The necessity to advice students as well as the differences and similarities of the consultation expertise of teachers are part of this project. A special emphasis will thereby be put on the respective support programmes of the partner schools. The actual necessity of this project is to strengthen the expertise and to generate incentives for further improvements. So far, it’s unclear what kind of consulting methods and instruments are used in the involved schools. However, one thing seems to be obvious: There is a clear potential for improvements as existing consultations are rarely made use of, although there is an increasing demand in counselling. Therefore, it seems highly possible that with restructuring and a change in methods and instruments, this may lead to the expected success. A further aspect that is not clear is how teaching staff deals with factors like, for example, migrant background, heterogeneous cognitive capabilities or the behaviour in consultation in terms of failure. There is no scientific analysis for the mentioned topics so far. Therefore, one can expect to gain new insights into the topic of counselling expertise and thus a revision of the current standards at school. The following partners will be part of the project, in which students as well as teachers of different disciplines are integrated: - Business College LÖRRACH (Germany) with the focus on business, administration and health care - FURNESS ACADEMIES TEST (United Kingdom) is a mainstream school - IIS STENDHAL (Italy) with the focus on science, language, business and land surveying - ANNA GIRONELLA DE MUNDET (Spain) is a mainstream school as well as a vocational college with the focus on fashion, electrical engineering, maintenance and engineering The activities of the project are structured in the way that they correspond with the achievements of objectives. All schools are involved at all stages and a special emphasis will be put on the Best-Practice Approach. A target-actual comparison at every school is the main part in stage 1. Through gathering the results already in this early stage, possible opportunities for improvement can be identified. Furthermore, through the exchange between the participating schools, and also the introduction of existing counselling methods of the business college Lörrach, further ideas for new approaches can be accumulated. Stage 2 is dedicated to the targets and subsequently to a target-actual comparison. In addition, each school can already draw connections between the set targets and their own expertise. This way provides, once again, the opportunity to recognize a need for optimization. The target-actual comparison offers the possibility to identify a discrepancy between what counselling offers and the actual demand. Out of that, solutions can be derived for the existing mismatches. The special focus of stage 3 lies in the development of counselling standards, to review measurement methods in regard to migration background, lack of ideas or perspectives and heterogeneity of students which do play a significant role. Consequently, the created standards can directly be coordinated with the critical, outlined factors. Stage 4 is dedicated to the implementation of the optimized measures. It is expected that the mismatch problem of counselling supply and demand is already reduced by this stage and the implementation of individual school counselling standards have been reached. The counselling standards will be assessed in stage 5. Every school is provided with an individual analysis of supply and demand by using the developed scorecard and data collection through surveys. Hence, it’s guaranteed that the set standards lead to an optimization and extension of consultation expertise. In the last stage (stage 6), individual school measures will be derived. On the one hand, this serves as part of the continuous improvement process and on the other hand as further identification of readjusting potential. As a result, the counselling standards and expertise at every school is individually improved. The correlation of the results of the actual analysis will emphasize the achieved gain in expertise. Out of the interdisciplinary and the different age patterns of students as well as teachers, it is expected to gain expertise through the possibility of forward and backward analysis of future and past consultation possibilities. At the end of the project it is the aim to have specific results at hand. The teacher’s manual, that will contain all the developed counselling standards, serves as an example, to sustainably save and distribute the results.
As part of the project, both the students' need for advice and the differences and similarities in the teachers' theoretical advisory skills in terms of career choice were examined. A focus was also placed on the respective support programs at the different schools. The main necessity of the project was to strengthen one's own competencies in this area and to generate incentives for improvements. Up until now it was completely unclear which counselling methods and instruments were used in the different schools. It was clear, however, that there was a need for improvement at all schools, as the previous consulting was little used, although there was an increased demand for advice. Therefore, even before the start of the project, it was assumed that restructuring as well as a change in methods and instruments would lead to the desired success. Initially, it was unclear how the teachers would react to factors such as a migration background, cognitive performance or counselling behaviour in the event of failure. A scientific analysis has not existed. Therefore, even before the start of the project, it was expected that knowledge would be gained regarding the development of advisory skills and a revision of the respective internal school standards. The following partners took part in the project, involving both students and teachers from various fields: - Commercial school in Lörrach (Germany) with a focus on business and economics, administration and health; - IIS Stendhal (Italy) with a focus on science, languages, economics and land surveying; - Anna Gironella de Mundet (Spain) as a full-time general and vocational school with a focus on fashion, (electrical) engineering, maintenance; The activities of the project were structured in such a way that the project phases were precisely tailored to the achievement of objectives. All schools were involved over the whole period of the project. Particular emphasis was placed on applying the “best practice approach”. In phase 1, an analysis of the current situation was carried out at the schools using self-created questionnaires. By evaluating the results, the identification of potential for improvement was already given in this phase. Furthermore, through the exchange between the schools and the presentation of the advisory instruments of the KS Lörrach the generation of ideas for new instruments was stimulated. Since the partner schools have already recognized in this phase that the individual school systems are so different, it was decided to establish a presentation of the school systems in the next phase. In phase 2, a target analysis was carried out using a SWOT analysis and then a target / actual comparison was carried out. Again, there are initial aspects for the need of optimization. The target / actual analysis identifies the reasons for the discrepancies between the advice offered and the demand for advice. Proposed solutions for the described mismatch problem arise. In phase 3, advisory standards and a measuring instrument were developed. Factors such as migration background, lack of ideas, lack of perspective and heterogeneity of the students were examined. In phase 4, the optimization was implemented at the individual schools. On the one hand, phase 5 was used to further implement optimizations and on the other hand to evaluate the implemented consulting standards. Shortly before the end of phase 5, about 2 weeks before the planned project meeting, the meeting was cancelled due to Covid 19. The partners decided that the project should not be extended but should be continued online. In terms of content, the partners initially decided to postpone the presentation of the project results from the fifth phase and to exchange experiences on the pandemic with the pupils involved. The main aim was to further develop the social skills of the pupils by allowing mutual empathy. Thus, the focus was initially placed on a personal exchange of experience with regard to private challenges, digital learning and professional future prospects. In phase 6, a scorecard was used in order to derive school internal measures and interactions between all those involved were shown. At the end of the project, specific action results are now available for all partner schools, some of which have already been established in the schools and which should continue to be used in the future.