The Future of Education

Physics, with their general concepts, principles and laws, is widely considered to be the fundamental base for other natural sciences, technology, engineering, biosciences, and many other fields. Physics involves the study of all measurable aspects of the matter, energy and interactions. It touches many aspects of peoples’ lives giving elements for many key questions in the society. But, on the other hand, the perception of the society is not in line to the above when talking about physicists. Recent decade, according to discussions and conclusions at various events of physic associations, for example within the Forum of Physics and Society of the European Physical Society [1], young graduates in physics have a set of strengths and weaknesses in relation to the society needs. Their strengths are related to the performance in health sector, energy, environmental protection and food security. The main strengths of being a physicist are strong knowledge and skills in problem solving and modelling complex systems, strong intrinsic technical and cultural motivations, effective skills for various occupations related to policy making, business, consulting, etc. Also, the key weaknesses have been identified, which are related to cultural understanding of what it means to be ”physicists” and student aspiration for the career path, lacking of information of potential jobs, poor possess by students of cross-sectoral competences [2] (team work, communication, entrepreneurial skills, cultural awareness and expression, social and civic competence, etc.), lacking interests by graduates to spend time and effort to interact with the non-traditional labour market world, and to decode potential industrial applications. In this study we have analysed which of key competences [3] are missing by students and physics graduates, and how to integrate achievements of those competences into the formal curricula or other forms of learning, which could give graduates better position at the labour market and society.  Further, we have analysed and discussed the knowledge and skills from physics that could be given to graduates in other fields, for their better competitiveness.

Keywords: Cross-sectoral competences, physicists, non-formal learning;

References:
[1] European Physical Society, Report from the Forum Physics and Society meeting, CERN, Switzerland, 2012
[2] European Skills Competence, Qualifications and Occupations Taxonomy, https://ec.europa.eu/esco/portal/home
[3] Council recommendation on key competences for lifelong learning, Official Journal of the European Union, C189/1, 2018