21st Century Skills for 21st Century Needs is an Erasmus+ project focused on equipping young people with the skills they need to navigate through future challenges.
About
Young people today face a society in constant change. Competent workers and citizens in the future are individuals who can learn and adapt to new knowledge - alone or in collaboration.
Consequently, the objectives of education are no longer just what you learn, but how you learn, and also what you can one do with the knowledge you have. It becomes important to “learn how to learn” and to create new solutions to new problems.
This is the discussion on the 21st century skills - on which skills are needed to navigate through future challenges. For the students to be skilled for the 21st century there is a need for the education to have more of an entrepreneurial approach and methodology. This will make the students competent for future job opportunities in a constantly changing labour market.
We regarded this project as a unique opportunity to work further with these topics and approaches in collaboration with teachers in different countries in gaining new knowledge in teaching 21st century skills in the education of future teachers.
Our partners
Denmark
Located on the Jutland peninsula in Southeast Denmark, the Municipality of Vejle is the sixth largest in the country (population: 115,000), and the capital of Region South Denmark. "Vejle...Making things happen" sum up Vejle's vision.
The Department for Education and Learning has entrepreneurship as focus, following the national curriculum for primary schools as well as the EU policy on education. It has many years' experience with IT pedagogical development locally, nationally, and internationally. For the last 10 years, Vejle has implemented an ambitious strategy for the Digital School. The 8 themes in the strategy were: Digital infrastructure, learning, teaching aids, development of competences, management and culture. As part of this, it has implemented the Fablab At School project, that focuses both on entrepreneurship thinking and digitalisation. In March 2014 Vejle Municipality received the national Digitalisation Award for the strategy and the obtained results.
Vejle addresses and copes with the challenges of the 21st century through a strategic, innovative approach to development. To survive global challenges and preserve the residents’ living standards, new methods are constantly developed and tested to transform Vejle into a smart city that rationalises the use of digital solutions for its services.
Vejle has cooperated with over 70 municipalities, learning institutions, government and private institutions, NGOs and professional organisations across Europe, and globally, which enabled the staff to improve their competences in a wide range of areas.
Norway
Verdal municipality is located in the middle part of Norway, next to the Trondheim fjord. With around 15 000 inhabitants Verdal is a middle-sized municipality in Norwegian terms. The municipality is strongly influenced by the industry sector and the dynamics and business cycles that characterises this sector. Due to the importance of the industry sector Verdal municipality is striving to provide the industry with employees with the right skills and competences. Throughout many years the municipality and the industry sector has cooperated closely through school projects, entrepreneurship and VET contracts to be able to match the education provided by the municipality with the need for skills in the business and industry sector.
Nord University is a young university consisting of three study locations that have strong regional ties as well as a global perspective. We educate tomorrow’s teachers from preschool to upper secondary school, and within sports and the fine arts. Our fields of research emphasise the teaching profession and professional teaching practices. This project gave us the opportunity to collaborate with teachers and organisations working with students and schools. We benefit from the collaborators’ expertise and knowledge in gaining new knowledge in teaching 21st century skills in the education of future teachers.
Romania
Asociatia pentru Consolidarea Societatii Civile - Valea Jiului was founded in 2005. We help local NGO and institutions with project writing, implementation and reporting consultancy as we want to bring our contribution to the development of a strong and empowered civic society in our region. One example of making things different in our local community is the project 21st Century Skills for 21st Century Needs. We wanted to start a change in the formal educational system. And we did!
UK
Form the Future is a Cambridge-based social enterprise whose vision it is for all young people to move successfully from education into employment, providing the talent that our region’s companies need to grow.
We bridge the gap between students and employers – helping schools to achieve their Gatsby Benchmarks of good careers guidance, while helping businesses to raise their profile with young people, future-proof their future talent pipeline and support their communities. With volunteers from business, we help students develop employability skills, careers awareness, motivation and ambition.
We lead this Erasmus+ 21st Century Skills for 21st Century Needs programme’s UK project team which includes teachers from five Cambridge-based schools: Bottisham Village College, Comberton Village College, Hills Road Sixth Form College, Saffron Walden County High and Sawston Village College. Together we have hosted the programme’s launch conference in March 2019, participated in the teacher training programme and developed this handbook showcasing learnings gathered from this two-year long programme.
