Call for Papers: EETP Vol. 20. No 3(78) 2025. The Concept of 4Cs Competences as a Challenge for Contemporary Education of Young Children

The sustainable future proposed by the 2030 Agenda requires reorienting education from subject-based teaching to supporting cross-curricular competences development involved in solving complex, interdisciplinary problems. These competences can be called differently in pedagogical literature: transversal competences or competencies of the 21st century (skills that are typically considered as not specifically related to a particular job, task, academic discipline or area of knowledge and that can be used in a wide variety of situations and work settings); STEAM competences, 4C competences (from English: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity), although the latter are also developed in 5C (character) or 6C (citizenship). Although the acronym does not work well when translated into Polish, it perfectly reflects the essence of the problem - today's children need different knowledge and skills than their ancestors. The best that a modern school can to a child is the ability to learn independently, critically evaluate and select available information, creative problem solving, cooperation and communication with others, emotional and cognitive self-regulation. Developing such meta-competences is possible from the earliest childhood, and according to many researchers, it is also consistent with the specificity of a young child's learning - learning through discovering and inquiring, multi-sensorial experiencing of the world, asking questions, doing and testing hypotheses, formulating conclusions. Is such a reorientation of education from textbooks and worksheets towards the holistic development of the child possible in the Polish educational system, and to what extent (or rather in what way)?