As Europe seeks to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, a society attaining high levels of relevant skills is required, including the demand for science-related attributes. To enable this, there is a need for a future generation of researchers and practitioners who can identify and seek to resolve major challenges (eg issues related to energy, water, climate change, food, health and transport) and prepare for future change. The Educational sector, particularly in the science education field, has a prominent role to play in promoting attributes for those facing such challenges. In fact, there is a perceived need for science education to contribute to developing competences such as the capacity to analyse global and intercultural issues critically and, from multiple perspectives, to evaluate how differences affect perceptions, judgements and ideas of self and others.

The current proposal seeks to build on the global trend towards changing the focus of learning from knowledge acquisition to competences, and more specifically, towards the so-called transversal competences a learning expectation for the next generation to acquire in school (Reimers & Chung, 2016). Models of transversal competence emphasise the importance of critical and creative thinking, problem-solving and collaboration skills, as well as an understanding of core ideas, or concepts (Holbrook et al.,2020)

Despite a focus towards encompassing such broader competences, their implementation within school curricula is not straightforward, even though aspects of transversal competences have been integral to curricula in various countries (Reimers & Chung, 2016). While science education, in particular, has seen a transformation from the teaching of subject knowledge to the broader advancement of competences, lacking is an overarching (international) guiding framework to enable educationists to support the teaching of transversal competence goals.

The goal of the current symposium is to introduce a new vision for a STEM teacher career pathway, which is novel, attractive and recognising the need to attract non-science oriented persons who later become motivated to take up a STEM teacher career. The vision further recognises the inclusion of attributes, highly acknowledged among the younger generation, such as those related to business, policymakers, leaders, managers, international ambassadors, as valued acquisition for science teachers. This is seen as important noting the lack of teachers in all STEM- related subjects across Europe. This symposium based on the Erasmus+ project - HighFliers. involves four European countries: Estonia, Finland, Portugal and Croatia.

The theoretical framework is based on -  skills highlighted in Education 2030 model (OECD, 2018), a three stage motivational STEM teaching model (Holbrook & Rannikmäe, 2014), Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, plus self determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and social constructivism (Bandura, 1997)

The following research questions are addressed and answered during the symposium:

-      How do participants evaluate a cross-national (international) modular course, developed to promote transversal skills for future STEM teachers?

-      How important are self mangement skills perceived to be and how can they be imporved?

-      How do future Finnish teachers appreciate the need for interactive and communication competence?

-      How do Estonian course participants evaluate educationally relevant skills, promoted during a course based on international modules?

During the symposium, case studies from participating countries are introduced and an overall self-evaluated status among transversal skills within becoming educationalists from the 4 countries are discussed. Validity issues of evaluation instruments, determining the effectiveness of the modular course, are discussed

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