30 Months TRANSVAL-EU: Looking back, looking ahead…
When the policy experimentation on the validation of transversal skills, TRANSVAL-EU, started on the 28th of February 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic and in the midst of various lockdowns all over Europe, we as a consortium had a guiding vision for our intentions in the project formulated in the proposal and a great variety of expertise in the 16 full partners and 11 associate partners affiliated to the project as well as a strong sense of purpose and commitment to the topic and the collaboration. In the first 14 months out of 30, working together took place solely virtually, the forming-norming-storming-performing development of the team identity happened therefore gradually, in different stages and forms.
With the European Training in May 2022 in Perugia, Italy, the consortium started to come together in person, as well as bringing practitioners from Austria, Belgium, Italy, Lithuania and Poland together, kicking off what lies at the heart of a KA3 project – the policy experimentation itself, the Field Trials.
The national trainings and the piloting in the respective countries with different target groups and according to country-specifics chosen transversal competencies was accompanied by a study assessing inter alia the impact for validation and guidance practitioners as well as candidates on their awareness of transversal skills and their active use of transversal skills in their practice (for practitioners) and the impact on employability and empowerment (for candidates) – and the results are remarkable as the impulse of the training shows positive effects with regards to awareness and capabilities in the realm of transversal competences for practitioners and candidates, see the results in detail:
In those last days of the project life span, rather than the beginning of the end, it feels like the end of the beginning: We will keep on working together on raising awareness for the power of transversal skills and the benefits of validation and the recognition of prior learning and seize the momentum of the project and the partnership.
