The aim of the European VET Development Initiative is to improve the quality by 20 percent in relation to the recruiting, encouraging more young people to enrol in VET, and encouraging the industry and commerce to recruit more employees with a VET qualification. Furthermore, the aim is that municipalities, regions, and ministries prospectively promote the improvement of quality in VET.
At the participating intuitions in the project, the development of the culture for change is based on implementing evaluation as a tool for quality development. By the concept ‘culture for change’ is meant the existence of the capability and will to currently developing activities that promote quality development. ‘Evaluation’ means an application-oriented, systematic, and databased assessment of processes. The culture for change requires that the teachers and managers at the educational institutions are able to evaluate and to apply the results of the evaluations in developments.
The evidence-based assumption is that evaluation enhances quality as well as the probability of implementing and embedding the results at the institution.
Part of the aim of the project is that the achieved outcomes will be applied in other contexts.
The development in the project encompasses three initiatives included in the European VET Development Initiative: mobility, excellence, and i-VET development. Differing in contents and form, the three initiatives call for different and accommodating evaluation strategies.
The aim of the mobility program is to develop the institutions’ competences through mobility and cooperation. The evaluation of this program will focus on the exchange of competence and the impact of this exchange on the content, structure, and development of the educational programs.
The aim of the excellence program is to develop continuously more suitable and up-to-date VET programs focusing e.g. on e-schools, development of general competences, work-based learning, guidance, and assessment and recognition of prior learning. The evaluation of this program will focus on how the planned activities ensure the quality of the excellence programs in VET, on the needs of the companies, and on the documentation of the development.
The aim of the i-VET development program is to establish a socially oriented initiative aimed at specific groups or specific geographical areas. The evaluation will focus on to which extent the initiative reaches the target groups (e.g. through the teachers’ ability to differentiate the training), and to which extent the initiative meets the social and educational needs of the target group.
The overall purpose of the project is, at the involved institutions, to develop a culture for change that contributes to an ongoing quality development during and after the implementation of the initiatives. This requires:
1. Developing methods for experience gathering and evaluation at the involved institutions.
2. Qualifying teachers and managers for applying the results of the evaluations in developments and improvements of quality.
3. Establishing organisationally embedded strategies at the institutions in consideration of the particular national and educational conditions
Results from the first phase of the project is available in the two VELUX Working Papers. The ‘Sustainable Culture for Change’ Working Paper provides knowledge on planning change initiatives, competence development of teachers and development-oriented evaluation. The ‘Survey’ Working Paper provides the reader with a brief overview of the Vocational Education and Training Systems in the four countries: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
