Objective 1: we wanted to investigate the place of the Homeconomics subject in the training of young people in secondary education. In Finland it is an official subject for all pupils, including pupils in the context of inclusive education. For the time being this is a gap in Flemish education. There is no ADL (= adaptation to daily life) subject for our students. This new subject would provide the opportunity to develop skills in the organization of daily life and household in the school. Objective 2: Thanks to the professionalization of the teachers of the internationalization team, they were able to contribute to the modernization of secondary education in IKSO. We want to look further down the road to reflect and to really get training in new teaching methods to optimize the learning gains of the students.
The Institute for Catholic Secondary Education in Hoeselt is an upper secondary school for technical and vocational secondary education. In the realization of the modernization of secondary education, our labor market-oriented courses will transform into an educational center where students, who are often part of disadvantaged groups, are strengthened in their professional competences. The aim is the empowerment of students and teachers and the urge to prevent the mismatch between education and the world of work. We found that there was a gap. Labor market-oriented courses of study do everything in their power to deliver well-trained professionals who could be immediately deployable and who would have the necessary technical competence to do their job well. However, life is more than work. In order to find a place as a happy person and employee in our European context, there are also other needs that must be met. These are included in the European key competences; those competences that every individual needs for their self-fulfillment and development, active citizenship, social integration and contributions to a successful life in a knowledge society. The General Subjects Project (in Dutch PAV) is tasked with developing learning competence in the fundamental basic skills of language, reading and writing, arithmetic and information and communication technology (ICT). Based on key competence 5, the learning competence, problem-solving attitudes are developed to stimulate learning as well as a person's ability to deal with obstacles and changes. The desire to apply previous learning and life experiences in diverse life situations is an essential part of human life. What we noticed, however, was that this learning competence was no longer applied to everyday, current problems that arise in concrete family life. In our contacts with our students, often from disadvantaged groups, we noticed that they also needed these concrete life skills. Our students are left with many important, practical questions. How should you organize your life if you want to stand on your own two feet? What about the household chores? How do you get healthy food on the table? How do I manage to carry out minor repairs myself: replace a lamp, fix a bicycle tire, tie a button, sew, ... How do I keep my budget in balance? How do I deal with all the civil and administrative obligations required of me as a resident of the EU? These are necessary skills that our students do not spontaneously possess. There is no time or opportunity to learn it in their family, the (grand) parents themselves are at work and the young people of today see that their parents often spend these jobs on third parties (cleaning lady, seamstress, bicycle mechanic…). However, they forget that their modal income will later be insufficient to keep it affordable. This certainly applies to our students who come to our school on the basis of the M-decreet. There is no subject in their curriculum that focuses on adaptation to daily life, unfortunately a shortcoming in their education. To acquire these skills, a new learning opportunity was needed. We had found that in the Scandinavian countries this problem was prevented by the subject "Home Economics" in the curriculum of all students. In this project we wanted to investigate whether this course could also be implemented in the organization of modernized secondary education.