We Research: Enhancement of Transversal Skills for Better student Achievement
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked an educational crisis in which teachers and educational professionals in elementary school settings experienced a shared apprehension regarding the vulnerability of citizenship education and the democratic school climate. Amidst the shift towards online teaching methods, educators primarily prioritized content education, such as math and languages, inadvertently neglecting the crucial role of transversal skills also known as soft or social skills.
The Social Blend project seeks to increase awareness of the vital importance of transversal skills in elementary education, particularly within the framework of blended learning. This approach integrates digital tools into classroom instruction to foster student engagement and enhance learning motivation. It aims to target stakeholders at all levels, including students, teachers, educational experts, and policymakers. Additionally, the project focuses on improving both students' and teachers' digital competencies.
The groundwork for the research was to determine whether teachers were aware of what transversal skills are, how to teach them and which were neglected the most, based on the findings it was concluded that the project should work with the following 10 transversal skills:
- Compassion
- Democratic Participation
- Respect for the Environment
- Communication skills
- Ability to Study Independently
- Self-Discipline
- Flexibility and Adaptability
- Ability to Think Independently
- Resourcefulness
- Appreciating a Healthy Lifestyle
Next toolboxes were created, a game toolbox, discussion toolbox and a digital tool toolbox. Each of the three toolboxes contain content for each of the 10 transversal skills. A lesson plan developed specifically for integrating transversal skill teaching into the regular school curriculum was then developed to support the toolboxes and their use, to make it easy for educators to use the toolbox materials.
The materials developed are available online free of charge for any educator to use, the website contains a library with additional materials, video guides and information gathered during the project, as well as the toolboxes, toolbox guides.
During the late stages of the project each of the seven project partners arrange continuing professional development courses (CPD courses) for educators, teachers and teacher students to experience, use and experiment with the materials developed through the project. The last CPD course will be held the 25th of April in Poland at the Bielsko-Biala University.
Did you know
- The project took form during the covid pandemic, and the first meetings had to be arranged online. The first physical meeting took place in Brussels in the spring of 2022.
- The Social Blend project consists of seven European project partner organizations from Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
- After the project has ended the material created during the project will still be available for up to 3 years.