TEACH INC
Start date: Sep 1, 2016,
End date: Aug 31, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
TEACH INC aims to provide a response to a set of needs directly related to needs of the participating schools and the demands for modernisation of the educational systems in Europe 1. NEED FOR KEY COMPETENCES ON CREATIVITY & INNOVATION: The importance of creativity and innovation in addressing the economic, environmental and social crises has been recognized in Europe. Recent policies call for the strengthening of Europe’s innovative capacity and the development of a creative and knowledge-intensive economy and society. Current training and education does not meet the demands of organisations and companies for employees with innovative, problem-solving and entrepreneurial capacities.2. NEED TO MOTIVATE FOR FURTHER LEARNING: The rate of school failure in ages 18 to 24 is 10.9% in the EU, with countries where this number doubles, e.g Spain,Cyprus,Greece, Portugal. The participating educational authorities, institutions and schools recognise that preparing students and motivating them for further learning, is key to reduce school leave (and failure) and increase attainment in tertiary education. They are aware that they part of the solution lies in the educational system, playing a key role in fostering and developing (young) people's creative and innovative capacities and that is it necessary not only to teach students the required subjects, but also how to transform problems of real life by finding creative solutions3. NEED TO GENERATE A CHANGE IN SCHOOLS & TEACHERS :schools have a duty to provide their pupils with an education which will enable them to adapt to an increasingly globalised, competitive, diversified and complex environment, in which creativity, the ability to innovate, a sense of initiative, entrepreneurship and a commitment to continue learning are just as important as the specific knowledge of a given subject. Although some experiences to introducing these aspect have taken place in schools across Europe (e.g. in Doukas & MDuran), the experiences are scattered and more due to individual initiative of a school or even a teacher. As such the majority of the school teachers in the regions participating in the project lack the skills and knowledge to promote creative learning skills and abilities and active learner-centred learning approaches in class. TEACH INC aims to address these needs by providing secondary school teachers, with the skills and competences to embed innovation and creativity in their their teaching activities, and thus enable them to prepare their students better for the labour market.- Define the skills and competence framework needed for embedding creativity and innovation in secondary education;- Develop an accessible and user-friendly app (with a support platform) based upon the needs of teachers and schools, for access to creativity techniques, best practices, examples and testimonies. -Enhance the take up of creativity techniques and innovation by giving the secondary teachers, their institutions and relevant stakeholders guidelines on mainstream this in a coherent and comprehensive manner;- Promote community where teachers and other interested can share knowledge and experiences, and which sustains the TEACH INC. results beyond the project duration. The work is structured around a logical workflow of 5 IOs, which start of with aesearch activity aimed at to drill into the skills, competences a the target group (O1 ) to move on the the design of the training/learning approach (O2) and the development of the TEACH INC learning content (IO3) and app and e-leanirng platform (IO4). Before releasing its final version of its is necessary to validate (O4). To guarantee realisation of the foreseen impact a continuous quality a evaluation is conducted (and the dissemination effort aimed at reducing barriers towards uptake underpins all the workflow (O8). The impact on (future) teachers and / or teaching staff is related to their skills and competences as teaching professionals, TEACH INC. will provide them with the skill-set and knowledge to fully integrate creativity and innovation into the competence curriculum of their students, independently of the course topic or subject. By using the TEACH INC. app and environment they will be able to embed these issues into their daily activities, access materials and activities to involve the students in this process and e-guides for making parents/caretakers aware about the changes and how to engage them in this process.Increasing the competences of (future) teachers in creativity and innovation will spark the uptake of new participatory teaching and working models with a strong experiential approach. Teachers will find themselves better prepared for the changing educational environment in which a change of paradigm is taking place from group classroom education with a knowledge provider (teacher) and knowledge receiver (student), towards more individualised and participation.