Train to Sustain – developing capacity to teach sustainability in VET Erasmus Project

Project Title

Train to Sustain – developing capacity to teach sustainability in VET

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Cooperation between educational institutions and business; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

According to EU the ambitions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals should be mainstreamed into education, training and learning policies. Innovation and entrepreneurship should be encouraged and promoted if we want Europe to compete in the global race. The recently launched Green Deal part of European Commission’s strategy to implement the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals integrates, among other elements, the mobilisation of industry towards a clean and circular economy. This can contribute to innovation, growth and job creation. At the same time circular economy and Lean philosophy are claimed to have compatibility. Based on this we see that the areas of Sustainability and Circular economy combined with Lean are knowledge and skills that are essential to teach VET students.
There exist material on these issues but not applied specifically for Vocational education and training. This strategic partnership will seek to develop innovative approaches to professional development of VET teachers/trainers know-how and methods of teaching sustainability and circular economy facilitated by Lean in order to meet the needs of working life and society.This will facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship. The training approach aims at being innovative, interactive, experimental and inductive. New technologies will be explored and used in the development of the training material.

The partnership: 5 VET educators from Finland, Denmark, Austria and Portugal including a project group of 12 people from different fields of VET. One of the Finnish partners is coordinator. All partners bring different know-how and strength to the project but they all have in common that sustainability is part of their strategy and they need capacity building of teachers to train students on sustainability issues. The project has associated partners from working life bringing on expert help and authentic examples.
The objectives:
– To build capacity and confidence of teachers/trainers in teaching sustainability and circular economy combined with Lean principles in innovative ways
– To provide sustained professional development that disseminates the expertise of the partners across the partnership and encourage synergies with organisations in different VET disciplines and different countries
-To increase capacity of each partner to develop sustainability issues on an organisational level and to increase the cooperation with working life on these matter.
– To spread the knowledge and skills of using different digital skills and tools between partners
– To increase capacity of each organization to cooperate at sustainability issues at an EU/international level.

This will be done by developing a high quality training package (scope 24h) including 4 intellectual outputs that will be piloted with VET teachers in a LLT event:
1. A Basic theory training package on sustainability, circular economy and Lean. What is what? Why? How?
2. An Electronic toolbox with activities to facilitate learning
3. Four digital virtual 360 environments from different industries with information and individual activities
4. A Teachers training guidance/manual
In order to facilitate the training of teachers and the use of the training material the material is translated into the partner countries languages ( Finnish, Swedish, Danish, German and Portuguese). Project information and all outputs will be available on a free open access website.
In order to reach the goals of the project 2 transnational meetings and 5 LTT events will be arranged. The LTT events 1-4 will promote learning on the addressed subjects of the project, on didactic and pedagogic issues, innovative digital methods, cooperation and learning from working life. In addition they will provide useful authentic material for IO´s from working life situations. The learning in the LTT´s events are vital for the outcome in the IO`s. The LTT event 5 is a learning, piloting, and evaluation session of the training course. About 25 VET teachers including the project workers will participate and evaluate the outcome. One Multiplier event is arranged in each partner country towards the end of the project to disseminate the results.
The main results and impacts:
– There will be a minimum of 5 teachers/trainers in each partner organization that can train others on sustainability and circular economy facilitated by Lean.
– There is ready to use training material on the addressed topics in English, Danish, Finnish, German, Portuguese and Swedish online for anyone to use.
– The dissemination has lead to that also other organisations are using the material and develop their skills

Expected long term impact is that VET graduates possess these skills for society and work.That the know-how and skills have lead to innovation and entrepreneurship so that the participating countries and Europe are competitive on the global market. Ultimately to protect and save the planet.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 246560 Eur

Project Coordinator

VAASAN KAUPUNKI & Country: FI

Project Partners

• ESPOON SEUDUN KOULUTUSKUNTAYHTYMA OMNIA
• ATEC – Associação de Formação para a Industria
• bit Schulungscenter GmbH
• EUC SYD