Developing, assessing and validating transversal key competences in the formal initial and continuing VET (TRACK-VET)
Céreq is involved in setting up a partnership with six other institutions for the Track-Vet project, funded as part of the Eramus+ strategic partnership. The main aim of this project is to provide evidence-based support to national governments and agencies, EU agencies and key stakeholders involved in designing policies on developing, assessing and validating key cross-cutting competences.
The transversal competences at issue here are the eight key competences defined in the 2006 European Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, which are “necessary for personal fulfilment, active citizenship, social cohesion and employability”. The project focuses more particularly on four of these competences, which would appear to be the most difficult ones to evaluate, namely:
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Learning to learn: the competences associated with independent learning;
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Social and civic competences: those linked to the construction of citizenship;
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Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship: competences enabling individuals to move from ideas to acts;
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Cultural awareness and expression: competences linked to the various fields of the arts and their appreciation.
Since these soft skills cut across the various education disciplines, the first stage of the research will consist of identifying how these key competences are developed and evaluated in each of the national education systems singled out, and in particular in the field of vocational education and training. This will provide the starting point for questioning all the actors involved in the development and evaluation of these competences (at national, regional and establishment levels) as well as for conducting a survey among specialists in these competences, whether they be representatives of practitioners, experts or researchers. Thus this project is adopting a qualitative methodological approach based on face-to-face or collective interviews.
TRACK-VET project is being carried out by the partnership consisting of seven institutions:
- Austrian Institute for Research on Vocational Training (Austria)
- Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research in Norway (Norway)
- French Centre for Research on Qualifications (France)
- National Institute for Certified Educational Measurements in Slovakia (Slovakia)
- Matej Bel University Banska Bystrica (Slovakia)
- National Centre for Education in Latvia (Latvia)
- Warsaw School of Economic (project leader) (Poland)
