The social dimension in European higher education

In the series “European Policy Seminars” of the Academic Cooperation Association, the ACA is planning to organise a seminar (on October 14th) that is spot on: the social dimension of higher education.
Here's the rationale as taken from the invitation:
The “social dimension” is an elusive but critically important issue for European higher education. The European Commission’s 2012 Lifelong Learning Programme call for proposals (issued this month) singles out “the social dimension of higher education” as one of its five priority areas for multilateral projects. In the call, the Commission has indicated specific preference for projects focused on such issues as widening access for underrepresented groups, tracking the development of expanded access for these populations, encouraging increased completion rates in higher education, and further developing the notion of the “social responsibility” of higher education institutions.
Social concerns have traditionally played an important role in the discourse on European higher education. After a boom in the social rhetoric in the 1970s, the issue re-emerged in Europe in the context of the Bologna Process: should the student body entering, participating in and completing higher education reflect the diversity of our populations?
Stated aims and ambitions are one thing, but how about the reality on the ground? Are our universities and colleges accessible for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and immigrants and cultural minorities, to mention just three groups that play a role in the ‘social discourse’? Or is the social dimension, as a report of 2009 found, a rhetorical rather than a real success, and is it true that it is still not the “ability to learn but the ability to pay” which determines participation in higher education? Do universities and governments in Europe have policies for participative equity in place, and are these policies effective?
These are some of the questions which this ACA European Policy Seminar will address. The latest research findings are planned to be presented, among them a soon-to-be released EURYDICE study on the issue, the brand new EUROSTUDENT 2011 report and the external evaluation of the social dimension in the Bologna Process.
The European Commission will present its latest policy position paper on higher education and the OECD will provide intelligence on if and how our universities and colleges are catering to students from migrant communities. Two institutional representatives will provide insights on access and diversity ‘from the field’.
This being the working programme for the seminar, I regret that I won't be able to attend. Still, hopefully some of the reports and results of this seminar will be shared on the web and that's when I can include some links here to relevant, valuable information. I'm already looking forward to that. In today's world we should cherish all talent and provide opportunities for this talent to be developed via higher education.

Establishing the RMA prototype

This time it was Vallodalid, Spain where the EDDILI consortium gathered to have its 4th EU level meeting. Our host was the INTRAS foundation, a non-profit organisation developing and promoting activities concerning assistance, research, evaluation and dissemination of mental health and other disabilities actions, plus an English language webpage to explain more !
Within the designated one-day meeting the project partners managed to jointly establish the definitive prototype, the draft (extended) table of contents for the RMA manual, and get a solid overview of all that's coming up in the next few months.
It was in that sense a most productive meeting, meeting all the objectives set beforehand, while it also demonstrated the cooperative mode that we had been working in up to that point. Meetings are always the best opportunity to share thoughts on (presentations of) work done and updates on current and future work, in order to have everyone on the same page.
This meeting we were joined by two delegates from the EU commission, 2 Grundtvig project managers, who attended the session as external observers and were helpful in making practical suggestions to round off this multilateral Grundtvig project successfully.
Here is a visual representation of the meeting:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This blog post 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 herein.

