Guidance – Digital tools and Method development Erasmus Project

Project Title

Guidance – Digital tools and Method development

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

Career guidance has a strong impact on social inclusion as it enables better access to employment, improved welfare and increased competences. It has the potential to play an important role in supporting youth to make well-informed decisions about their future careers. This is particularly true for schoolchildren and students with special needs and/or from socio-economically deprived backgrounds.

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought widespread difficulties in the coaching and teaching field. The education sector has shown great courage, strength and innovative power to face the sudden shift to online and distance learning, career guidance and coaching. Even though, schoolchildren and students have now marginalised or changed opportunities to take part in guidance and coaching – and students who thrive in a face-to-face learning environment have their chances reduced. As a result of this, staff working with career guidance have experimented with new ways of coaching and interacting, mainly through digital tools and methods. The challenges identified have been many and at the moment there are big gaps in both theoretical knowledge and best practice in regard to how to create well-functioning, tangible and inclusive digital environments.

From this problematic development and extensive needs for increased digital knowledge and, methods and practices – the project #Guidance have emerged. The project builds it base on combining the Erasmus+ horizontal priorities of social inclusion and innovative practices in a digital era, which both goes hand-in-hand with the identified needs of the project partners and the well-structured activities to be implemented throughout the project.

#Guidance project objectives are:
• Promote social inclusion and equality in career guidance throughout the education system.
• Promote that more young people and students complete their education and increase their opportunities to get a job.
• Promote more young people and students make well-thought-out study choices.
• Increased perceived health and hope for the future among young people and students.

With the overall project objectives as the umbrella – the following expected Project Results during the project are:
(1) Increased skills and competence on how to create an inclusive digital environment throughout the education system.
(2) Increased skills and competence on how to use and adapt digital tools and methods to make career guidance more inclusive.

The target groups have been identified thoroughly together with all partners of the consortium. With the project focusing on promoting social inclusion these groups consist primarily of individuals with lacking opportunities/disadvantages to take part of guidance and coaching through digital tools and settings. Considering this fact the target groups are:

1) Individuals in the risk of being socially excluded within the following groups: (A) school children (primary and secondary school) (B) students (high school and university) (C) youth not in employment, education or training (neet:s). Also, parents are a group that’s need to be addressed: (D) caregivers.
2) Groups responsible for both strategic and practiced career guiding and coaching (E) Career guidance counsellors (F) teachers and school-leaders (G) development managers working with career guidance and (H) Non-governmental organisations staff (NGO).

The consortium consists of 8 partners representing 5 Member-States which bring a wide range of expertise directly related to the aims of the #Guidance project: On-the-field experience of guidance in digital environments; Methods on how to reach social inclusion for groups and individuals in risk of exclusion and drop-out; Regional and municipal experience on guidance and coaching management and policy with digital tools and resilient methods; Extensive knowledge about labour market training as a part of guidance in digital contexts and; Widespread experience on successful management of international projects. Moreover, the variety of partners also brings a wide range of perspectives and approaches to guidance and coaching which are rarely brought to the samt joint strategic development work: 1 regional authority, 3 municipalities, 1 university, 1 private company and 1 social profit organization. They will all bring unique and varying knowledge linked to their specific structural role and ensure real impact at school level.

Key actions to achieve the Objectives and Results of the project are incorporated in two Intellectual outputs (IO):

• A digital toolkit for an inclusive environment (IO1) lead by Region Örebro County.

• A training package (training program and material) for teachers and career counsellors (IO2) lead by Município de Lousada.

Validating project outputs with target groups, participants and relevant stakeholders are a key activity in which partners will invest time and resources. This will create long-term effect in each country and organization.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 271175 Eur

Project Coordinator

Region Örebro län & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Norrköpings Kommun Utbildningskontoret
• LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF KEKAVA MUNICIPALITY
• SATAKUNNAN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• MUNICIPIO DE LOUSADA
• Competence Sverige ekonomisk förening
• Valmieras Attīstības aģentūra
• Stebo vzw