In the nearest future will be the most appropriate competence of Virtual collaboration: the ability to work productively, to enhance participation, and demonstrate a presence as a member of a virtual team now that ICT makes it easier than ever to work, share ideas and be productive in spite of physical separation [Future Work Skills 2020].
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There is very important direction of the development of transversal competences - implementation of their forming into the educational processes. Trends and challenges in integrating transversal competencies into education should be considered and applied in the modern educational policy.
All terms broadly refer to the adaptation skills, competencies, values, and attitudes required for the holistic development of learners, such as: collaboration, self-discipline, resourcefulness, and respect for the environment. Therefore, it means that new approaches, which are aimed, on its development should be implemented into the educational system.
Many organizations in Europe have taken an interest in the problems of improvement of high education by implementing new approaches. For instance, National Learning and Work Institute (England and Wales) situated in UK is one of them. This is the one of the organizers of Festival of Learning. Festival of Learning is part-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) to help promote ESF activities and successes in the field of educational policy support. The ESF is a European Union initiative that supports activities to extend employment opportunities and develop a skilled workforce. Established by the European Union, the European Social Fund helps local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects, which will support innovation, businesses, skills development, job creation, social inclusion and local community regenerations. This is a sufficient financial support of high education because of investing over £2.5 billion in England in the 2014-2020 programme to extend employment opportunities and develop a skilled workforce for students (https://www.festivaloflearning. org.uk/info/european-social-fund).
The recent project supported by EU in the frame of the Seventh Working Programme of Horizon 2020 - "Idea Garden". This is the project based on the motivation to better support creative practices and the goal to bridge the gap between traditional, often fuzzy, nonlinear work practices and the available ICT infrastructure. The idea is to implement a creative learning environment, which will consist of state of the art hard, and software technologies that assist during all phases of the creative process (http://idea-garden.org/). This is a response of educators to the demands of creative economics. It is very important to notice that the problem of new technologies in the system of high education is actual because of increasing social problems worldwide. In particular, the problem of social cohesion and its educational background is actual and will be considered in more details.
All these technologies will positively impact on creativity and social cohesion development of all subjects of educational sphere. However, this way of learning is similar to instrumental learning and does not solve many actual communicative, psychological and social problems. They are seemed to be appeared nowadays and continued at least at the nearest future. Therefore, it is necessary to implement into the educational system the different approach - more holistic and compatible with the actual social challenges. This is the transformative learning approach.
Transformative learning approach as cognitive adaptation strategy
Jack Mezirow of Columbia University has developed this transformative learning approach based on the Transformative Learning Theory. The history of this approach started in the 1970"s, after researching factors related to the success or lack of, and of women"s re-entry to community college programs [Mezirow, 1978]. His result was that a key factor was perspective transformation. When Mezirow studied the data of his original studies, he noted
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a number of participant"s patterns of activities or behaviors through which they are usually held and reported. Based on these descriptions, he developed an overall step-by-step model of the process of transformative learning [Mezirow, 1978]. In a broad sense, these steps describe the general process of involving people in activities that may cause it to shift in semantic perspective as well as to different consequences. It is important to notice, that these steps were carried out in a unique individual manner. They are very different and in a different manner help learners to integrate their learning outcomes and give them important senses and meanings. In his work "Transformative changes of adult learning" Mezirow [Mezirow, 1991] scrupulously compared the proposed step-by-step model of transformative learning theory with other theories of adult learning, finding the many correspondences between them, noting that these steps can be implemented in different ways and in different orders. They can be cyclic or recursive and learn the individual may start with any of them or not include them at all. He described "10 phases of the transformational process" and argued that transformations often follow some variation of the following phases of meaning becoming clarified:
- A disorienting dilemma.
- A self-examination with feelings of guilt or shame.
- A critical assessment of epistemic, sociocultural, or psychic assumptions.
- Recognition that one"s discontent and the process of transformation are shared and that others have negotiated a similar change.
- Exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and actions.
- Planning a course of action.
- Acquisition of knowledge and skills for implementing one"s plan.
- Provision trying of new roles.
- Building of competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships.
- A reintegration into one"s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one"s perspective [Mezirow, 1991].
The first phase was a disorienting dilemma. The next two phases are important aspects of
the second of the theory"s themes - critical reflection. The next phase represents the third of the theory"s themes, rational discourse. This is a very effective communication tools. The effectiveness lies on exploring with others the discovered "misfit" between your premises and your environment. And specifically it means that:
- "Recognition that one"s discontent and the process of transformation are shared and that others have negotiated a similar change;