As part of the EU project led by the University of Malta, a diverse group of educators, researchers, entrepreneurs and artists from various countries recently held an intensive five-day course in Greece led by experts from around Europe to tangibly reimagine how education could be in 2050.
Dr Kerry Chappell, one of the course experts performing her workshop.The course showed how difficult it is for groups with diverse backgrounds to work together. Participants were purposefully placed with other individuals who shared differing expertise, creating a space where highly philosophical and practical minds needed to find a way to create and build on ideas together.
Despite the inevitable hiccups in these challenging working groups, participants produced highly creative and innovative projects. Their ideas ranged from a posthumanist vision for education to an education model with continuous learning where the school is the community. The transdisciplinary approach worked to envision a different future that tries to make small strides to improve society.
Over the next couple of years, the project, entitled Sci Culture, hopes to develop the course to effectively combine various disciplines to facilitate the skills of critical thinking and dialogue. Such skills are needed to guide decision-making to arrive at solutions for the complex challenges society faces. The project has the ambitious goal of facilitating a network of ‘Sci Culture ambassadors’, and engaging thousands of individuals all over the globe with the idea that transdisciplinarity is the way forward.
Sci Culture’s next course, to be held in Norway in November aims to continue to improve the approach. Grants will soon open for University of Malta students interested to participate in the course.
SciCulture is funded by the Erasmusplus programme with support from the European Commission. The project is led by the University of Malta in partnership with Science View, the University of Exeter, the University of Bergen and TU Delft. For more information visit the links below.
www.facebook.com/sciculturecourse
twitter: @culture_sci