Learning and networking

With the CEV symposium in Brussels just behind me, I’m looking back here at the experience. It was well announced as an event on “Volunteering as a means of empowerment and social inclusion”. The week before we received all the information by mail, among which a list of participants. It’s always interesting to know in advance who will be present at such an occasion. Not to my surprise, I read that I was going to be the only representative from a university , even though we are a university of applied sciences.
Learning and networking: those were my goals. Learning about the great diversity of voluntary activities within Europe and familiarising myself with the landscape of volunteer initiatives but also barriers to voluntary action. And networking in order to get acquainted to a number of European players in the field of volunteering and, secretly, hoping to find some partners to start up a small scale European project, a Grundtvig Learning Partnership.
I am happy to say that many of my expectations have turned out as I'd hoped. Enthusiastic, open and committed people I met, quite a large group from all over Europe (and a few from beyond), all with their own experiences and input. Many of them are members of the European Volunteer Centre and have known each other for quite a while, but the other half of the audience present on the first day was not, CEV director Markus Held established.
On day 1 I particularly liked the dialogue café: a wonderful way of getting to talk to a variety of participants in a short period, with a specific question as the starting point. On day 2 it was the workshops that I enjoyed most. I listened to Anne Sophie van der Bracht who related how young people were involved in activities that support their mental, physical and ethical development in 3 years at a stretch, moving from bronze to silver to gold in the process, each year for them being more difficult than the one before. Volunteering is (only) part of that. Next to that they do sports, study and go on an annual expedition. The overall aim is to teach these 15 to 19 year olds that through dedication and commitment to tasks and by working systematically, they can exceed themselves. It’s an intensive type of youth work performed by the foyer (Jongerenwerking Brussel). As for volunteering, they hope that these youngsters (all from non-Belgian backgrounds) will maintain their voluntary work as a structural thing.
Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) and the role of international partnerships was another workshop that attracted my interest. In the huge organisation that VSO is and based on the wealth of experience they have gained through the years, they have developed their theory of change and demonstrated the potential of volunteering in the improvement of the lives of people experiencing poverty and marginalisation. The Chief Youth Officer at the Kenyan Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports then illustrated their National Youth Volunteer Scheme, established together with VSO.
The final part of day 2 was dedicated to the Brussels declaration on the role of volunteering in the fight against poverty and social exclusion, making a bridge between the themes of the two consecutive European years.

Day 3 was meant as an opportunity to meet volunteers and voluntary organisations in a large tent by way of a continuing fair that will be travelling around Europe in the course of 2011, the European Year of Volunteering.

To end this post , just a few encouraging facts:
• Volunteering improves self-confidence. Over 80 % of English volunteers report that engagement in voluntary work makes them happy and improves their self-esteem.
• Research shows that the unemployed, people coming from minority ethnic groups and unskilled workers are underrepresented in the “volunteering force” of Europe.
• According to a study among job seekers in England, 81% of respondents said that volunteering gave them a chance to learn new skills.
• Almost 75 % of employers prefer to recruit candidates with volunteering in their CV.

Learning makes you happy, says study

Clipped from: www.elli.org (share this clip)

Learning makes you healthy, satisfied and happy and improves social solidarity, according to the first results of the European Lifelong Learning Indicators (ELLI) study.
ELLI is the first European comparative lifelong learning index and as such provides a useful tool for gaining an overview of the situation of lifelong learning across the EU.
The ELLI project was launched by Bertelsmann Stiftung in January 2008 in an effort to make the concept of lifelong learning more understandable and transparent. It is meant as a resource for political decision makers and educational institutions, private industry, academics and journalists, as well as all of Europe’s citizens who want to know more about learning in their own country and the rest of Europe – what it entails, and the impact it has.
ELLI measures learning throughout the different stages of life from ‘cradle to grave’ and across the different learning environments of school, community, work and home life, so even taking into account relevant activities, such as sport, culture, voluntary involvement as well as participation in courses within adult education centres.
The overall results show that the Nordic countries Denmark, Sweden and Finland and, in addition, the Netherlands rank highest. Particularly Denmark and Sweden have been the most successful countries in Europe at implementing the idea of lifelong learning. The top performers are followed by a group of countries that consist of mainly Central European and Anglo-Saxon countries. The next group of countries, which are below the EU average, are from Southern and Eastern Europe and range from the Czech Republic to Poland, with Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania at the bottom end of the table.
It was especially the preface to the publication that I found inspiring, under the heading: "Learning, lifting the treasure within". Here's a relevant paragraph I'd like to quote: "Lifelong and life-wide learning is about the whole person. It is about allowing every individual to participate in society and making our society more cohesive. Learning enables people to develop to their full potential and to play an active role in their environments. It allows them to try new things and to harness untapped talents. Along with enhancing employment opportunities and professional standing, learning lays the groundwork for fulfillment in life.
Moreover, learning cannot and should not start or end in the classroom or in other educational institutions. We learn on the job, as members of associations or political organizations, in our families, during our leisure time and in our communities as well. In order to make lifelong learning a reality, it is important to embrace and connect all learning stages, types and places and to link this process with the wider spectrum of benefits that flow from it."
In my view, far too often and too long learning has only been associated with teaching and instruction within schools or prescribed learning frameworks. Fortunately, we now see increasing recognition of learning achieved outside the formal curriculum, e.g. also via so-called Recognition of Acquired Competencies procedures. A most welcome development in the right direction, providing easier access to other learning tracks! However, generally speaking there is still insufficient appreciation for informal, experiential or non formal learning overall. Let's hope the ELLI study and its preface will be read widely across Europe.

