In addition to their core mission of imparting knowledge and skills, educational organisations usually also want to contribute to tackling upcoming societal challenges. The more complex these challenges become, the more important it seems to be to adopt a holistic perspective in education. The international project EDUCATION has developed materials for such a perspective.
In the international project EDUCATION, organisations from nine countries have addressed the question of how adult education can contribute to shaping future-oriented societal developments in four areas:
Democracy
Digitisation
Sustainability
Basic skills
For three years, the project partners, including the SVEB, have been working on concepts for a holistic understanding of education in the context of pressing social developments.
Objective: a responsible and able-bodied population
The background to the project was the consideration that current developments such as the megatrends digitisation or sustainability create uncertainty for many people. To be able to cope with these complex developments and take advantage of their opportunities, societies depend on a population capable of learning. They also need a population that is prepared to take social, political and environmental responsibility.
In most countries, including Switzerland, education systems focus on work-related competences. Other aspects, which are also important for individual and social development, are often less important in the education system. The “EDUCATION” project was launched in order to encourage those involved in continuing education to consider their role in shaping social developments.
Future-oriented Nordic concept of education
As is well known, it is not enough to simply provide knowledge and information in order to generate learning processes and readiness for change in the population. The EDUCATION project therefore sought ways to focus more attention on future-oriented and change-oriented approaches in educational work with adults. To this end, the project partners drew on a common understanding of education in Scandinavia: a holistic concept with roots in German philosophy and humanistic education, which, through the detour to Scandinavia, is once again gaining importance in the German-speaking world.
Materials for training organisations
As part of EDUCATION, various foundations and concepts have been developed to support a more holistic understanding of education in continuing education. The materials are available in German, English and a number of other languages and are summarised in a road map.
With its focus on future-oriented educational concepts and transformative learning, EDUCATION followed the thread of its predecessor project FutureLab – a project in which the SVEB also participated.
Further information