Project

Key Information

Name: Vocational Training of the Inner-Self
Acronym: VOCIS
Period: 15/12/2015 to 14/01/2018
Duration: 25 months
Partners: 5 organisations from 5 countries
Budget: 166.902,00 EUR
EU programme: Erasmus+, Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Description

The VOCIS project aims at increasing competences and skills for self-regulation of professionals or students and to implement coaching for self-regulation in order for them to achieve a better coping with increasing professional constraints and a higher efficiency at work.

Professional activities in modern societies are subject to the claim of continuous optimization. Learned knowledge quickly becomes obsolete and needs to be updated, technical systems follow rapid innovation cycles and needs and expectations of customers and users to determine which products and services are in demand. Failure to follow and to cope with fast paced optimization requirements can lead to strong negative consequences for the individuals as well as for the organisations. They consist primarily in

• stress and strain
• decreased performance and motivation
• increase of sick leaves, absenteeism
• increased costs
• burnout, depression and eventually suicide.

The extent to which professionals succeed in managing requirements depends not only on the distinctiveness of their skills but also significantly of the actual level of support experienced by them in this respect within an organization. If existing resources are strengthened, a stable balance of requirements and competencies to overcome them is established.

This context of dynamic changes in professional life outlined above can be made out in all sectors with particular strains in the social sector. They can be better addressed through both individual and organizational design, learning and development. Therefore, the project addresses a.o. the following key questions:

Which self-regulation and self-control skills are of special significance for the social sector and vocational education?

Which practical models working with personality traits are particularly common in the social sector and vocational training and which have the greatest impact and benefit for the professionals?

What are the organizational resources that have beneficial consequences for self-regulation and avoid stress and strain?

Which approaches could turn into opportunities to develop skills for self-regulation?

The VOCIS project will develop a set of high quality instruments for the Vocational Education and Training of self-regulation skills to be used by VET teachers and trainers, coaches, professionals in both continuous and initial vocational education and training. They will allow to train and to reinforce skills for self-regulation and self-control in order to increase the ability of employees, students, trainers/teachers and coaches for flexible and sustainable self-regulation, self-organization, and self-guidance leading to higher motivation and volition and better coping with frustration.

More specifically, this set of educational instruments will be composed of following outputs available in the national languages of the project’s consortium (English, French, German, Italian and Croatian):

• Framework of methods and contents for individual coaching for self-regulation skills,
• Framework of methods and contents for peer coaching for self-regulation skills,
• Curricula including methods and contents for continuous vocational training (CVET) of the inner-self,
• Curricula including methods and contents for initial vocational training (IVET) of the inner-self,
• Diagnostic toolkit for identifying strengthens and weaknesses of inner-self related skills for a flexible and relevant use of the materials to address learning objectives on an individual level as well as on an organisational level in coaching and training contexts.

All elements of good practice derived from the project will be compiled and presented in the final publication “VOCIS@hand” written in English. The project’s results will all be made available on this website intending a sustainable promotion of the contents. The website is mainly in English but many outputs will also be shared in German, French, Italian and Croatian.