TEACHING AND LEARNING TRANSVERSAL COMPETENCES IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION. LEARNINGS FROM ERASMUS plus SOCCES-PROJECT

Transversal or transferrable competences are recognized fundamental in our knowledge-based society. They are crucial for meeting the needs of the labour market and enabling social cohesion and active citizenship, ensuring flexibility, adaptability and motivation. Transversal competences are also called generic, soft or employment competences. They are used and developed in all areas of life. Education at all levels should encourage learning and expression of the transversal competences and thus support entrance into working life where the competences are further developed and transferred from one task or job to another. Even though working life as well as educational authorities widely recognize the critical importance of transversal competences in future employment, educational practices even at higher educational level lag often behind. Much importance even in higher education institutes (HEI) is still given to subject based, theoretical learning even several innovative pedagogical approaches have been developed which offer solutions for teaching and learning future working life competences. This article presents learnings from Erasmus + SOCCES-project (SOCial Competences, Entrepreneurship and Sense of Initiative - Development and Assessment Framework, 2014-2017) concerning transversal competences and educational practices using examples from six European higher educational institutes (HEI). The article claims, that learning through business cases in intercultural collaboration, can tackle barriers which culturally related pedagogical approaches create. This kind of approach motivates students to develop and express the necessary 21st century competences and gain full satisfaction. A business case model is presented which includes various aspects assuring learning of different elements related to transversal competences.