EDDILI, state of affairs in a nutshell

EDDILI is an international action-research project targeted at adult learning staff (ALS). It is co-funded by the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme under the action Grundtvig Multilateral projects.
During the 2 years of the project life the international partnership aims to develop and introduce the reciprocal maieutic approach (RMA) of Danilo Dolci as an interesting educational approach to be used in the field of training of adult learning staff.
In the past few months EDDILI has been implementing this approach in all the partner countries simultaneously and it’s expected to have a serious impact and enhance the quality of adult learning.
In mid-July an international meeting was held with all 6 partners in Frechen, Germany, with the aim of coordinating the ongoing project activities and plan the next stages and steps. After an initial 5-day international “train the trainers (trainers of ALS)” gathering in Palermo (in January 2010) about the Reciprocal Maieutic Approach, those trainers are now delivering an intensive training course to ALS in their respective countries. The main educational approach used by trainers is the RMA. The course includes on-line modules as well as in-presence modules.
As a final valorisation part of the training course an international seminar will be held in Rotterdam upcoming 26 – 29 September 2010. It’s meant to give a strong European dimension to the training course, but also enable and promote the encounter between adult learning staff from the diverse countries and to develop a network among them.
The next stage is then to create a prototype of a manual focused on the RMA approach as a new and valuable tool in adult education. In the meantime ALS will be putting into practice their new skills and competences in their daily activities with adult learners. The monitoring of their experiences will provide valuable information as regards the impact of the method and further support the final version of the RMA manual. This product is then ready for dissemination at a European level in a number of languages and will establish the reciprocal maieutic approach as an interesting educational approach in adult education in Europe.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This blog post 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 herein.

Teaching ethical behaviour ?

“It was your responsibility!”, just a random remark I picked up during our European Grundtvig project meeting in Palermo, when something went wrong. Just one of the many comments that we often hear people make when they want to remind others of particular expectations that they had as regards the performance of a task that was not carried out satisfactorily or as expected. Somehow we all have our own (implicit) standards and norms. However, only when something goes wrong or turns out a failure , suggestions, remarks, hints but also outright criticism are expressed that point to a code of conduct that was hidden from sight before the incident took place.
Such incidents often give rise to discussions, debate or (preferably) dialogue, but can potentially lead to frictions. They alert us to the fact that one’s own perspectives and values may differ from others. Now suppose we could identify and establish universal (and perhaps even perennial) values, would conflicts then be erased from today’s world? Or is it naive to expect that a universally adopted code of ethical conduct will prevent any future friction?
Even though I usually have a positive (perhaps sometimes idealistic) view on life, there is no doubt in my mind that in the practical application of such a universal code of conduct multiple decisions and choices can be made in similar contexts.
Still, if we then decide that identifying common ethical values or formulating a common ethical code of conduct is a hopeless task, I feel we would be missing an ideal opportunity of sharing views and harvesting the benefits of finding common ground on an important issue such as ethical behaviour. No matter what the outcome will be, all people involved in this collective exploration of coming to a joint code of ethical behaviour will benefit. It will provide them with a variety of perspectives, clarify different approaches and increase understanding of their own points of views in relation to others. After all, the actions of individuals are largely shaped by social experience.
As someone working in education the ensuing question for me is: can we teach ethical behaviour and if so, how ? Wasn’t it Socrates who said: “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” and similarly Galielo Galilei : “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." Then there is also Plutarch who said: “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." It is this approach to educating people, combined with serious dialogue that should be the way to encouraging students to express ethical behaviour and which will continue to be valuable in times of change and globalisation.
Why am I reflecting on this? I’m after all not a lecturer in ethics; I’m just an interested layman in ethical issues who started collecting resources on ethics on the web via the delicious bookmarking site (click here for a direct link), when we were on the point of submitting an application for a European (LLLP) learning partnership about ethical competences. Ethics is one of the courses all students take in the school of social work, so I felt we could benefit from sharing views and focussing on this issue in a European project with partners from various countries.
In our first meeting in Vilnius (see my earlier blog post) we identified 20 ethical values, here’s a visualisation of them, thanks to wordle.

