Description of the challenges and work area of the project InLab

In the planned project, the relevant work areas "passage from school to vocational schools", "practice phases as experience and development space" and "passage to vocational education and work" are included in the prevocational education schemes. Tools for the diagnosis and development of competence are necessary in each of the 3 areas. Hence, the diagnosis and development of competence is the profile task in multicultural contexts. 

Profile task – diagnosis and development of competence in multicultural contexts

The diagnosis of competence and the transition of the results into individual support- and development concepts are components of all work areas. The special conditions of the adolescents have to be considered here. Intended aims are:

  • Implementation of measures for self-diagnosis in educational programmes and the connection of self- and external assessment
  • Implementation of a method to bundle the competence-diagnosis and the transition into individual supporting concepts
  • Confrontation and examination of internal and external concepts of life

Challenge 1:

Transition from school to vocational school
Getting started in educational programmes of the transition system is frequently characterised in that way that those programmes are chosen as compensating measures or as waiting loop and that a considered orientation for a specific profile takes hardly place. Accordingly, a comprehensive orientation is necessary in the initial phases of the educational programmes. Here, the development and analysis of competences and environments is given priority and a realistic evaluation of their own situation is made for adolescents. Individual strengths are revealed and examined through multiple perspectives. Thereby a basis for the following vocational development and course of action is created.

Challenge 2:

Practice phases as experience- and development area
Adolescents see practice phases as beneficial and motivating. Not only for migrants it means a plunge into strange environments and a challenge to act socially responsible in multicultural contexts. An instructed analysis combined with practice phases has to take place to use this as a component of competence development in educational programmes. "Cooperation and exchange in multicultural environments" is therefore seen as another challenge. There is a monitoring system for the individual design of internships that establishes individual types of action in interconnected multicultural environments. The internship can only be used, if there are abilities to act in these life contexts.

Challenge 3:

Transition into vocational education and work
For different reasons, the transition into vocational education and work is a complex problem area for adolescents. It is highly important to understand, that it is less a specific moment in time that becomes the focus of attention but a whole transition period. The project should make a systematic companionship of the adolescents in the transition process possible. These challenges are first taken up in 3 work areas before a transfer in the project context takes place.

Work area 1:

Quality compass individual support
A central problem of the individual support is the adequate diagnosis of competence, the combination of the results and based on that a support and competence development of the learner beyond divisional and personnel boundaries. The quality compass "individual support" is a control- and quality assurance mechanism on educational programme level targeting the development of a coherent overall concept of the individual support. It helps to bundle and coordinate particular activities and to examine them critically against the backdrop of the overriding aim of the individual support. Referring to the idea of support- and development planning, the three characteristic elements "acquisition of competence", "support- and development conversations" and "organisation of beneficial learning environments" are distinguished. The central control- and documentation mechanism generates a support and development plan in which the essential results from different occasions and tools of the acquisition of competences (e.g. class tests, occupational assessment, self-evaluation, observation in class) are brought together, support- and development conversations along with target agreements are prepared and evaluated afterwards and the organisation and evaluation of the particular supporting tasks and -steps are adhered. In addition, the quality compass contains guidelines and guiding principles, which provide an orientation to teachers for the selection, adaption and / or reorganisation of diagnosis- and support tools.

Work area 2:

Business traineeship for students

The business traineeship for students in the transition system is the focus of the developmental work in the work area II. The traineeship embodies a framework for individual experiences and individual developments in the working environment. In this sense, it can be understood as a learning environment which should be arranged according to the principles of individual support. Work area II meets this challenge. Within the project team, different issues are cooperatively or coordinately processed. In that way, the development of individualized tasks with different levels of difficulty, which reach from documentation-tasks through analytical, comparative and problem-solving tasks to evaluation and reflective-tasks, builds one main emphasis of this work area. In addition, the complete group arranges a material pool, which includes documents from the traineeship (e.g. checklists, forms, invitation letters, consultant compendiums or flyers of the traineeship for the public image). Besides these activities the improvement of the traineeship support is in the foreground. The Blended-Mentoring-Concept combines two innovative ideas: On the one hand, operated by an intense support ratio, there should be created an improved foundation of trust between learners and teachers referring to the idea of mentoring. On the other hand, it shall be added the on-site support of the qualified teachers by an online support via the new medium "weblog", with reference to the Blended-Mentoring-Approach.

Work area 3:

The role-based balance of skills

Work area III wants to create a systematic monitoring of young people in the transition process from vocational school to working environment. This is intended through the development and implementation of a concept for the diagnosis and development of professional orientation competence - the role-based balance of skills. In terms of a strength-orientated and motivating approach, learning environments will be created in an introductory step with reference to the concept of the balance of skills, which enable and put special emphasis on the uncovering and the making present of (hidden) competences and strengths of the learners. This is reached by the analysis and reflection of personal roles from the environment of teenagers. The role-orientation can be understood as a link between the acquisition and development of competence: Roles were derived from distinctive situations of professional reorientation, which merge the tasks and requirements that are allocated to individuals in the context of professional orientation. Characteristic for this instrument is therefore a continuous, individual competence diagnosis, of which the results can be used for the development of competence within the framework of professional orientation.
Contacts

Scientific direction

Prof. Dr. H.-Hugo Kremer

Prof. Dr. Marc Beutner

Information

Dr. Petra Frehe                                                                                          

Funding sources

Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales

Funding sources

European Social Funds