KEY COMPETENCIES FOR FOSTERING BETTER INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING AND EMPLOYABILITY Erasmus Project

Project Title

KEY COMPETENCIES FOR FOSTERING BETTER INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING AND EMPLOYABILITY

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

Am I What You (believe) to see?
This leading question opens research in the field of communication for teachers, students and persons in professional and famliy-life as well.

We experienced that lacks of selfexploration may cause lacks of communication competencies and these may cause misunderstandings and conflicts between persons, groups and nations as well.

Incongruence between the goal of the sender and reception of partners in communication can be detected in family, kindergarten, school, on the street in a workplace internationally. We conclude that we need non-verbal, verbal, emotional, artistic and foreign language competencies in different situations and surroundings

This was the common motivation for four schools from DE, GR, LT and PL to try out, how to improve knowledge of oneself, others and groups and improve competencies of communication for fostering personal, interpersonal and international understanding, communicaton and embloyability.

Communication competence involves situational adaptability and fluency in verbal and non-verbal means of communication and is a key to almost all other competencies (reading, speaking, writing, and counting). Our goal is to improve this competence by the use of body language for international understanding or CIC (Clear International Communication) and efficiency of education.
We offer international experience which might be understood as a kind of exercise or test of the trained competencies and give students/teachers a background for intercultural communication and how to compete the challenges to be faced in intercultural environment.

The participating schools show quite different profiles:
Holstentor Gemeinschaftsschule (DE)
is a secondary state school for about 550 students and 50 personnel. Students are about 11-16 years old. The school provides 6 years general education with a basic and a medium level of exam as a basis for further education at a highschool or vocational education. One special focus is career-orientation.
Gymnasio Megala Kalyvia-Trikala (GR)
is a lower secondary state educational institution (age of pupils 13-15) with 52 students and 15 personal. It provides general education covering the first 3 out of 6 years of secondary education. There are specially equipped labs of sciences for biology, technology and computer study .
Kauno Maironio universitetine gimnazija (LT)
is a typical upper secondary state educational institution (age of pupils 15-18) with 506 students and 55 personnel. It provides four year learning areas for higher classes of secondary education being a pilot school emphasizing teaching of foreign languages, application of new technologies, research in education and especially career guidance.
Szkoly Okretowe i Ogolnoksztalcace CONRADINUM (PL)
is an upper secondary state school (age of pupils 16-20) with 437 students and 87 personnel. It provides general and technical (mechatronics, electronics and shipbuilding) education in 3 or 4 educational cycles. Cooperations with various institutions like universities, local authorities and especially with several employers’ associations provide easy access to apprenticeship and gaining practical skills.

The goals described above we have been aiming at by various methods during a lot of national activities and international meetings with training and performance:
1. 1 International Symposium for basic knowledge about the theory of 4-beaks and 4-ears with lecture and workshops
2. About 30 meetings per school on national training, invention of games, dancing, job interview, pantomime, facial expression etc.
3. 3 further international meetings for evaluation of national activities by exchange of results, common training, performances, videos
4. 4 bilateral cross vocational exchange experiences

Communication competence has been improved in several situations with different methods like cross conversation, mirroring, translation circuits, etc.
Especially the non-verbal sector (body language, mimics, pantomime, video clips, picture-series, graphics, symbols, signs and arts, music and dance, tactile hints in acrobatics and other forms of expression) supported safer understanding and social inclusion.
Participating teachers and students interacted in vocational activities and educational workshops for training of body language and voice.
This reduced fears of public speaking – also in conference language – and enabled to participate in discussions, to ask questions in groups while international meetings, to be persistent, being watched while eating, writing, etc., to communicate with “important“ people during job interviews.

The listed competencies shall support in future life:
– task-orientated non-violent cooperation in and outside school;
– reliable partnership and agreements;
– career guidance and employment;
– workplace stability;
– flexibility in case of losing the job;
– international employability;
– world-wide peace;
– successful peace conferences

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 86400 Eur

Project Coordinator

Holstentor-Gemeinschaftsschule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Szkoly Okretowe i Ogolnoksztalcace CONRADINUM
• Gymnasio Megala Kalyvia trikala
• Kauno Maironio universitetine gimnazija