TRAIning Transversal – Supporting Career Development and Research Erasmus Project

Project Title

TRAIning Transversal – Supporting Career Development and Research

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

Transversal Skills are personal and inter-personal attributes that enhance an individual’s interactions, job performance and career prospects. While hard skills include job specific knowledge, Transversal Skills relate to a person’s ability to interact effectively with co-workers and customers and are broadly applicable both in and outside the workplace. While it is generally acceptable that Transversal Skills have a major impact in employability, it has also been suggested that in a number of professions, they may be more important over the long term than occupational skills.
EU in a large number of reports urges the development of Transversal Skills to all citizens, as they provide the opportunity to increase employability, entrepreneurship, personal and professional development and make major contribution to the financial growth and security.
Even though there is considerable effort for developing Transversal Skills of Managers and University Graduates, educational materials and courses addressing the needs of disadvantaged groups such as low educational level unemployed or recently employed ones are almost not existent.
TRAIT project aimed at filling that gap by developing using a new training approach – The Blended Learning Model (Rotation) addressing the Transversal Skills development needs of unemployed young people, by using the standard EU classification and terminology system (4 transversal competencies group proposed in Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (Council of the European Union, 2006): Learning to learn; Social and civic competence; Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; Cultural expression and other crucial two: Interpersonal communication and Ethical values and sustainable development – good governance. By using new innovative educational tools and pedagogical approaches, the project produced a complete toolkit suitable for accreditation, providing training for developing the selected 6 transversal skills. The course development was based on a complex scientific research that provided valuable information 2 crucial key questions: Which are the best: technical skills or transversal skills? and Which are the most important transversal competences? This research involved trainers/teachers and employers from 5 countries. The results have been analysed according to the comparative design approach – the performance targets (best target – student/employee) and the low performance targets (weak target – student/employee).
To the best of our knowledge there is no similar attempt. The research results and the blended learning TRAIT toolkit, both based on EU scientific standards, apart from the major impact they may have on reduction of unemployment and financial growth of several disadvantaged groups it may also serve as model for all subsequent attempt in the field.
The partnership included 6 organizations coming from 5 EU countries, covering a wide geographical area and languages spoken by a large percentage of the population. It contained different types of organizations, such as VET school, NGO’s, consultant organizations, small companies, employers’ associations, ensuring the complementarity of the perspectives, requirements and contribution, thus providing for the high quality of the final outcome.
Along with the course, dissemination plans and promotion materials have been developed as integral part of the project, in order to ensure the sustainability and maximize its impact for the years to come.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 160500 Eur

Project Coordinator

Liceul Tehnologic de Mecatronica si Automatizari & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Burdur Il Milli Egitim Mudurlugu
• Archivio della Memoria
• ProEduca z.s.
• Frauenberatungsstelle Oberpullendorf
• Bluebook s.r.l.