All these have now been worked out in a joint format, a framework identifying aspects like knowledge, skills, attitudes, potential instruments, pedagogical issues etc. Following that, at the 2nd project meeting in Palermo we tried to come to a common understanding of all these issues. However, all the steps we've taken so far have still been very much theoretically oriented and unfortunately, much of the meeting time was spent on presenting theoretical foundations of ethical values and competences and ways of categorising them.
The real challenge will be to put it all into practice by designing and implementing appropriate tools to use in educational settings. This will be the focus of our 3rd meeting in Romania in November. We expect to share experiences in the educational/pedagogical approach and discuss how each partner, in their own context, applied a diversity of instruments for a limited number of the identified ethical values. Let's hope that this upcoming meeting will have a more interactive working mode than the one I've just come back from. It's to a great extent the European project meetings that are favourable to exchanges, discussions and dialogue and where participants in a learning partnership can familiarise themselves with a wide variety of European views in a way that is unparallelled.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This blog post 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 herein.

LEVEL5, at a glance

In the beautiful and peaceful setting of Alden Biesen castle, Belgium, a European conference took place on the validation of informal learning. It was announced as a practical and active conference bringing together practitioners and educational experts from a variety of European countries. And indeed, after some keynotes and an overview of some informal learning projects, the afternoon was fully dedicated to getting to grips with the LEVEL5 system, an instrument meant to validate informal or non-formal learning.
Just 2 weeks prior to this meeting I had attended a seminar session where a speaker had pressed an urgent message on his audience: to sustain good practices it's of vital importance to demonstrate to your funders or sponsors that the projects you have run have been worthwhile, in the sense that the beneficiaries can be shown to have made progress in one way or another. And exactly that had in the past often proved to be a bottleneck. At the end of a project many people show enthusiasm , new innovative approaches are tried out and tested to the satisfaction of many, but in the end, as the projects have been funded with temporary money, good practices in the social domain die a slow death as the impact is not or inadequately demonstrated via a survey, research or any other validating tool to assess success.
LEVEL5 is a welcome development, in that it could substantiate exactly that: this approach can establish competence development of (adult) learners in informal and non formal learning contexts.

Learning results can be displayed and (via a 3-dimensional web-based cube) visualised in 3 different dimensions, namely cognitive, activity related and affective competences (sometimes referred to as Head, Hand and Heart).
Two dimensional charts are also available to display the learning results which were recorded after a learning project. This truly appears to be a promising development from which many adult learners and adult learning providers may benefit.
More detailed information about LEVEL5, including some screenshots of the software, is available via the REVEAL community website.

creativity and innovation

Those were the terms that triggered me and set me off to Brussels for a 2-day conference organised by the EU. And what an inspiring 2 days it became!
It was the first time I saw Ján Figel' speak, EU commissioner for education, culture, training and youth. I had read some of his speeches before, but seeing him "live" made me realise how this man really tried to make an impact on the audience by actually speaking to a huge gathering instead of just reading out a text prepared in advance, as did the second speaker Luc Van den Brande, President of the Committee of Regions and Odile Quentin, Director General EAC, in her closing speech. What also struck me was that he stressed the fact that it was all about "making human life more human", his captivating speech was a real message to the listeners and came across as authentic.
I was quite happy about the choice I had made for the session on the crucial role of schools in innovation and fostering creativity. The key issue of new skills needed for new jobs was highlighted and the audience was presented with creative answers to the key question of what to teach in schools to prepare the young generation for these new jobs.
The next day I had decided to go to the session of social innovation to hear a number of fascinating examples of societal entrepreneurship. Turning something seemingly bad into something good, was what all the speakers drove. Budapest Beyond Sightseeing for example is a case in point: it's a different type of city tour that takes the participants to one of the most neglected districts of Budapest where they get to experience the area’s hidden treasures through active participation, stories and encounters with locals, aiming to change the perception of the neighbourhood and its residents. The two people in charge of these social cultural walking tours both come from a social work background.
The conference ended with the rapporteurs summarising the policy conclusions from each of the theme sessions, here's the link to the report.
And here are some of the pictures I took to get a flavour of the whole event.