Responding to the need for new educational models, TWIN-IN develops, tests, implements, and refines an innovative adult learning model: Twin Transition Schools (TTS).
Built on the principles of social and experiential learning, TTS shifts the focus from traditional, externally mediated knowledge “delivery” to a context-specific, distributed learning experience. TTS’s philosophy relies on experimentation, negotiation of meaning, and co-creation of knowledge and skills through a learning-by-innovating approach.
Twin Transition Schools bring together heterogeneous actors (farmers, farm advisors, agronomy and technology students, researchers, Higher Education Institutes’ teachers, educators and learners from the field of Vocational Education and Training, and agrifood startups) who carry unique skills and experiences. By engaging in problem-based, discovery-based exercises in real-world settings, these diverse participants co-innovate toward sustainability by using digital technologies. Translating experience into meaning leads them to actively build digital, green, entrepreneurial, deep tech, life-related, and resilience competencies while sharpening their critical thinking and decision-making capacities.
Guided by specialized facilitators, learners navigate this transformative process by following Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle through a series of predefined yet flexible, real-world experiential episodes. Their journey begins with concrete experience, where participants confront real twin-transition problems they encounter or will face in their professional lives. This is followed by reflective observation and abstract conceptualization, two phases in which individual and collective reflection allow learners to contextualize their experiences, exchange cross-sectoral strategies, and identify critical skill gaps. The cycle concludes with active experimentation, providing practical spaces for participants to apply new knowledge in real-life settings. As facilitator guidance gradually lessens, learners are empowered to reduce their dependence on trainers and ultimately become autonomous, self-reliant twin-transition agents.
