PROFF – Professionalisation of VET teachers for the future - Europa

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not have the skills the labour market requires. One of the key challenges facing VET is how toguarantee that teachers’ ‘vocational skills’ keep up to date with developments in business.Another challenge, also stemming from developments in the labour market, is how to keepexisting teachers and how to attract suitable candidates for the teaching profession. In a‘knowledge society’ the teaching profession is of central importance. The ideal of lifelonglearning cannot be achieved without professional teachers. This is a challenge in which bothgovernment and professional organisations have a vital role to play.Internationalisation: internationalising VET teacher skills is a serious challenge. Marketdevelopments imply that to an increasing extent national VET systems are called upon toinclude an international dimension in the training they provide. Also the action programmespromoted by the EU Commission bring this dimension into the classroom. For teachers, areasof critical importance include language skills, knowledge of other countries, knowledge oftrades and trade requirements in other countries, intercultural communicative skills, etc.Besides the challenges clearly identified by the Helsinki workshop, early research in PROFFidentified three new – and critical – challenges which the Helsinki workshop had not includedin its own list.Changes in national VET legislation: during the past 10 years most European countries haveresponded to changes in the economy and the labour market with radical changes to VETlegislation. In short, national VET systems no longer last for decades. Reform follows reformand teachers have to be able to handle this situation. Preparing them is an important challengefor existing models of teacher and trainer training.Changes in the organisation of teaching: the spirit of VET reform demands that vocationalschools become ‘learning organisations’, whose most important resource is their teachers andtheir knowledge. As a result, developing teacher competences and knowledge sharing havebecome central issues for school management and for drawing up organisational and trainingstrategies. Meanwhile, however, organisational change has led to the introduction of newworking practices – flexibility, modularisation, interdisciplinary teaching – that challenge thetraditional roles of VET teachers. The role of the VET teacher is no longer to workautonomously but rather to cooperate with other teachers to plan, coordinate and carry outteaching together. This raises the question of how to change teachers’ perceptions of their roleand how best to prepare them for the different roles they will occupy in the future.Meeting teacher needs and guaranteeing their professional welfare: VET teachers obviouslyhave a strong interest in raising professional standards and thereby improving their position onthe labour market. It should none the less be recognised that the impact of VET reform onteachers’ professional wellbeing is not automatically positive. Perhaps the most importantchallenge for VET is to find ways of meeting teacher needs. This is likely to involve increasedefforts to improve teacher competences and to provide teachers with formal qualifications.Often it is likely to require recognition of non-formal competences teachers have acquired14
through practical experience. In some cases a more transparent salary and career system mightalso make a useful contribution.Professionalisation of VET teachers for the futureOrganisational changes:teamwork, projectorganisation, etc.IT developmentNew target groups,changing target groupprofilesNational legislation:reforms and changingpolitical prioritiesVET teachersnew teacher roles,new competencerequirementsFrom teaching tolearning: student-centredapproachesInternationalisationLabour marketdevelopmentChanging paradigmswithineducational theories2.2. MethodologyThe Helsinki workshop pointed to the need to identify good practices.Given this goal PROFF decided to base its investigation on a series of case studies. The goalof the individual case studies was to describe a training programme providing in-servicetraining to VET personnel and responding to (at least some of) the challenges identified by theproject. The programmes to be investigated could be local, regional or national in scope andcould include both formal and informal training activities.Each national TTnet was asked to identify four or five programmes which satisfied thesecriteria. To ensure the ‘standardisation’ of data collection, the project coordinators created astandardised questionnaire and explanatory notes. The national TTnets then used these toolsto collect a series of preliminary data, which they submitted to the project for evaluation. Bythe end of October 2002, 21 cases had been submitted.At the end of January 2003, PROFF selected 10 of these cases for analysis. The key selectioncriteria were:• innovation: the degree to which the programme provided a genuinely novel approach tocritical issues in teacher and trainer training;• impact: the extent to which programmes were already influencing VET practice in thecountries where they were originally implemented;15
Page 3 and 4: PROFF - Professionalisation of VETt
Page 5: The European Centre for the Develop
Page 9 and 10: Table of contentsForeword .........
Page 11 and 12: Executive summaryThis report descri
Page 13: The report ends by summarising the
Page 16 and 17: Pedagogical and vocational skills;
Page 18 and 19: The responses to these challenges w
Page 22 and 23: • transferability: the potential
Page 24 and 25: Portugal, a government initiative t
Page 26 and 27: ‘continuing education of teachers
Page 28 and 29: of teaching staff at ROCs, and a ne
Page 30 and 31: new set of competences. The new app
Page 32 and 33: education and to foster creative, e
Page 34 and 35: Just as programmes differ in scope
Page 36 and 37: of continuous learning. Individuals
Page 38 and 39: 3.8.2. Material outcomesOn material
Page 40 and 41: 4. Conclusions and recommendations4
Page 42 and 43: adequate training not only for teac
Page 44 and 45: (c) Training policy for VET personn
Page 47: List of terms and abbreviationsESFE
Page 50 and 51: Theme Target group, scope Outcome A
Page 52 and 53: Theme Target group, scope Outcome A
Page 54 and 55: as their ability to cooperate in te
Page 56 and 57: 4. Telkkä, development of educatio
Page 58 and 59: • familiarise teachers with pract
Page 60 and 61: with different skills and organisat
Page 62 and 63: 10. Continuing education of teacher
Page 65 and 66: BibliographyAmmatilinen opettaja ty
Page 67 and 68: Cedefop (European Centre for the De

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