Nowadays society demands people to be capable of self-directing their professional and personal lives. Everyone has to make choices, has to handle changes, has to deal with uncertainty. Most people cannot do this by nature, they have to learn it. The lifelong learning (LLL) policy of the EU is a way to stimulate and facilitate citizens to enlarge their capability of self-directing their career. This policy will be more effective if young people are involved from the start. The best place to learn this is in school when pupils/students have to make choices with regard to further education and career. However, Dutch research shows that the current way in which this is organized in schools is not very effective. A promising approach is guiding pupils in a dialogic way at their development of a work-identity: the concept of career-learning. Therefore, this project starts from the hypothesis that career-learning is a success factor for LLL. The project will produce new work methods, supportive instruments and materials, specifications and outlines for teacher training and finally a strategy on how to implement this. The partners are fully aware of the differences in school systems, roughly to be divided in the academics (EN, ES, FI, PL) and the vocational (BE, AT, DE, NL), and qualify these differences not as hindrances, but as a positive dynamic factor for real learning during the project.

Reforming career guidance provision runs the risk of associating the improvement of career guidance for example with reducing drop out, rather than continuously supporting all students to learn career self-management skills, a universal preventive and educational approach. Positioning such skills as an integral part of general and vocational education is more likely to bring about long-term work force preparation and development benefits than could be achieved by external and time-bound impulses and funding. It could be the ultimate new skill for new jobs because this career learning is about the complex and personal nature of career decision-making: issues of personal identity, values, and the role of work in one’s life. Career learning is a blend of information and guidance and career-related activities to help young people discover who they are. Career learning is not only integrating the ‘what’ en ‘how’ but above all the ‘why’ of learning; therefore, it could be the true motivator for initial school learning as well as for further lifelong learning.

Short term target-groups
Students and teachers are not only target groups in this project, but from day one co-creators of innovation. Furthermore, developing will go hand in hand with disseminating. To this end, every partner organizes a student panel and a teacher panel, these panels being local stakeholders within the (affiliated) school of the partners. Both local panels will meet 4 times during the project and will have a central role in the local dissemination sessions.

Long term target-groups
Teachers, students, parents, staff, and managers of (affiliated) partner schools and sister schools, (local, regional and/or national) policy-makers, local business communities. The intended innovation targets the connection of the learning of students (the ultimate goal), the learning and working of teachers (as a means to support the learning of students), the policy of the (affiliated) partner schools, and the perceptions of managers. For local business communities it is of interest to know that pupils/students from the partner schools will be very well equipped for a constantly changing situation on the labour market; students learned to connect their values and personal development to the developments in the world of work.

Stichting Landstede Zwolle – the Netherlands

Flanders: Dienst Beroepsopleiding
Austria: Verein Schul- und Ausbildungsberatung SAB
United Kingdom: Adam Smith College
Spain: Instituti Tecnologico y Grafico Tajamar (technical and graphical school)
Germany: Volkshochschule Mainburg e.V.
Finland: Kokkolan kauppaopisto (business institute)
Poland: Spoleczna Wyzska Szkola Przedsiebiorczosci Zarzadzania ( Academy of management)

Lifelong Learning Programme
Action: Multilateral Projects for Development of Innovation.

http://sites.google.com/site/eucareerlearning/home/news

Tanja Biebaut: tanja.biebaut@ond.vlaanderen.be .

Project acronym: CLLL
Project agreement number: 2010-3662/001-001
www.careerlearning.eu or www.career-learning.eu

Disclaimer: This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. CLLL 2010 – 3662/001-001