PROFF – Professionalisation of VET teachers for the future - Europa

On pedagogical skills there are some clear transnational trends. In many training activities,focus is on qualifying teachers for more ‘student-oriented’ approaches, i.e. coaching; guiding;supervising and tutoring.There is a clear change in the teacher’s role brought about by a stronger focus on learning, thestudents and their individual learning styles, and by the greater flexibility of VET broughtabout by modularisation and increased possibilities of credit transfer/recognition of priorlearning. This calls for more individual guidance of students and the ability of teachers toassess the strengths and weaknesses of their students to guide them through VET.Another skill focus is ability to cooperate with other teachers in planning and carrying out theteaching. Teachers are expected to cooperate and create synergy between different subjects inthematic/interdisciplinary teaching.One case that stands out is the Portuguese one focusing on ‘pedagogy of documentation’. Theaim of this training activity is to qualify teachers to work as ‘information guides’ in schoollibraries. It provides a good example of the expanding functions teachers are expected toundertake. Teachers learn about documentation methods and information search to guidestudents in their search for information.However, training does not focus solely on the pedagogical update. Teacher functions are notisolated but seen as a whole and therefore training also provides participants with skills thatsupport teachers in other functions, e.g. project work and management, administration andresearch-related activities.Overall, the cases confirm a move away from an isolated teacher role to teacher teams andmore diverse teacher functions. Teachers must have a very broad span of skills to perform intheir profession.The cases represent innovative training activities and thus a common ambition is to developnew and more up-to-date models for the continuing training of vocational teachers. Sometransnational trends are use of dual training, modularisation, on-the-job learning and studycircles/experience exchange groups.These methods are not new, but it is obvious lifelong learning, focus on different learningcontexts, interaction between these learning contexts, and teamwork have had a hugeinfluence on the way training and skills development are perceived. The interaction betweenpractice and theory is increasingly in focus. The challenge is to create training activities whichare close to the practice of teachers and which support them in their present – and future –functions but which also challenge their practice. Often teachers have to reflect on practiceand see how theory and practice might ‘fertilise’ each other.In the Dutch case, a good example of new approaches to training is provided. The trainingactivities are tailor-made to the institutes of vocational training and adult education (ROCs)and reflect different contextual factors: a new labour market agreement, fear of a large exodus21