Why in Europe are there about 4 millions of young people not engaged in education, training or employment? When and where did they loose their motivation to achive their professional dreams? Most of people started to build their "career management skills" at the primary school and also earlier, when they began to explore the real world around them, looking for something new and exciting to do. The idea of lifelong learning is strongly related to lifelong guidance: people have the need of skills for managing complex decisions and career transitions along their learning and career pathways all life long. Career learning is becoming an essential component of modern education and training systems to orientate younger generations towards the acquisition of 21st century skills. Lifelong guidance has been receiving increasing attention at both European and national levels. In particular, the Resolution of the Education Council (2008/C 319/02) pinpointed four priority areas: 1. Encourage the lifelong acquisition of career management skills (CMS); 2. Facilitate access for all citizens to guidance services. 3. Develop quality assurance in guidance provision. 4. Encourage coordination and cooperation among the various national, regional and local stakeholders. Member States were invited to take action to modernise and strengthen their guidance policies and systems. One of the main point of the European strategy to reduce Early School Leaving is to promote career education and guidance at any school level. In particular, regarding CMS it has been highlighted a great heterogeneous variety of practices and experiences at school: “In the compulsory education sector, CMS programmes tend to be delivered either as a standalone and timetabled subject, or as a series of themes taught across different subjects in the curriculum, or through extra-curricular activities” (ELGPN 2012). There is a great need of a shared framework and related educational materials and resources all over Europe. These skills should be learned from all pupils starting from primary education. Teachers should be prepared to provide career education and guidance support to pupils and parents. This proposal will promote at European level a cooperation among schools, Universities and career guidance providers, for sharing different and innovative approaches, for defining and testing a shared CMS framework and for developing guidance and training resources for teachers and school counsellors, also using the best ICT. The JOBLAND project will foster a wide cooperation at European level and innovative training resources to develop and implement career learning tools for schools, within the perspective of prevention of Early School Leaving and empowering pupils and parents to design suitable and motivated study and career paths. More then 80 schools in 6 European countries and 250 teachers will be directly involved within the project activities. More than 400 pupils will benefit from the project results.
The project aims to prevent early school leaving and school drop-out, through the development of career learning in primary schools and the improvement of teaching skills. Early School Leaving (ESL) is a serious and complex problem for Europe as it represents missed opportunities for young people and a loss of social and economic potential for the whole society. The idea of JOBLAND is to improve career learning at the first level of the school system in 6 Countries for preventing early school leaving, including schools, HE institutions and organisations involved in research and career guidance. The main aims of the Partnership were: To identify and develop teaching and learning approaches, methods and ICT resources that effectively support the development of Career Management Skills in primary schools, as transversal key competences; To develop evaluation methods and practices that improve the quality of Career Management Skills learning at school; To identify and develop training paths for teachers and school counsellors at European level. More than 110 schools were directly and indirectly involved in the project in 6 European countries. Beneficiaries of this project were: -912 teachers and school counsellors involved in the training paths and in the development and testing of the career guidance models and tools. -2461 pupils directly involved within 6 pilot actions for testing the models. -over 5000 teachers and stakeholders involved in events and on-line dissemination and exploitation activities. -over 450000 practitioners and teachers involved in wide open dissemination activities. The project fostered the idea of improving career education at school via an intervention to empower teachers with new skills, methodological resources and education materials (based on gamification and career learning theories), in order to prevent early school leaving and of educational disengagement. The main results of the project were to: 1 - Identify and develop teaching skills for teachers and coherent learning approaches, methods and ICT resources for the development of career education activities at school, within the European concept and framework of Career Management Skills (see Resolution on Lifelong Guidance 2008) as transversal key competences for managing lifelong study and work transitions; 2 - Develop assessment, evaluation methods and practices that improve the quality of learning of Career Management Skills; 3 - Identify skills and develop training paths in this field for teachers and school counsellors, transferable at European level; 4 - Provide coherent and "user friendly" tools for teachers and school counsellors in 6 languages. The set of tools and methodological documents of the JOBLAND project included: O1 - CAREER MANAGEMENT SKILLS - A methodological framework for career learning at school; O2 - CAREER TEACHING - Teaching and guidance skills for improving career learning at school; O3 - DESIGN MY FUTURE - Career Learning Units and Videotutorials; O4 - JOBLAND - Exploring careers - Educational game for schools; O5 - CAREER LEARNING AT SCHOOL - Handbook for teachers and practitioners; O6 - JOBLAND DAY - Career Learning in Europe - From theories to practice. The impact of project lies in the essential character of the JOBLAND consortium which enabled to gather institutional relationships and organisations that work at a national and international level in the education, training and guidance sectors, in each Country (Romania, Italy, Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey). The impact of the project observed in the pilot actions revealed a great interest of students, teachers and practitioners for digital results, learning units with video tutorials and gamification. Assessment sheets completed by teachers and practitioners showed a great success of Jobland's intellectual results in school practice. 97% of the evaluations were very good, and the suggestions addressed subjective aspects of teaching. The project will certainly develop, in the coming years, a wide base of resources from each partner involved, which can be extended and combined to broaden the effect of the project at European level. In many countries participating in the project, these changes in teachers' mentality regarding the new educational strategy in career education are already being implemented starting with Jobland digital resources. In Romania, for example, the Jobland video tutorials and the Powtoon application, used to create these video tutorials, had a great impact in the context of the pandemic. Romanian Jobland experts have created many educational videos that have inspired the creation of videos throughout the Romanian counselling network. In the CMBRAE network, over 20 videos were created using PowToon, with a national impact on the education system. IO6-JOBLAND DAY, offered the greatest impact of the project at European level.