Seeking co-production of knowledge in alternating training: insights from DESCI first round of world cafés

Abstract

In the last years the debate on competences and their role in the development of a more inclusive societies and in promoting innovation processes has become increasingly crucial at European level. The European Commission identified 8 key competences (basic and transversal competences and soft skills) that have to be attained by all citizens during their learning process. Also employers require from their employees more and more these kind of skills, and this is true also in the scientific education and research context. Indeed “Communication, working with others, problem solving and other similar abilities are considered very important requisites for a recently graduated student by a large section of the research laboratories responsible.” Nevertheless, European school curricula bestow little attention to transversal competences and soft skills. In this framework DESCI1 project, funded by Erasmus + Program, aims to develop a methodological pattern for alternating training in secondary school systems, adopting participatory design methodologies based on a Living Lab environment, to improve the connection between school, research, enterprise and territory and to promote the development of soft and transversal skills in students, needed to allow them to foster the innovation process, to increase their employability, express themselves, acting consciously in the system and driving the innovation and social inclusion in their communities. The DESCI approach undergoes to a continuous and participated evaluation process, under RRI principles, meant in order to explore, in a process of co-creation of knowledge, the ongoing results of the project. The evaluation outputs emerged at this stage of the project confirm that, in the learning AT process, the DESCI approach promote the increase of transversal competences and soft skills in the students, mainly referring to those included in the 8 key competences identified by the EU Commission.