Conference Agenda

This work reflects the importance and responsibility of the school to respond to the needs of the entire school population. Specifically, a research paper is presented that focuses on the rural school setting, with the purpose of exploring inclusive education practices in this type of school.

Rural schools have great value for their environment since they constitute an important element within the institutional structure of a certain territory. In addition, families in rural communities generally collaborate in everything that the school makes them participate in. However, in order for this relationship of cooperation and complicity to occur, teachers must feel really committed to the social and natural framework that surrounds them and become aware of the need to incorporate it into their pedagogical work (Boix, 2014). Achieving this commitment of teachers is an important challenge for the management teams of rural schools with a high rate of variation of teachers since this fact poses an important handicap to design and carry out educational projects for the center due to the lack of continuity of the team that has to implement them.

The construction of an inclusive school, which ensures the presence, participation and success of all its students requires promoting, also in rural settings, changes in various fields: cultures, policies and practices. An inclusive school, which is oriented to an inclusive society, also needs to establish measures for the protection and training of people and groups that are in a situation of greater vulnerability and at risk of educational and social exclusion by reason of origin, ethnicity, language, economic and social situation, sexual orientation, gender identity or sexual characteristics, discrimination or violence, which are subject to exclusionary pressures or that encounter barriers in access, presence, participation and learning.

These changes should have teachers as an axis and engine. There are several studies on teaching competences (Cano, 2005). From an inclusive education approach, the competences we consider appropriate to train teachers are strategic competences, along with innovation and creativity, reflection and self-criticism (Fernández, 2013). For this, we have to take as a reference a permanent training and reflection of the skills to investigate, update, energize, employ creativity, lead, promote self-concept, open to change, etc. It is about improving the quality of education with equity, to respond to the demands of the educational field, through innovation processes and the implementation of projects and tasks based on active methodologies.

All these competences are related to the empowerment of teachers and shared teaching leadership, key factors for the improvement of teaching-learning processes, school results and the relational climate of educational institutions. Teacher empowerment must be enhanced and promoted by the management teams (González et al., 2019). All this involves training reflective and critical professionals in their daily tasks, capable of implementing changes to improve the center and its educational practice. It is about linking the teaching profession not only with a series of rights, but also responsibilities. Our proposal aims, from continuing education, to generate teacher empowerment through a better knowledge of their educational reality, the implementation of more innovative methodologies from action research, promoting the inclusion of all students in the center, reflection on practice, the preparation of a reception plan for new teachers, with the intention of generating a structure that enhances the sustainability of the project in the long term, enhancing the connection with the community environment.

The current project aims to identify examples of innovative and inclusive pedagogical practices and analyse how they cand be grouped into focal areas in VET excellence centres. The analysis is made in the frame of a large scale project: Governance for Inclusive Vocational Excellence (GIVE): 621199-EPP-1-2021-1-IT-EPPKA3-VET-COVE. www.thegiveproject.eu

Innovative pedagogies are focused on creating a stimulating and conducive learning environment that facilitate the learners to experience good, relevant and robust learning. When attempting to understand and define this concept, we notice a certain degree of fuzziness. Some opinions emphasize the creative and generative potential of teaching practices and environments, others are focused on the use of creative methods and techniques or, in some cases, on technology-enhanced learning (Ciolan et all, 2020), while other are focusing on evidence for impact.

Innovative and inclusive approaches are being used with increased frequency related to learning outcomes (knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values) that are needed for today's learners to thrive and shape the world, create and contribute to a better future of themselves and their communities. Short-term and long-term employability based on the resilience and creativity founded by the key competences are essential for each learner.

A good quality education that ensures the maximum valorisation of the individual potential of each student must be centered on the students, on their needs and their characteristics. The need to individualize the learning process is more obvious in the case of education for students belonging to vulnerable groups (learners with special education & training needs, learning disabilities, coming from disadvantaged areas, at risk of exclusion or with a migrant profile).

In the GIVE project we focused exactly on innovative and inclusive pedagogies in VET excellence centres, dealing with a number or even all the at risk groups mentioned above.

