The Future of Education

The MASTER self-assessment allowed about 160 low-skilled adults in Italy, Cyprus, Portugal and United Kingdom, to be protagonist in the identification and evaluation of their Personal, Social and Learning to learn competence (PSL), by participating in the piloting carried out in the framework of the ERASMUS+ project MASTER. PSL was set as a key competence by the European Council and has been chosen for the self-assessment because, since it regards how to manage personal resources, social relationships as well as learning opportunities and career, it is crucial to increase adults’ awareness and empowerment, and to favour their full and effective participation in society. The self-assessment has been carried out through 2 tools, selected and adapted at pedagogical level by the University of Roma Tre: the Questionnaire about the perception of one’s own competences and beliefs (QPCC) and the Competence Cards for professional and immigration counselling, both already tested with different objectives and target groups from the ones of the MASTER self-assessment. The tools have been administered online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, by guidance and training professionals, during 3 sessions: the first one, in small groups, allowed the professionals to introduce the self-assessment process, objectives and the competences to be evaluated; the second one was aimed at the individual self-assessment through one of the 2 selected tools; the third allowed to discuss with the users the outcomes of the self-assessment process, through a report synthetizing their strengths and the competences to be improved, possibly through tailor-made courses, to be developed also on the basis of the self-assessment results. The innovation of the MASTER self-assessment process mainly stands in the following elements: Focus on PSL competence - it represents a wide range of skills that applying to all spheres of life and that, favouring self-awareness, are essential for the re-engagement of low-skilled adults; Bottom-up cooperation between private adult education providers and Public Employment Services - professionals from public and private domains cooperated together in the same organisational framework by building common approach and methodologies and are currently working for systematising the practices they built; Involvement of the users in a process giving them the opportunity to make adult people more aware of their skills, to improve their self-esteem, to reflect about the possibility to learn also from failures, to gain relevant information for their future participation in reskilling paths and, as side effect, to improve their digital competences with specific reference to the use of video-conference tools.

 

Keywords: adult education, low-skilled, key competences, self-assessment.