The first meeting of the project " Building an Ecosystem for 21st Century Skills Education in STEM (BE-21-SKILLED " took place at the beginning of June at Riga, organized by RTU FEEM. BE-21-SKILLED aims to identify and instill region-specific 21st-century skills (21CS) in HEI STEM teachers so that they are better equipped to transfer these to their students. A particular emphasis will be placed on female students in STEM, who are particularly underrepresented in STEM fields; are at greater risk of dropping out, and generally, have poorer career outcomes than their male counterparts.
RTU FEEM is the leading institution of five project partners:
BE-21-SKILLED ambitiously sets out to achieve the following objectives:
1) Facilitate the understanding and identification of 21CS in region-specific and labor-market relevant contexts through multi-stakeholder collaborative efforts (via PR1- Regional Skill Councils Blueprint and Skill Panorama)
2) Foster the HEI teachers' abilities to instil 21CS in their students via training and feedback loops (via PR3: BE-21- SKILLED Teacher Empowerment Program)
3) Enhance the skills among students to increase their employability and capitalise on their innovative potential (via PR5: BE-21-SKILLED Student Pilot and Playbook)
4) Improve the understanding of non-female STEM actors (students, teachers, employers, etc.) on the need to support female STEM students and instil 21CS in them
5) Innovate the curricula by embedding tools targeted at developing particular skills in students (via PR2: BE-21-SKILLED Toolkit)
6) Actively participate in the dissemination of results and good practices (via PR4: BE-21-SKILLED eCompass)
