taking into account the dynamically changing external trends shaping the labour market, (ii) insufficient institutional support of educational and professional developement of young people, (iii) unevenly distributed education in foresight and Futures Literacy in Europe resulting in an educational gap in the application of techniques and methods for anticipating the future to the personal and professional development of young people. In this way, the project addressed the needs of young people in terms of equipping them with tools for anticipating the future, but also provided new knowledge to secondary school teachers, university teachers and guidance counsellors to enrich their methodological repertoire in terms of methods for managing the future of young people in the face of uncertainty of the labour market.