E.S.S.E:N.C.E.- Entrepreneurial Skills in Schools Education: Nurturing Citizenship and Entrepreneurship

Background The project aims at resolving some problems identified in the Italian and European school systems, about the inadequate interest showed, by the secondary schools, about the entrepreneurial education and the assessment and self-assessment techniques of these competences ((Eurydice Report 2016). Following the directives established by the Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020 and the three Europe 2020 key initiatives (innovation union, youth on the move, new skills for new jobs), which support the creativity and innovation, included the entrepreneurship at all levels of education, ESSENCE proposes an innovative methodology of transmission/evaluation of entrepreneurial competences to be applied within the secondary schools participating at the project. Objectives Through the improvement of the professional profile of teachers, ESSENCE wants to help student in acquiring/evaluating the entrepreneurial competences, allowing them to develop transversal skills such as critical thinking, creativity and self-perception, and introducing them, with the game, to the professional world and promoting their active citizenship. This objective will be reached through the realization of a training path, for the teaching of the project’s methodology to teachers; specifically, the training will include strategies for the teaching of entrepreneurial competences, techniques of assessment and use of a digital tool, the E-portfolio, for the assessment and self-assessment activities. So, the general objective is to produce an impact on the school system, in terms of improvement of the education quality and evaluation and self-evaluation of entrepreneurial skills, through the update of teachers’ competences (specific objective of the project). Participants Direct target group: - teachers and headmasters of the secondary schools; - students, beneficiaries of the learning path. Indirect target group: - representatives of the institutions and of the educational field. Activities The project foresees the implementation of the following activities: - 12 specific activities, useful for the realization of the intellectual output: methodology of assessment and self-assessment of the entrepreneurial competences (O1/A1); - Joint Staff Training Event for the training of teachers (C1); - activities for the dissemination of the project, in total 6 multiplier events (E1-E6) Methodology The project implements a validated process for the development and transfer of the innovation based on different points: 1 sharing of best practices: LUT, UM and Framtidsfrön make available their own best practices, contributing to the realization of the project methodology; 2 comparison with stakeholders at local level (O1/A4) for the collection of feedbacks regarding the proposed methodology; 3 on the basis of feedbacks, it will be possible to join and adapt the best practices with the aim to realize a draft of the assessment and self-assessment methodology, based on the development of the entrepreneurial education in the schools (O1/A5); 4 definition and implementation of training path for teachers (O1/A6) to be implemented during the JSTE at the University of Murcia (C1). 5 after the training it will be possible to test the methodology within the schools partner of the project(O1/A10-O1/A11); 6 the collection of feedbacks occurred earlier (O1/A11) will be fundamental in order to proceed with the activity of fine tuning (O1/A12); The development of this process will lead at the realization of an innovative methodology of transmission/evaluation of the entrepreneurial competences, which will be implemented by the teachers within the school contexts. Results - update of teachers’ competences; - innovative methodology of assessment and self-assessment of entrepreneurial competences; - improvement of teaching/learning processes of schools.