Abstract:

The labor market is in continuous change, and the COVID-19 crisis has put thousands of young people in a situation of not only material but also emotional insecurity. Since 2008 the unemployment rate of young people is increasing at an accelerated rate (World Economic Forum, WEF 2021). According to INSEE, already in 2017 unemployment reached 1.6 million people in France, with the youngest having multiplied by more than three their unemployment rate in 40 years. In addition, the World Bank's Global Risks report (McLennan, SK Group, & Zurich Insurance Group, 2021) indicates that young people already makeup two-thirds of the world's poorest people and are entering an international labor market in the midst of a recession, where the health crisis has had a greater impact on them, all without the necessary skills to stand out and be able to adapt to today's challenges.

The current educational system is not yet able to offer a pedagogical alternative to achieve the goals that are demanded by the contemporary professional world. At the same time, most 21st century students are still being taught by teachers who use 20th-century pedagogical practices in 19th-century school organizations. So how can we prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, for societal challenges that we cannot yet imagine, and for technologies that have not yet been invented? The job market is constantly changing, and the COVID-19 crisis has put thousands of young people in a position of not only material but emotional insecurity.

In this context full of challenges for young people, it was proposed a series of interactive online pedagogical pathways aiming at developing 21st-century competencies in school-age children and youth from 10 to 18 years old. All pedagogical pathways are conceived based on main competencies within the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) framework and listening to the students who are active participants of the co-creation of the pedagogical pathways. Students are recruited through online surveys and invited to answer a 60-minute semi-structured welcome interview. Once the interview is finished, students are invited to constitute a student council that would afterward be invited to participate in events to co-create activities, and finally, testing the pathways they or others helped develop.

This presentation aims to introduce the context and methodology used by the research-action programs Beyond Education, as well as to present the challenges and visions that were identified in the interviews of 14 students aged 16 to 18 years old regarding their motivations, fears, and how they see their relationship between technology and learning. A thematic analysis (Braun and Clark, 2009) was carried on, using field notes (Philipp and Lauderdale, 2017) to search for main categories. Results will be presented and discussed.

Keywords:

21st-century competencies, adolescents, online learning, context, methodology.