"Our partnership project entitled: ""Preserving biodiversity and local natural resources: sustainable development in two specific areas (Monbazillac and Sibiu)"" has five main objectives:- to enable learners to acquire and/or deepen the notions of sustainable development, ecology and biodiversity.- to develop European citizenship- to enable them to practice English, the working language of the project- to improve their use of digital communication tools.- to encourage transnational exchanges by having them work in groups or French/Romanian pairsOur project will be carried out over a period of 2 years, starting in September 2020. It is a bilateral project between the LEGTA de LA BRIE of Monbazillac in France and the Colegiul Economic ""George BARIȚIU"" of Sibiu in Romania. The teachers in charge of this project will be Mrs Carine SAGAZ, Mrs Steluta-Mihaela RĂULEA and Mr LEGENTIL.The project will include four training mobilities with four meetings with pupils from each country working in pairs for the project, detailed work on the themes of sustainable development and biodiversity using the e-twinning platform, social networks, the production of interactive videos in English about the various places they will visit, the creation of a website which will host the written and oral expression work as well as the active participation of the pupils during the video conferences.This project, whose target language is English, will develop the European citizenship of French and Romanian pupils, whose discovery of the many facets of the two countries will strengthen their feeling of being a European citizen.Why a project about biodiversity?Because biodiversity is a heritage of ecological, economic, social and cultural importance.The aim of this project will therefore be to make pupils aware of actions implemented, such as natural parks, to preserve biodiversity. They should also be able to identify endangered, vulnerable and invasive species, the main threats for their survival and the consequences of their disappearance/presence on ecosystems. The development of European citizenship will involve discovering Romania or France, as the case may be, their respective position in Europe, and the historical, geographical, socio-cultural and agricultural aspects of each of the partner countries.The project will encourage learners to study the following question: what is European citizenship? They will realise that one of the key affect of the European construction is the important role it confers to citizens. Normally, in traditional international organisations, only states are directly concerned by the decisions adopted (such as the United Nations Organisation). They will learn that the concept of European citizenship was introduced by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, as well as the rights and duties which fall within the scope of European citizenship.In terms of language, pupils studying English in their training course and having opted to follow English ""European Section"" courses for French learners, will practise English, the working language of the project, for all work in oral comprehension, written comprehension and written expression skills, with particular emphasis on continuous and interactive oral expression.In the age of the Internet and social networks, the project will rely on dematerialised communication tools facilitating exchanges between partners from both countries. In particular, pupils will communicate via applications such as ""Skype"", create a website dedicated to the project, but also create slide shows and use video tools."

"<< Background >>Gaining international experience is one of the common goals of the partner schools. We believe it is very important for students and staff to learn from, in and with other countries. This is not only about expanding professional knowledge, but also about personal growth. We would like to cooperate in order to jointly offer a contemporary education that takes into account the goals of sustainable development, environmental protection and actions to counteract climate change in the educational content. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to obtain, elaborate, compare and jointly reflect knowledge and innovations from other countries/regions.This is important not only for our trainees, but also for the staff, teachers and trainers who can raise awareness and provide students/trainees with the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to achieve the goals of sustainable development, environmental protection and actions to counteract climate change, and inspire them to learn and work abroad, adapt their own teaching to current needs and contribute to school development.