Project

I-VET - Fostering Intercultural Competences of VET teachers and trainers

The primary aim of the I-VET project is to improve the skills of VET professionals in the handling of intercultural dynamics.

Rido / Fotolia

The project will involve the promotion of strategies to overcome processes that marginalise young people and adults from a migration background and expose them to the risk of being denied access to training. Steps will also be taken to encourage thought on the specific benefits, social, educational and economic, arising from a careful handling of intercultural encounters.  The I-VET project is intended to develop a learning model for VET professionals. This model will be based on the results of a project conducted by a consortium of six higher education institutions within the framework of an ERASMUS Intensive Programme called "Interdisciplinary Course of Intercultural Competences (ICIC)”. In the ICIC project, SFIVET was involved in assessment of the learning model. During the ICIC, various instructional approaches were tested: experiential learning, reflective practices, specialist contributions, testimonials, visits to various locations, institutions and neighbourhoods, written re-elaborations and local and remote comparisons.This learning model is ideally suited for improving professional competences and will be reflected in the I-VET project in the form of a preparatory phase (e-learning) and an intensive classroom phase (summer school). This learning model is intended to improve the professional skills of VET professionals who work in schools where the student body is largely intercultural.

The project therefore adopts an experiential or active approach learning.  Specific outputs will be used to transfer the ICIC learning model to I-VET:

  • Guidelines on how to structure content and plan e-learning activities and summer school courses;
  • Online "laboratory" platform for intercultural training to enable the various participants and partners to continuously work together to produce documents;
  • Social network to facilitate the exchange of opinions in a virtual environment;
  • Training workshop and pilot summer school courses to develop intercultural skills;
  • Experiential learning model, which enables adapted transposition of the training strategy;
  • Publication of a compendium of scientific papers that analyse the results achieved.

The added value at the European level will be achieved through the quality of transnational partnership networks and the competences that each partner will contribute to the project. The transfer of pedagogical innovations to Switzerland in 2013 will be of particular relevance to the European network. This transfer will bring additional added value once training content is imparted through integration of the online laboratory platform and the summer school, which will allow the European partner institutions to continue working together from a distance.

Method

The various work packages of the project will be evaluated within the framework of transnational meetings. In addition, a steering committee will monitor the quality of results and ensure that the project progresses in a coherent fashion.

The I-VET project will be assessed on the basis of objective criteria such as analysis of participation levels and user traffic on the virtual platform, attendance of summer school courses and constructive interactions between partners. Training efficiency will be assessed to determine the level of satisfaction with the intensive programme from three different angles: a) knowledge gained; b) interactions; c) organisational aspects.