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Growing Talents Across Europe
Growing Talents Across Europe
Start date: Jun 1, 2015,
End date: May 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Charlottenlund upper secondary school aims to offer internships abroad to students and staff in vocational education. According to national, regional and local strategic plans, development of vocational education through internationalization has a high priority. Internationalization facilitates reciprocal learning between partners on methods, techniques, language and culture, and will be valuable for all involved organizations, staff and students. We link this project directly to our school's vision "Growing Talents", emphazising the significance of learning through internships abroad in order to develop the persons, departments and organizations involved. In Norway, as well as in many other European countries, there is a national trend that fewer young people choose a vocational education. Policies and strategy plans for counteracting this trend focuses on international cooperation and learning as one means for increasing the number of students applying for a vocational education. At Charlottenlund, we want to use the possibilty for a stay abroad during the vocational education as a part of our recruitment strategy, both for students and staff. In all vocational departments, determined students and staff should have the possibility to increase their learning and experience by staying in one of our international partners.
Having established secure contacts with the partners through previous partnerships and preperatory visits, Charlottenlund Upper Secondary School plans to cooperate with reliable partners that the school has well-established contacts with. We also know which strengths the partners have, and thus in what fields the partners can contribute to quality improvement in our organization. Some of the vocational training and staff mobilities will be carried out in partners offering parts of the education that Charlottenlund lacks facilities. Other mobilities are focused on disciplines and competences where Charlottenlund aims on improving the quality of education. In total, we apply for sending 38 students and 5 staff, in five different vocational departments of Charlottenlund Upper Secondary School.
Charlottenlund Upper Secondary School offers has a department of special needs' education, linked to different vocational programs. We aim to offer staff and students mobilities to a similar department in an Icelandic school, in order to improve quality on both departments, exchange of experiences related to this group of students and offer the students the experience of internationalization that would otherwise be difficult for them. We apply for sending 3 staff and 3 students from this department.
We plan to start the project by carrying out staff mobilities, beginning in autumn 2015. These mobilities will focus on learning methods and ways of organizing the vocational education and training at partners. By starting with these mobilities, it will be easier to select and prepare students for mobilities later. Student mobilities will take place in 2016 and 2017. Students and staff will stay both in the partner schools and in companies cooperating with the partners.
We will disseminate the results from the mobilities by class and section presentations from the staff and students participating in the mobilities, in management board meetings, in regional professional networks and in our school web page. Dissemination will focus on quality improvment issues and new methods of teaching and improving vocational education.
We believe that the close link between the regional and local strategy and action plans and the activities in this project will ensure that the organizational impact of the project will be large. The vocational departments, the management board and the regional professional networks will all be involved and informed about the project. By focusing on mobilities related to fields where we see that our vocational education can improve most from external input, we expect to see visible results directly on the education offered at Charlottenlund Upper Secondary School from the project. Short term results include new teaching equipment and methods incorporated, whereas long-term results will be spread of these methods to other schools, input on the organization of vocational education, exchange of methods and offers between partner schools and countries and a more international/interrelated vocational education in the partner schools. Thus, we expect school improvements to take place at a local and regional/international scale of this project. We also see this project as a a vital piece in the work of raising the attractivity of vocational education.