<< Objectives >>The implementation of the project will lead to a collaboration to complement teaching content, skills and abilities in the context of horticultural education and training with regard to the goals of sustainable development, environmental protection and to counteract climate change. Intuitively, participants ""get used"" to questioning their actions in terms of sustainability and environmental impact and to look for ""green solutions"". As teachers and trainers are not only accompanying persons but active participants, this partnership also contributes to the goal of continuous professional development for teachers, trainers and educators and thus to the further development of the participating schools and institutions as a whole. In addition, it is intended to prevent the shortage of skilled workers and to prepare well the future professionals for the tasks that will be expected of them on the labor market in the near future. The protected setting and the relatively short duration of the respective joint practical lessons make it easier for the rather reserved or anxious students to come into contact with the unknown. Since vocational students in particular usually have fewer language classes in their training program, they are also less likely to dare to go abroad in coutries or regions wher another language is spoken. The protected framework of these LTT activities partly takes away their insecurity, initiates independence and leads to more self-confidence. Some students could also be encouraged to do another internship abroad or to accept a job abroad. The participation could also motivate some of the students or teachers to look more intensively at foreign languages and become more open to learning them.<< Implementation >>Within this partnership, we will organize several transnational project meetings. These will take place partly virtually in order to protect the environment and not to further climate change. Each partner will prepare a joint practical teaching week as a blended LTT or further training activity in the subject area in which their institution has a specialization or particular experience on the topic of ""sustainable gardening"", thus sharing this experience with the other partners and contributing to the achievement of the common objective. We also organize targeted teacher training in collaboration with the Association of European Horticulture Teachers. The following mixed LLT activities are planned by the different partners: At the Dutch partner on the topic: ""Living garden - living public space"", at the German partner on the topic: ""Planning and creation of perennial beds taking into account climate change and sustainability"", at the Latvian partner on the topic: ""Planning and design of plantings by taking advantage of modern technology"", at the Austrian partner on the topic: ""Possibilities of growing fresh vegetables in winter to reduce imports from faraway countries"", at the Croatian partner on the topic: ""Possibilities of infrastructural adaptation of the school to the current needs of the labor market and environmental protection"", and at the French partner on the topic: ""Functional approach of dry stone in its role as a regulator of the ecosystem"". Due to the fact that these are blended LTT activities, the participants will have to do common tasks before the activity, during the activity they will not only work practically, but also reflect and report on their activities together, and some time after their participation in the LTT activity they will answer a questionnaire again. In this way, they will again have to deal with the knowledge they have gained and the change in their attitude or their way of acting towards sustainability, environmental and climate protection that has taken place in the meantime. This will remind them again of the goals and further motivate them to work towards ""green solutions"". Dissemination activities during the partnership are also foreseen: Participants must report on their activities not only during the LTT weeks, but also beyond. Publications should take place on the homepage of the Association of European Horticulture Teachers, in local or regional print media or radio interviews, among family/friends and at work and in social media and in the environment of the respective partner institutions on their usual publication channels.<< Results >>Through the Europe-wide cooperation and the implementation of these LTT activities, the students and their teachers gain insights into how climate change is expressed in other areas, what approaches are being used elsewhere to counteract it, and thus receive suggestions on how they can act sustainably and in an environmentally friendly manner in their everyday horticultural work. The skills and abilities acquired in the course of such jointly conducted international teaching units remain much more firmly anchored in the trainees' minds than the ""usual"" teaching content. The impression of their participation will continue to have an effect even after they have finished school, and they will continue to apply their changed behavior toward sustainability, environmental and climate protection in their subsequent professional practice. As a result, some of the impact may carry over to employers, colleagues, and/or customers, for example, customers may be offered/recommended planting designs that take climate change into account, water-efficient irrigation systems, or the use of natural stone, vegetables produced in the area may be offered to a wider audience. Also, when planting and maintaining public green spaces according to methods that do justice to sustainability, environmental and climate protection, people not involved in the project become aware of this way of working and are motivated to think about it or imitate it."

