The mobility of staff has always been considered a priority by the European Union, one target in education for 2020 being to increase the participation of adults in learning by 15%. However, to assure good quality, efficiency and a high impact of mobility events, in our case professional development courses, it is vital to have well-prepared host institutions and to invest in strengthening the professional profile of teacher trainers. The partnership, consisting of 5 training providers from 5 different European countries is based on the needs they personally encountered in their own institutions, but also on statistical data from a national and European level. Based on our findings, there isn’t a unity between the teaching methods in the European countries and there are no quality standards for planning, implementing and evaluating international-level training courses. Moreover, providing international training courses requires a set of competencies and knowledge: they require both subject-specific expertise and knowledge about the specific elements of an international training course. Since no previous outputs or actions were dedicated to adapt training events to these specific particularities of international training courses, the project is very welcomed. In response to the listed needs, the main objective of the project is to increase the quality of international level, job-related short-term training courses by creating a Standard Guideline on how to plan, implement and follow-up such an event, and by strengthening the profile of professional development course trainers with the help of events developing their competencies and knowledge in the field of planning, implementing and following-up such activities. The project will directly target international level, professional development training providers (e.g. host institutions offering KA1 short term courses) and the trainers involved in these institutions. Of course, indirectly, the project will have an impact on trainees and sending institutions as well, since an increase in the quality of training events will positively impact the trainees attending such opportunities and their sending institutions. The project will directly target a number of 185 trainers/training providers via its events such as short term training events, transfer of know-how training events, project presentations and multiplier events. Within dissemination an additional number of 2400 people/institutions will be reached.
The main objective of the project was to increase the quality of international-level training courses by developing Guidelines on how to plan, implement and follow-up such events and by helping trainers of such events to evolve professionally.
“Guidelines 4 Training” was based on the needs of the partner institutions, which, as also proved during project time, were also the needs of many other organisations who are delivering international training courses. More concretely, the main need staying at the core of the project was the lack of quality standards in organising, delivering and evaluating international training courses, as: - Such standards are considered to be important for ensuring the quality of international training courses; - There is no unity in the European Union as regards the criteria/standards that international training providers should follow, therefore, providers and trainers followed their own strategies (efficient or not, depending from case to case); - There was no consensus in the knowledge and skills of the trainers delivering international training courses, which generated mixed learning results.