Our analysis is a two way process, starting concomitantly from two directions: literature review of different approaches and taxonomies and analysis of innovative practices from the field, attempting to ”meet in the middle” in trying to answer the questions: what works (and what does not work so well) in terms of pedagogical innovation in VET excellence centres focused on inclusion of vulnerable groups.

Among the analysed taxonomies, we investigated the OECD perspective (2018, 2019), Open University (2020, 2021, 2022), Istance & Paniagua (2018) etc.

In the practice identification and analysis, we focused on the four vocational centres of excellence involved in the GIVE project, under the leadership of Cometa Educazione from Italy and we have collected examples from these centres, but also from 5 companies, closely working with them.

In designing the possible future scenarios of education (2020), OECD identified the “Schools as Learning Hubs” as one of the evolutions of the learning ecosystems. TVET is often already a clear example of this scenario. In both IVET and the CVET area, links between VET centres and companies, and research centres in some cases, are standard way skills are identified in the market, integrated in the curricula and implemented in the training courses.

The “learning hub” solution has been promoted by several international initiatives as the core of platforms for developing and promoting excellence. Both the concept of “learning hub” and “excellence” can be different, although some golden threads can be highlighted.

This research aims at providing evidence of how such Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) are structured, developed, even supported and the perspectives of their role in the future VET sector.

Many international organizations have already proposed literature review on this topic, highlighting the dimensions of quality of training and relevance in terms of skills for the market, “addressing innovation, pedagogy, social justice, lifelong learning, transversal skills, organisational and continuing professional learning and community needs [including introduction of measures of] rationalisation, restructuring of governance, cost reduction, heightened accountability or greater competition” (ETF, 2020). In a nutshell, albeit inevitable differences among different contexts (ETF, 2020), Vocational Excellence can be considered a combination of two elements (GIVE, 2022b):

1. innovative and inclusive pedagogies;
2. agile, anticipatory and entrepreneurial functional governance

A preliminary study by the European Commission offered an interesting overview on the possible types of CoVEs, mainly from an institutional point of view, underlining also a specific taxonomy of categories of excellence, adapted to local and sectoral needs in terms of structures, stakeholders and activities (EC, 2019: 5):

“1. ‘purpose built’ or designated entities as part of national/regional arrangements for vocational excellence, and;

2. individual VET providers, functioning as CoVEs for a region, sub-region or sector”.

Beyond desk-research, several initiatives were promoted at international level to identify, promote and possibly scale-up excellent examples in VET. Among the others, UNESCO-UNEVOC promoted the Skills for Innovation Hubs (i-Hubs) in order to identify and support 10 pilot institutions worldwide which could be considered excellent in terms of organizational practices, institutions’ engagement with external stakeholders, learning and teaching processes; an evaluation process was implemented, Guided Self-Assessment (GSA), based on two tools: 1) Balanced Scorecard to assess and document, through quantitative and qualitative data, the i-hub’s internal readiness to innovate 2) Skills and Innovation Ecosystem Map to assess and document how favorable to innovation the i-hub’s ecosystem is (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2019).

The European Training Foundation, since 2020, has activated its ETF Network of Excellence (ENE) including almost 300 TVET centres based in its area of action (EU and neighbouring countries). The ENE includes VET centres with an enhanced range of activities and objectives over and beyond the provision of initial vocational training: for example, research, continuing vocational training, local economic development, greening of skills and technology transfer [aiming at being] engines for systemic improvement but their capacity to perform this role depends upon their character as organisations, the capabilities of their leaders and staff, their relationships with their ecosystems and their capacity to collaborate with other vocational schools and centres” (ETF, 2021).

Since 2019, the European Commission has been the stakeholder which, by promoting a specific program (EACEA 33/2019), has activated more than 20 CoVEs characterised by adopting a systemic approach through which VET institutions actively contribute to co-create skills ecosystems, together with a wide range of other local/regional partners, including activites listed under three clusters: Teaching and learning; Cooperation and partnership; and Governance and funding).