Strategies to Utilise and Cultivate positive Characteristics & Employability Skills in Schools

"The high school students are facing new challenges for career and life management arising from the complexity of current global economy, industries, and technology change. The main purpose of a comprehensive educational and developmental guidance in a school setting is to promote and enhance the learning process, to equip students with the necessary knowledge, skills and values to make informed decisions for successful transition from school to further education or work. School counselors are in a great position to assist students through the post-secondary planning process and to help in resolving problems they face in regards to career choice. The goal of SUCCESS Project was to create an innovative training package for school counselors based on principles of Positive Psychology (PP) that would be successfully applied to support students after their graduation from high schools. The SUCCESS Project was oriented to enhance school counselors’ competencies in developing student’s employability skills based on PP principles.According to the results and responses gathered during focus groups and quantitative research in each partner country the SUCCESS team were able to pin out the 10 Employability Skills that are of outmost importance and need to be acquired by students in order to sustain and thrive a successful career path. These skills are: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Self-Presentation, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Decision Making (Problem Solving), Negotiation Skills, Teamwork, Communication and Engagement (Flow). All of the Employability Skills suggested above, can be taught, developed and nurtured through the use of a variety of activities that derive from Positive Psychology. The 4 pillars of Positive Psychology that can support and cultivate the aforementioned desirable outcomes are Positivity, Character Strengths, Resilience and Meaning (Meaning of life). Overall, 80 activities were developed across the four pillars (modules), amounting to a total implementation time of approximately 60 hours. Activity types ranged from personal written tasks based around reflection and self-awareness to more active exercises including role playing, cooperative tasks and etc., in order to create a flexible training package. Each activity was developed using the following template structure: Activity Title, Duration, Skills to be enhanced, Activity Type (Individual/Group/Homework), Activity Level (Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced), Materials (if required), Implementation Instructions, Evaluation & Reflection. The SUCCESS Training Package along with the SUCCESS Online Training Platform were tested on trainers who afterwards had training sessions with 25 school counselors in each project partner country. The SUCCESS Training Package consists of the “Guide for SUCCESS Handbook” and “SUCCESS Handbook: Activities & Instructions"". The SUCCESS Training Package was prepared in English language and translated in 3 languages (Greek, Lithuanian, Italian). The online SUCCESS Training Package (Guide for SUCCESS Handbook and SUCCESS Handbook: Activities & Instructions) is accessible through the SUCCESS Project website (https://www.successlearning.eu/training/).Information about SUCCESS On-line platform, Guide for SUCCESS Handbook and SUCCESS Handbook were sent to schools, school counsellors, project stakeholders and other professional organizations and networks. The main target group of the SUCCESS Project was school counselors, who had possibility to access new knowledge and develop new skills that would assist them in progressing at both professional and personal level. 125 school counsellors from project partners’ countries who participated in pilot trainings evaluated the SUCCESS Training Package very positively. The counsellors agreed on the fact that it was important to implement this kind of training package in schools as beneficial for both, students and counsellors. In order to disseminate the tangible outcomes of the Project, the multiplier events have been conducted in all project partner countries. During the multiplier events, the final results and outcomes of the Project and the online educational platform were presented to the attendees. The content of the multiplier event has been evaluated highly positively. All 240 participants expressed their intention to share the SUCCESS resources with other professionals and were strongly motivated to implement the presented tools in their career guidance work with students."