CONTEXT Forestry EduTrainer tackles the question of the lack of a specific training to become a forestry trainer for Vocational and Educational Training (VET) and adult learners. The forest sector offers a variated number of jobs opportunities within wood harvesting. All over Europe, different training possibilities exist for all these professions through VET and Lifelong Learning. All these trainings need and employ Forestry Trainers who teach and train young and adult learners to become forest workers and to put in practice knowledges, and most of all practical techniques of wood harvesting. Thanks to previous exchanges, the partnership of Forestry EduTrainer has realised that technical forestry trainers have very different backgrounds and qualifications among European countries. As showed by the survey realised by the Centre Forestier, most of the forestry trainers employed by VET centres are highly experimented forestry technicians and professionals, but they are not systematically qualified to acquire teaching and pedagogical competences to apply to forestry training. They have become forestry trainers either because other experienced forestry trainers assisted them, or because they achieved a complementary qualification to acquire teaching and pedagogical skills, unfortunately without specific link with forestry training. Hence, a specific training for forestry trainers is lacking in all the surveyed countries, and in most of European countries. In consequence of the key role that trainers have in forestry training, especially within safety requirements, a special training standard for forestry trainers has to be developed. OBJECTIVES In order to tackle this issue, Forestry EduTrainer project aims at creating a European Certificate for Forestry Trainers (ECFT), i.e. a training course for technical forestry trainers, common to all European countries. The training course for forestry trainers, which will lead to the ECFT, will be issued through a distance-learning platform. The training course will be designed using a minimum number of conditions and EU- forestry training standards (core curriculum), with special features according to national specificities and 3 different forestry subjects: manual logging, mechanised logging and skidding. The course will not focus on the basic and technical knowledges / capacities about forestry works. Our objective is not to train a person to become a forestry worker. The course will rather focus on training/pedagogical methods and tools to apply by trainers in the forestry-training sector. ACTIVITIES OF THE PROJECT AND PARTICIPANTS The partnership will develop a Training Course for forestry trainers, by defining a Competence Standard and a Training Standard, structured to train forestry trainers to: - teach, train, evaluate, monitor and follow-up forestry learners; - exchange within a European dimension with other forestry trainers; - implement a Safety culture among forestry learners. The Training course will be designed in order to be issued through a Distance Learning Platform, also designed by the project, which will gather all the training resources and tools. The Training course and the Distance Learning Platform will be tested through 2 experimental trainings: - During the 1st experimental training, 10 experienced forestry trainers (Super Trainers) from the partners’ organisation will be trained to issue the training course through the platform to other forestry trainers; - During the 2nd experimental training, 18 beginner forestry trainers will test the training course through the platform with the support of the Super Trainers of the partnership. The Training Course, the Distance Learning Platform and the other outputs of the project will be adjusted according to the feedback of these actions, in order to disseminate and continue issuing the European Certificate for Forestry Trainers (ECFT). RESULTS, IMPACTS AND LONG TERM BENEFITS Thanks to the development of the EFCT, Forestry EduTrainer will facilitate an effective and innovative solution to the lack of a specific training for forestry trainers in Europe. The ECFT and the annexed tools developed to issue it (especially the Distance Learning Platform) will allow: - Beginner forestry trainers, recently employed by a forestry training centre, and also forestry trainers who started as forestry workers and became trainers, to benefit from a specific training, designed from European common standards, to acquire, improve and perfect the necessary teaching and pedagogical skills to properly train forestry workers. - Individual candidates who wish to become forestry trainers, to benefit from a specific training to become forestry trainers and to work in all those forestry centres that recognise the ECFT. - Forestry VET centres and other organisations that employ forestry trainers to dispose from a new training course to improve the teaching and training skills of their trainers.
The Forestry EduTrainer project created the first European training for forestry trainers. I/ Background The project was born from a survey conducted at European level on the forestry trainers’ qualification. Its results allowed the project partners to draw a situational analysis of forestry training in Europe : forestry trainers with comparable profiles ( technical experts who turned to training at one point in their career), diversity in their trainer training ( or absence of specific training), a need to gain more pedagogical and/or methodological competences. The consequences of such a situation: no worker mobility, national ( or binational) training framework, lack of capacities to transmit competences efficiently linked to a shortage of pedagogical/methodological competences, aggravation of forestry work dangerousness. II/ Objectives To solve this problem, Forestry EduTrainer created 6 Intellectual Outputs for the creation of a specific training for forestry trainers, efficient, shared and laid on good practices. These Intellectual Outputs followed the usual order for creating a new training: - Creation of the Competence Standard - Creation of the Training Standard - Elaboration of the training course divided in modules and subobjectives. - Work on the way to deliver the training: transfer of the training course onto a learning platform and creation of digital materials - Experimenting with the training, and training of the future trainers on this training: the EduCoaches - Ensuring the sustainability of the training course and its future development III/ Partnership and participants The Forestry EduTrainer project was lead by 7 well-known organisations in Europe in the wood and training sectors: - Le Centre Forestier de la région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France, coordinateur - Centre Tecnologic Forestal de Catalunya, Espagne - Kuratorium Fur Waldarbeit Und Forsttechnik (KWF) GMBH, Allemagne - Landerbetrieb Forst Brandenburg/Waldarbeitsschule Kunsterspring, Allemagne - Natuurinvest, Belgique - Scuola Agraria del Parco di Monza, Italie - Jyväskylän koulutuskuntayhtymä, Finlande Each of these organisations dedicated to the project experts in forestry training and/or blended-learning, project managers and technicians in charge of the translation of the training course. Also took part to the project and the experimentation of the Forestry EduTrainer course a total of 31 forestry trainers coming from 6 European countries. Finally, the multiplier events organised by all project partners allowed to target more than 150 people coming or not from the forestry sector or from partners’ countries, potential future trainees on the course thanks to the organisation of events held face-to-face or online. IV/ Activities The Forestry EduTrainer partners realised 6 Intellectual Outputs by creating and disseminating divers’ surveys and through intense research, and by sharing their knowledge. During the 3 and a half years of the project (prorogation due to the pandemic), the project partners met 18 times, whether online or during transnational meetings. A total of 7 experimental trainings were organised, whether or not funded at European level. They allowed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the training course and work on their solving. Finally, 11 multiplier events were held. V/ Results, impacts and benefits at long-term The Forestry EduTrainer project has thus succeeded in creating the first European training for Forestry trainers and in ensuring its sustainability. The training answers the needs identified in the situational analysis, by offering to the forestry trainers a singular training in Europe created thanks to collective intelligence and good practices, et mainly focused on the pedagogy and methodology needed in forestry training. The Forestry EduTrainer training is proposed by recognised organisations at national and European level, which will provide it at European scale and work towards its improvement through the sustainability strategy worked upon. Many trainers and/or forestry training organisations have already expressed their interest in the Forestry EduTrainer training. At mid and long-term, the benefits of Forestry EduTrainer will be a better qualification of forestry trainers as well as trainings of higher quality, thus permitting more efficiency and work quality in the next-to-be forestry professionals as well as a diminution of the number and gravity of accidents.