REVEAL - Reconstructing an Environment for continuing professional development and Validation for Educators in Adult Learning The Adult Education sector in the EU Member states is rather heterogeneous – in the southern and eastern countries there are independent organisations or individuals that often lack support and lobby while in many other European member states, adult education staff is very diverse in regard to their professional and educational background. In parallel, there is no approach for a certification procedure for Adult Educators competences. In general there is a need for the professionalization of Adult Educators. KA1 courses ought to be a source of professionalization on the European level but there is no central platform where professionals can find high quality Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses and course providers can advertise and organise their courses and learning offers according to professional and European standards. European validation systems and instruments have not really been implemented in KA1 courses yet. Additionally, there is a lack of high quality learning and teaching materials for the professionalization of adult educators that can be used without legal copyright issues (OER). By now there is no systemic approach that interconnects KA1 courses to the EQF system – which hampers a systemic approach to a true European validation of professionals in adult education in these EU-funded courses. REVEAL shall combine existing approaches of frameworks for professional competences for adult educators and compile a system that offers the opportunity to allocate KA1 courses on different competence levels. This way a modular European CPD system emerges which promotes transparency, comparability and which directly converts the EQF in the professionalization of AE. The core output of the project is the REVEAL Implementation strategy for the Professionalization of Educational personnel in Adult Education (O6). It is based on a fully-fledged European qualification for educational professionals regarding Competence Oriented Learning and Validation (COL&V), which is designed, developed and piloted with a group of 20 professionals in blended learning methodology (O5) including a rich open learning environment, the REVEAL platform (O4), that will have a specific section that acts as showroom for KA1 courses. The platform is centrally managed and maintained on an open source e-Portfolio system consisting of a combined learning and validation environment (O3+O4) that shall be developed on the basis of a sound technical ECVET specification (O2). The specification is grounded on a research survey (O1) that will address KA1 course providers, KA1 educational institutes, KA1 learners (professionals), their requirements and experiences on competence development and validation. REVEAL will create for the first time a system that allows the European educational community (sending organisations, course providers and the learners): - to communicate and manage their European development plans online - to match sending organisations and course providers along quality criteria - to integrate validation of competences and competence developments - to set up personal qualification profiles for each individual learner and to connect these to EUROPASS, ECVET and LEVEL5 instruments. In fact, the REVEAL platform is a place where professionals find high quality Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses and course providers can advertise and organise their courses and learning offers according to professional and European standards. Moreover, REVAL will establish a powerful network and platform aiming at setting up a large scale European OER network and material repository from which community members may take or add OER-contents. Therefore, the REVAL project will strongly contribute to the professionalization of educational personnel in adult education and will ensure a quality check for KA1 courses based on European standards. The project is based on a series of successful projects in the field of VINFL and will be carried out by a consortium of partners with a long experience in European project collaboration. The partnership consists of 9 partners from DE, GR, IT, BE, SK, LT, IE and NL working in Adult Education and bring in substantial expertise to support the implementation of VINFL as cross-sectorial approach.
REVEAL - Reconstructing an Environment for continuing professional development and Validation for Educators in Adult Learning The REVEAL project was based on a series of successful projects in the field of VINFL and will be carried out by a consortium of partners with a long experience in European project collaboration from DE, GR, IT, BE, SK, LT, IE and NL working in Adult Education and bring in substantial expertise to support the implementation of VINFL as cross- sectorial approach. The project aimed primarily on the professionalisation in Adult Education, a sector which is rather heterogeneous in structure and joint approaches and which lacks a truly European approach to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of educational staff working therein. The ERASMUS+ Key Activity 1 is certainly the flagship of European funding for CPD in European mobility and the amounts for staff mobility have been substantially increasing over the last years, with an ever rising tendency in future. However, as the REVEAL project found out in its stocktaking phase (IO1), there is a lack of clarity among the AE sector where to find high quality CPD offers on the one hand and how a high quality CPD should look like, since European validation systems and instruments have not really been implemented in the KA1 system and in CPD for Adult Education in general yet. KA1 courses ought to be a source of professionalization on the European level but there in the past there was no central platform where professionals could find high quality Continuing Professional Development courses and course providers can advertise and organise their courses and learning offers according to professional and European standards. As the REVEAL project found out in its first IO, most of the professional stakeholders such as grant owners, course providers and also staff in the National agencies and at the European Commission are concerned about this fact and would want a tool which tackles this challenge. There is also a lack of a comprehensive, high quality CPD approach including learning and teaching materials for the professionalization of adult educators. Until 2018 there was also no systemic approach based on a sound competence taxonomy that interconnects Continuing Professional Development for Adult Educators to the EQF system – which hampers a systemic approach to a true European validation of professionals in adult education in these EU-funded courses. REVEAL combined existing approaches of frameworks for professional competences for adult educators and compiled a CPD system which relates to an ECVET based qualification. The core output of the project is the REVEAL Implementation strategy for the Professionalization of Educational personnel in Adult Education (O6). It compiles a fully-fledged European qualification for educational professionals for Competence Oriented Learning and Validation (COL&V), which was designed, developed and piloted with a group of 22 professionals in blended learning methodology (O5). The COL&V learning programme was delivered in blended learning including the REVEAL learning suite – a rich open, web-based CPD environment consisting of OER learning technologies, namely mahara e-portfolio, Moodle LMS (also as mobile app device with a badging mechanism and the LEVEL5 validation software, all combined with seamless transfer between the systems. The a combined learning and validation environment (O3+O4) was developed on the basis of a sound technical ECVET specification (O2). The specification is grounded on a research survey (O1) that addressed KA1 course providers, KA1 educational institutes, KA1 learners (professionals), their requirements and experiences on competence development and validation. REVEAL learning technology partners also developed the PROVIDE platform (O4), which is an attractive showroom for KA1 CPD offers, sending organizations and individuals as participants of European KA1 mobility. The PROVIDE platform is a place where professionals find high quality Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses and course providers can advertise and organise their courses and learning offers according to professional and European standards. REVEAL created for the first time a system that allows the European educational community (sending organisations, course providers and the learners): - to communicate and manage their European development plans online - to match sending organisations and course providers along quality criteria - to integrate validation of competences and competence developments - to set up personal qualification profiles for each individual learner and to connect these to EUROPASS, ECVET and LEVEL5 instruments. Therefore, the REVAL project will strongly contribute to the professionalization of educational personnel in adult education and will ensure a quality check for KA1 courses based on European standards.