Research Snapshot about

Testing New Approaches to Training VET and WorkplaceTutors for Work Based Learning

(TTT4WBL)

Erasmus + Project no. 582951-EPP-1-2016-2-LV-EPPKA3-PI-POLICY

Leena Kaikkonen Irmeli Maunonen-Eskelinen Arja Pakkala Tommi Veistämö

The aim is to get wider understanding about WBL through WBL tutor training experiences

• TTT4WBL project aims towards professional development of WBL tutors through EU and regional cooperation and mutual learning. The project aims to promote stronger cooperation between VET and social partners and SMEs. It wishes to collect and analyseevidence for implementation of innovative measures and facilitate their transferability.

• The more precise objective of the project is to test a professional development model for WBL tutors in which tutors from VET and tutors from enterprises will jointly be trained in all three Baltic countries - Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

The main question is:What is the impact of the joint training of VET and workplace tutors?

The sub questions are:

• How the competences of the VET and workplace tutors have developed according to their own assessment?

• How the collaboration between the VET schools and enterprises have developed?

The geographical context of the research

Estonia

Latvia

Lithuania

Pictures from Pixabay

Collecting data

The data is collected through a number of different respondent groups

In each country, the data is collected through online questionnaires, group interviews and observations from different groups.

VET school and Workplace tutors= WBL tutors Vet Students

VET school managers Company managers

Lead trainers

The phases of data collection

Data collection process follows the schedules for the WBL tutor training process.

The data collection has been planned to implement in three phases. The aim of the cyclical data collection is to make possible to develop the WBL tutor training by sharing the findings from each cycle through lead trainers’ peer learning visits, in national and transnational meeting and taking into account the preliminary research outcomes.

Preliminary research findings

From VET school and workplace tutors’ surveys

Pilot phase Oct 2017 – Jan 2018 2nd+3rd phase March 2018-Jan 2019 1+2+3 Phase

Estonia Latvia Lithuania

Total Estonia Latvia Lithuania

Total Total

Number of tutors trained

67 70 54 191 145 230 258 633 824R

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WBL-tutor Beginning

50 66 54 170 97 187 125 409 579

WBL-tutor End 36 54 47 137 137

WBL-tutor 6 months

14 29 16 59 42 79 54 175 234

VET Students 2 1 10 13 27 43 6 76 89

VET School managers

1 1 14 16 3 11 27 41 57

Company managers

4 1 11 16 1 37 12 50 66

Responses all together

107 152 152 411 170 357 224 751 1162

How many

Tandem training in numbers

trained VET school

tutors

trained Work Place

tutors Total/ Country

Lithuania 187 125 312

Estonia 36 172 208

Latvia 131 169 300

Total 352 466 820

The key idea of the WBL tutor training is to implement a joint training of VET and enterprise tutors. This mode of training, called Tandem training, is considered to be the basis for the Baltic model of WBL tutor training.

According to the data collected, the majority of the participants in the trainings in Estonia come from the work places, enterprises.

How the tutors self-assessed their skills in WBL? Good

102 tutors

Average289 tutors

Weak112 tutors

Respondents who had someone to guide (WBL student) assessed more often themselves to be on level ’good’ than ’weak’ (difference around 10%).

Guidance experience has also other impacts; of the respondents having more than 11 years of experience, less than 10 % felt their skills to be on level ’weak’.

In comparison to un-experienced of whom approximately 30% felt their skills to be on level ’weak’.

Are there any differences between the countries?

Estonia Latvia Lithuania

Weak 40,4 % 16,4 % 24,2 %

Average 48,1 % 52,8 % 59,6 %

Good 11,5 % 30,8 % 17,3 %

Yes! The Estonian tutors assessed their skills lower that the Latvians and Lithuanians.

Are there any signs of development of the WBL tutor training?

Pilot phase Phases 2 and 3

Weak 37,5 % 17,90 %

Average 43,8 % 61,4 %

Good 18,80 % 20,7 %

In pilot phase, 37,5% of respondents assessed their skills to be on the level ’weak’.

In the phases 2+3 only 17,9% of the tutors considered their skills to be on the lowest level.

Also, the amount of the tutors on the level ‘good’ increased.

The WBL tutor training developed during the experimentation.

How what kind of findings there are about the WBL tutor competence?

The questionnaires are based on the Finnish WBL tutor competence profile. The findings show that planning is the weakest competence area. There is statistically significant difference between males and females, the females being better in planning.

The planning skills need attention

Planning

GuidanceAssessment

Development

What did the tutors bring up in the open questions?

The benefits of the training

• Cooperation: • between VET schools and workplaces, • Network experience, • Experience and knowledge of work

environment

• Learning: • Improvement, • Confidence, • Methods, • Learning process

Suggestions to develop training

• Cooperation • to be continued and improved, • more cooperation

• Training: • Tandem training, • methods to be developed,• cooperational problem solving, • updating and improving the

curriculum

How the background factors show in the findings?No statistically significant difference between tutors’ professional fields; i.e. professional field does not have an impact on how tutors experienced their competence

However, tutors in the fields of business and social care considered their competence to be stronger (especially in planning) BUT this is not statistically significant difference

No statistically significant difference between the size of tutors’ schools and enterprises.

No statistically significant difference between tutors’ teaching experience.

No statistically significant difference between tutors’ tutoring experience.

No statistically significant difference between tutors’ age.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

AgeProfessional field

Size of organisation

Teaching experience

Tutoring

Recommendations at this stage

1. Creating a recognizable Competence Profile for WBL tutors

2. Re-constructing the WBL-tutor training model

3. Developing strategic co-operation between VET schools and companies

Please note, it is important to do it in connection with other EU discussions of the topic. So, you need to study carefully other conceptualizations:

Competence profile behind the TTT4WBL project’s experimentation. It is based on EU and Finnish models and amended for the experimentation by JAMK partners

Consider especially the area ‘Planning of WBL’.

It showed as the weakest of the profile areas

It needs to be many-sided and systematic.

It is needed to develop the quality of the cooperation; shared responsibility in cooperation and quality development.

The phase of collecting data continues till the end of March 2019