Engaging in ongoing professional learning is essential to support VET staff to continuously acquire the skills, knowledge and understanding in their vocational areas. This continuous professional development (CPD) is needed to support quality improvement in teaching and learning and embedding of ICT skills into the curriculum to ensure that learners are "work-ready" and leave equipped with relevant and current skills-sets to meet the needs of employers. Improved learning environments also support a reduction in the number of early leavers and an increase in VET learners gaining qualifications. VET staff in many EU countries must complete CPD activities but reforms are currently underway to review the activities that can be included and how CPD engagement can be captured. Research shows that informal collaboration with peers can be a productive and supportive opportunity for undertaking lifelong long learning but it often goes unrecognised and unaccredited in VET organisations as there are often no systems in place to support staff in knowing how to set up informal learning activities and then to recognise their engagement with their VET "pals". The project activities facilitate the recognition and validation of knowledge, skills and competences achieved through informal learning by VET teachers and managers. The target groups are VET teachers, managers, organisations and policy makers. The project aims to support the professionalisation of VET teachers and managers in VET participants in the UK, Ireland, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania in the the areas of IT, Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. This will be achieved through the development and testing of a toolkit, framework and tracking tool based on research of existing practice to support them to engage in informal learning learning and allow organisations to capture, assess and accredit informal learning activities aligned to their strategic objectives. will also have the opportunity to have their informal learning acknowledged through the recognition of learning champions as a sustainable and cost-effective contribution to a VET organisation's management of its CPD programme.
The project 'Promoting Accreditation of Learning' (PAL) is a KA2 for the Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices under the Action of Strategic Partnerships in the Field of Strategic Partnerships of Vocational Education and Training. This 24 month project ran from September 2014 to August 2016. The partners were City of Dublin Education and Training Board, Ireland (CDETB), Kodolanyi Janos Foiskola, Hungary (KJF), Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania (KTU) and Akademia Humanistyczno-Ekonomiczna w Lodzi, Poland (AHE) with Belfast Metropolitan College, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom being the lead partner. Belfast Met & CDETB initiated the project and searched for other European countries which were experiencing similar challenges in the area of PAL in their education systems. Hungary, Poland and Lithuania were identified as the countries that would most benefit in a sharing process with Ireland and Northern Ireland as regards having a mechanism to capture the formal and informal process of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for VET tutors. The profile of the five organisations was an important element in the selection process in the context of securing a mix of core pedagogical elements that could be pulled together to produce the effective mechanisms that are essential for capturing tutors’ formal and informal learning. VET programmes are core elements of the partners included in this project. One of the key objectives of this project was to promote and strengthen peer to peer learning within VET areas. Learning champions exist in most VET organisations; they are those tutors who undertake informal sharing of their resources, expertise and strategies with others and promote the value of learning to others. They act as “pals” to others and as role models/champions for learning but are often unrecognised and their contribution is not captured by Human Resources department for either trainer or trainee. Project Objectives and Main Activities achieved 1. Establish how the VET sector currently recognises and accredits tutors’ formal CPD; 2. Identify the breadth of informal VET sector professional learning opportunities that are available as cost effective and sustainable mechanisms to support and enhance formal CPD; 3. Design an organisational system of recognising, recording and rewarding informal professional learning activities and achievements (CPD credits) aligned to the strategic objectives of an organisation and national priorities; 4. Produce a Toolkit of strategies to support the informal sharing of learning from professional experiences; 5. Produce a recording tool to monitor, track and verify individual professional learning; 6. Recognise role models within organisations as champions of learning/learning professionals through accreditation/certification; and 7. Share the project outcomes with the VET and wider sectors responsible for professional learning. Through this project’s outputs, VET organisations can foster a climate which will enable collaborative informal learning, both planned and incidental, to thrive, be recognised and aligned to their strategic objectives to create a culture of VET learning champions. The target groups are VET tutors, managers, organisations and policy makers. The project aims to support the professionalisation of VET tutors and managers in VET participants in the partner countries in the areas of IT and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This will be achieved through the development and testing of a toolkit, framework and tracking tool based on research of existing practice to support them to engage in informal learning and allow organisations to capture, assess and accredit informal learning activities aligned to their strategic objectives. They will also have the opportunity to have their informal learning acknowledged through the recognition of learning champions as a sustainable and cost-effective contribution to a VET organisation's management of its CPD programme. Although the project has ended, the website www.palcpd.eu remains live and members of public and other institutions are welcome to access the materials and adapt them to use within their own organisations for the purpose of promoting the sharing of informal learning and recognising those tutors who had contributed to the process.