European UNEVOC Network Consolidation Workshop
As part of UNESCO-UNEVOC’s efforts to strengthen the engagement of European UNEVOC Centres in Europe, a European UNEVOC Network Consolidation Workshop was held at the UN Campus in Bonn. This workshop aimed at strengthening cooperation and policy learning in TVET within Europe. The opportunity was also taken to involve UNEVOC Centres from Africa and Asia in the discussions, to facilitate future cross-regional collaborations with the European UNEVOC Cluster.
The following organisations took part in the meeting:
- The National Agency for Vocational Education and Training from Albania
- The Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research
- Shenzen Polytechnic from China
- Foundation Innove from Estonia
- The German Federal Ministry of Vocational Education and Training
- UNEVOC Centre for ‘TVET for Sustainable Development from Germany
- The Rift Valley Technical Training Institute from Kenya
- Vocational Education and Training Centre (CSOO) from FYR Macedonia
- Malta College of Arts, Sciences and Technology
- Centre for Innovation in Education and Training (CINOP) from the Netherlands
- Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences from Norway
- Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training
- Institute of Education Sciences from Romania
- Seychelles Institute of Education
- Centre for Flexible Learning, Soderhamn,Halsingland Education Association (CFL) from Sweeden
- Eidgenössisches Hochschulinstitut für Berufsbildung (EHB) from Switzerland
- University of Nottingham, Centre for International Education Research (CIER) from the United Kingdom
The discussions at this workshop were guided by the responses received from the UNEVOC Network members in Europe, where they identified key thematic interests and needs as established in UNESCO-UNEVOC’s Medium Term Strategy (2017-2019). These included: Industry 4.0; Entrepreneurship; Migration and Skills; and, Attractiveness of TVET.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Tknika will lead the group on Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The development of an initiative on entrepreneurship in the European UNEVOC Cluster makes sense from three different perspectives:
- Strategically it is fully aligned to the objectives of UNEVOC
- There is a lot knowledge in Europe
- The UNEVOC Centres are interested in developing initiatives on entrepreneurship
European countries have been working on developing entrepreneurial educational initiatives for many years. During the meeting all the participants shared their experiences and it can be said that all participants have interesting programmes to share in form of curricula, models, strategies, frameworks, etc.
On the meaning of “entrepreneurship”
Showing that entrepreneurship makes sense in the European UNEVOC Network is a necessary step to launch an initiative, but what does “entrepreneurship” exactly mean?
The European UNEVOC Cluster agreed on the definition of the European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework:
“Entrepreneurship is when you act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others. The value that is created can be financial, cultural or social.”
The definition implies for the work of the team that entrepreneurship does not necessarily mean to create a company and, therefore, the idea of “intra-entrepreneurship”, highly relevant for countries with high employment rates, should also be considered.
Objective of the team
Once the rationale of the initiative was settled and the definition agreed, the work team had to set an objective for the following years.
The objective needed to be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time based
After some discussion, it was agreed that the group will identify and publish the entrepreneurial education models that are working well.
But if we read this objective on the light of the characteristic mentioned above, we realise that it does not meet all of them.
Therefore, we decided to follow an enhanced Deming cycle:
During the next year the group will carry out the following actions:
- Describe the entrepreneurship education of their country.
- Analyse European initiatives to know what has been done and avoid waste of effort and time.
- Coordinate with the global team of UNEVOC working on entrepreneurship to make sure that we are all working together.
- Organise a conference or workshop at the end of the year (March of 2019) to share the findings through a publication and plan the actions for the next year.
Our present
Apart from the meeting, Tknika had the pleasure of contributing with a “Txistu” (traditional Basque Flute) to the flute collection of the International Centre.
The collection of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre is a perfect analogy of TVET because flutes can be found in almost every culture of the world. But, although they are the same instrument, flutes are different in each part of the world.
