Key skills for the students of tomorrow: a cross-sectional survey among school teachers and university lecturers

The survey here presented is part of the Horizon 2020 “Up2University” (Up2U) project, aiming at bridging the gap between school and university by promoting learners’ acquisition of crucial skills through formal and informal learning so to let them be successful and achieve challenging goals in the modern-day knowledge and network society. After a thorough literature and recent international policies review leading the authors to define the set of skills considered as the “must have”, a choice was made to collect teachers’ opinions about this set and their possible divergencies and suggestions, being school and university teachers the main recipients of the Up2U project. Specifically, a total amount of 60 skills was defined and grouped in 13 areas, in turn referring to three macro-areas (media and information literacy – MIL-, cognitive skills, socio-relational skills). Via closed items, we first asked teachers to declare how much students should possess each of them so to be successful in college (Likert scale 1-5). A final open-ended question investigated respondents’ opinion about the three most important things schools should do in order to prepare their students more effectively for college or university. 131 school teachers and 173 university lectures from nine countries answered the questions. Results revealed how both university and school teachers clearly understand that - to support students in the transition- it is necessary to reform the teaching models and to promote specific skills they themselves identify as critical. Particularly, school teachers put MILs ability at the top as in the case of “evaluating information validity and credibility” (3,64). According to University teachers, instead, character and socio-relational skills are much more relevant, in particular “respecting others’ ideas” (3,40) and “collaborating to solve problems” (3,34). The contribution will show differences in all the investigated areas, according to country and curricular subject. Also, by integrating teachers’ opinions with the literature review, the Up2U skills have been defined, around which to focus the further steps of the project. Content analysis of the final open question led to the construction of a 11-Categories list of “solutions/areas of improvement”. Particularly, University teachers’ response stresses as a crucial point Promoting Up2U skills (67%) and Improving Teaching Learning methods (18%). School teachers’ response stresses at the top: Improving Teaching Learning methods (17%), General Recommendations (14%) and Promoting Up2U skills (14%). In this case too, the contribution will give details about each of the categories, exploring teachers’ concrete suggestions. The information and views gathered through these surveys are a valuable starting point for defining the training and development priorities of teachers and students. We are however aware of some methodological limits, mainly related to the sample not being equally representative of the respondent countries, as well as numerically uneven between university and school. Yet, the amount of data collected and the heterogeneity of the represented curricular areas could be seen as a strength of this tool. Subsequent actions in the project are now being designed, including a new version of the survey which will consider suggestions gathered from teachers and reflections from researchers.