Train for Europe
Start date: Jun 1, 2015,
End date: May 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
“Train for Europe” foresees traineeships for VET learners and job shadowing activities for VET teachers in Europe.
The project applicant is the “IFPS. Pertini”, a vocational school in Trento (Italy) that provides vocational qualification in hairstyling, beauty therapy and woodworking.
The project aims to respond to the students’ and teachers’ needs emerging from a needs analysis carried out by the applicant organization. An objective of the project is to increase the employability of the students by enhancing their linguistic skills and key competences, which are fundamental in order to be competitive on the labour market. Furthermore, the project aims to develop both linguistic and methodological skills of teachers in order to provide CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) lessons. The management of the applicant institute decided to implement new CLIL courses starting from the next school year.
Conlan School (United Kingdom), Savo Vocational College (Finland) and HTBLVA-Villach (Austria) will be the project partners. They will provide traineeships for participant students inside their facilities or in companies of their local networks. The teachers’ job shadowing activities will take place inside the Finnish and Austrian VET institutes.
Train for Europe is a two-years-project involving 96 VET learners and 10 teachers of the“S. Pertini” institute. A needs analysis highlighted that the students have basic linguistic skills. Most of them come from families with a low social and cultural background. The consequence is that they don’t have many opportunities to travel or study abroad and confront themselves with other places and culture. The analysis also pointed out that the current school curricula don’t provide specific courses focusing on key competences like problem solving and flexibility. As for the teachers, only a few of them have already taught CLIL lessons; the project aims to improve their language skills and teaching methods in order to implement CLIL courses.
In detail, participant students will train abroad in companies selected by the partner organizations or inside their facilities. The traineeship will consist in a work experience in a foreign context: the students will have the opportunity to communicate in another language, confront themselves with new organization of work and become more aware of their professional skills. The full immersion in another European country will enhance their autonomy and their problem solving skills. Teachers will participate in job shadowing activities in the VET institutes in Austria and in Finland. They’ll take part in German/English speaking lessons and by means of observation grids take note of the CLIL methodologies used by the local teachers. They will have the opportunity to share and exchange teaching methods and innovate their teaching strategies and contents. This activity will improve their language skills and their ability to structure and implement CLIL lessons.
At the end of the project, students will have enhanced their professional and language skills and acquired an advanced know-how. The new competences of the teachers in terms of implementation of CLIL courses will have a positive impact on the applicant: participant teachers will transfer their competence and knowledge to colleagues and help them to develop CLIL lessons. Teaching content from the curriculum in German or English will increase the language competence of all the students in the school and stimulate them about the importance of global communication.
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