01 Mar TRANSVAL-EU – Validation of transversal skills across Europe

01 Mar, 2021

LinkedIn: @transval-eu

The TRANSVAL-EU project addresses the complex issue of validation of transversal skills. On one hand, employers place an increasing importance on transversal skills. On the other hand, transversal skills are only an implicit part of the existing validation and guidance processes.

There is a need to make the validation processes of transversal skills acquired in non-formal and informal settings explicit and to embed the lessons learned in validation and guidance policies.

TRANSVAL-EU proposes to experiment innovative approaches for the validation of transversal skills acquired through non-formal and informal learning (VNFIL) in five pilot countries – Austria, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Belgium.

TRANSVAL-EU addresses the insufficient knowledge and awareness of counsellors and practitioners on innovative VNFIL methods and transversal competences; the limited professionalization and experience of VNFIL staff in the field of validation of transversal competences. The project builds the capacity of practitioners and counsellors, as well as, when relevant, of other stakeholders on innovative VNFIL and transversal competences; and strengthen cross-sector cooperation between practitioners, policy-makers and other stakeholders in order to build coherent VNFIL systems.

TRANSVAL-EU intends to be one of the largest European policy experiments on VNFIL. The project has 16 partners from 7 countries. The project started on February 28, 2021, it will last 30 months and is funded by Erasmus+ KA3 Policy Reform – Policy Experimentations.

The project is currently in its second year of implementation.

So far, the partners have achieved the following outcomes:

• the European state-of-the-art report “Validation of transversal skills across Europe” was published in December 2021.
• Based on the report findings, a Database of Tools and Methods for the validation of transversal skills, including all the practices mapped during the research, was set up and is freely available for others to use.
• the Common Transversal Competence Framework encompassing 11 transversal competences and their descriptors was agreed by the partners.
• together with the Framework, the Guidance and Validation Practitioners’ Competence Profile defines the general transversal competences of guidance and validation practitioners, as well as competences specifically used for validating transversal skills.
• based on a selected number of best practices, a curriculum with 6 training units was developed, together with a Toolkit (a box of educational resources and materials).
• the European Training was carried out in Perugia in May 2022.
• National training sessions with validation and guidance practitioners in Austria and Italy took place in June, while training sessions in Poland, Belgium and Lithuania are being prepared for September 2022. This is the first part of the field trials where the training curriculum will be tested.

Expected outcomes after the national training sessions:

• • Project partners in each of the piloting countries will test the tools with end users by the end of 2022. This is the second part of the field trials.
  • The final activity in TRANSVAL-EU is the translation and implementation of the project results, if positive, into the practice and policies in the field trial partner countries.

PARTNERS

1. Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research through Austria´s Agency for Education and Internationalisation, Austria – Coordinator
2. Consortium for the validation of competences (CVDC), Belgium
3. Qualifications and Vocational Education and Training Development Centre (KPMPC), Lithuania
4. Regional Agency for Active Labour Policies of Umbria (ARPAL), Italy
5. Lifelong Learning Platform (LLLP), Belgium
6. European Institute of Education and Social Policy (EIESP), France
7. Educational Research Institute (IBE), Poland
8. 3s research laboratory (3s), Austria
9. Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
10. Nordic Network for Adult Learning (NVL), Denmark
11. Lithuanian education and science trade union (LESTU), Lithuania
12. ALL DIGITAL, Belgium
13. FORMA.Azione, Italy
14. Pluriversum, Italy
15. Chamber of Labour for Salzburg (AK), Austria
16. Austrian Institute for Vocational Education Research (öibf), Austria

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