Innovative Work Practices
Start date: Jun 1, 2015,
End date: May 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Context/Background:
City of Dublin Education and Training Board has experience great change especially in the past 5 years where a large number of its Senior Management staff are new. We produce an Education Plan for the Organization every 5 years defining the needs of Management, Staff and Students in the form of Objectives that we hope to achieve. We have identified 4 Major Pillars of work that we intend addressing where it is our Principals/Leaders who we will need overall to help with the delivery of the work.
The need to address the changes occurring in the VET Sector has been well documented in research as completed by SOLAS, CDETB and ETBI -------- During this period of 10 years we have secured a great deal of experience from taking a proactive approach where we selected CPD themes that we could develop into the design of Projects for the purpose of working with International Partners to produce Tools that are capable of supporting the CPD needs of Management and Staff in the context of Educational Change.
Objectives of the Project:
Objectives of the Project includes our determination to expose as many of our College Principals/Managers to what we are defining as Innovative Work Practice that their equivalents are implementing throughout Europe and in this case - Koning Willem I College in the Netherlands and Helsinki Vocational College in Finland. The selection of these two large colleges is based on established professional relationships, identification of good practice , evidence of staff implementing Innovative processes with their students and a shared philosophy to be the best that one can be. Also it is envisaged that in our attempt to complete this work we will design and formulate a related Model that will be useful to all VET Organisation for addressing similar challenges.
Number and Profile of the Participants:
We will have a total 10 Principals/Leaders participating in the Project that will be representative of 10 CDETB Colleges delivering VET Courses. The 10 are clustered into two groups where each group will complete Job Shadowing in one of the designated partner colleges. Each of the two groups has a gender balance with a matching of experience where three have more than six years, three are recently appointed leaving the other four with ranging from two to six years in the role of Leader.
Description of the Activities:
A proposed and tentative schedule is outlined above as an example of how we propose to implement the activities. We regard all aspects of the 4 days as a learning exercise for the participants as includes the sharing travel, meals, induction and evaluation meetings, job shadowing and completion of learning logs.
Methodology to be used in carrying out the Project:
The accompanying person will organise all travel and accommodation plus the agreed Agenda for each of the Study Visits
Also this person will act as Leader and spokesperson for the group while having freedom to make professional and executive judgments on behalf of CDETB in the interest of the groups. Both colleges have a similar management structure to that of CDETB Re--- A President/Chief Executive and the Faculties/Departments in the colleges are sufficiently large to compare with the size of our individual Colleges that will facilitate matching each of our Principals with a Department/Faculty Head.The accompany person will record Minutes of Meetings and decisions taken. The Leaders will complete Learning Logs as per provided Template.
A short description of the Results:
We expect to capture a large range of Innovative Work Practices as based on previous evidence as gathered for the production of CPD Booklets for the ePathways Project as per supporting VET Teachers. All of these findings as documented in the Learning Logs will be used to present the results in a Booklet Form. In order to achieve the outcomes of this Project it is necessary to design and formulate a Model as representative of the Methodologies applied where this Model will be documented and included as an introduction in the Booklet.
Impact Envisaged:
The fact that this project is designed to operate as a 2 Year Ongoing Project its impact will also be ongoing where it is intended to have the First formal Meeting for the Project in Early September 2015 as preparation for the completion of the Study Visit in October 2015. By waiting to complete the second Study Visit in April 2016 it will enable us the opportunity to collate the completed work in October, reflect upon our achievements and what we might have done better.
Potential Longer Term Benefits:
Evidence of a Better and more creative management of our Colleges/Training Centres will reflect the Longer Term Benefits.
Also we feel that the Model that we are proposing to use for securing the outcomes of the Project will in itself be adaptable for both Education and Industry.
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