Abstract:

Why do we teach?
This question touches the heart of all our educational efforts. What is it that education prepares future professionals for? Global developments in energy transition, digitalization, population growth, and food supply ask for other knowledge and skills than are traditionally taught in education (Richards, 2010). The current assignment for education is to prepare students for a rapidly changing world (Cachia et al., 2010; Redecker, 2009). Educating students in these transitions should be directed towards cooperating in a multidisciplinary or even interdisciplinary way, becoming actively part of the transitions, and becoming future literate. This means that education needs to prepare students for acting in complexity and embracing uncertainty (Cormier, 2012). They need to develop the power to create transitions and act accordingly. Education aimed at transition leads to unpredictable insights and continuous doubts.

How can transition skills be integrated into the educational context?
At a University of Applied Sciences, the aim is to have education organized in 2030 around the so-called Community of Innovative Learners (COILs), where students, lecturers, researchers, professional practice, and citizens all work together at the challenges at stake, and as such creating impact for the region. Curiosity, critical thinking, self-reflection, and ethical consciousness will become important qualities. The question arises how to develop these skills needed in the transitions?

What are transition skills and how can you ‘teach’ them?
The aim is to investigate if and how transition skills already are incorporated into the curricula of education in six different domains at a University of Applied Sciences: the Arts, Technology, Health, Society and Education, International Business, and Economics. To be able to do so, we first seek in (scientific) literature what the definition of transition skills is and what are transition skills. After that, we will examine the Teaching and Examination Regulations of 12 different Bachelors and Masters to determine how these transition skills are implemented in the different curricula. We will have interviews with responsible persons for these transition skills as well. What will become more clear is an overview of how far educations are in preparing students for an uncertain future.

Keywords:

Transition skills, complexity, community of learners.