With the “Europe 2020” agenda for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, the European Commission sets out two important challenges to be met by the educational system1 Share of early school leavers under 10% which means tackling the problem of early school leavers by reducing the dropout rate form an average of recently 15% to 10% in the future2 About 40% of the younger generation should have a tertiary degree, better educational levels help employability and progress in increasing the employment rate and reducing poverty.Seen from a political perspective, the desired effects of these specific aims cannot be questioned as they are the foundation for common wealth, sustainability and progress in Europe. Nevertheless it leaves schools with the challenging, merely contradictable task of minimizing the number of underachievers AND maximizing the percentage of young people with higher education entrance qualifications at the same time. Change in quantities therefore calls for a comprehensive, long-term improvement of educational quality.Therefore, the performance of the education system has to be enhanced. Many call for more and advanced CPD programmes for teachers and tutors in order to meet these political and sociocultural challenges (e. g. impact of inclusive learning culture at schools, more differentiation with regard to curricula, students’ individual needs and learning plans, integrating the growing number of refugees into the educational system etc.). However, advanced teacher training has little effect on the desired performance of educational systems, as the meta-survey by Prof. Dr. John Hattie in 2011 proves. For the first time large-scale scientific research in the form of tens of thousands single surveys were brought together by Hattie’s team to come up with reliable data with regard to one single question: What is it that makes learning effective? Claiming that the performance of educational systems, leading towards less dropouts and to more qualitative success in educational processes, heavily depends on seeing teaching processes from a student’s point of view (“visible learning”), he put up eight mind frames he thinks to be essential in this. So if schools are to meet the Commission’s aims as having been laid out before, realizing this two-fold challenge, schools have to analyze their status quo of performance (dimension 1), study the data of the Hattie Survey in order to realize which factors really do have a positive impact on the outcome of educational processes (therefore minimizing dangers of early school leaving and underachieving) and which factors do not resulting in a critical approach towards school recent development (dimension 2), developing and planning school development according to these by designing materials, applying methods, realizing approaches/best-practice examples and evaluating them with regard to the individual needs of participating countries’ needs and the situation at local schools (dimension 3) and methods or ways of measuring change due to undertaken efforts in the system (dimension 4).According to this main concept of the project, following steps will be undertaken by the partner schools1. Clarifying what these implications mean for schools (collecting information from partners on the status quo of the implementation of given guidelines in the countries’ educational systems); taking account of national, regional and school-level drop-out rates of each partner country (drop-out rates country, individual partner school; percentage of school leavers with low or high qualifications; development of these figures: past, present, future; recent ways of encountering under-achievement, drop-out and need for higher education entrance qualifications; identifying specific problems and common elementsoutputs: slideshare for (staff meeting/conference, school’s website), leaflets, posters (for teachers’ lounge) CREATING AWARENESS! 2. Looking at the outcomes of the Hattie-Survey; identifying motivators of maximizing the impact of learning processes; KEY QUESTION: Which factors do improve the performance of teaching and learning scenarios, which don’t?; looking at partners’ recent school development, KEY QUESTION: Does recent school development match the outcome of the Hattie Survey? Does it take account of these positive factors in order to improve the performance of educational systems? If “no” – why not?, if “yes” – to what extent!? 3. Designing materials, applying methods, realizing approaches/best-practice examples and evaluating them with regard to the individual needs of participating countries’ schools, looking at examples/”best practice examples” from participating countries to meet these guidelines. Outputs: Performance Pool – platform (materials), digital OR printed version offering materials 4.Methods of measuring change due to undertaken effort. Three strongest motivators : development plan, sustainability, CHANGE MANAGEMENT with controlling.

s. oben (Sprache des Projekts: Englisch)

"<< Background >>The project FARMER is a study into European best practices for recruiting and retaining students to the agricultural sector. We are facing major challenges regarding recruiting, environmental issues and climate change, social development, and digitalization along with rapid technologies' development. Their changes require new skills from the educators implementing a greening in the curriculum to support students on their vocational education and training path. The project will work on the development of teachers' work in supporting students cross-cutting skills within the scope of sustainability and future needs, and the understanding of how to use pedagogical and didactic methods as a tool, to increase the attractiveness of vocational education and training in the agricultural sector. According to the practical guide “Greening Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)” UNESCO, greening is the process of pursuing knowledge and practices regarding environmental and climate changes. Entrepreneurship and UN17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are closely linked in today’s agricultural education, which means that students need to adapt agricultural education with relevant content and teaching methods. At the same time the agricultural industry is facing problems with poor reputation, which is why the Danish Agriculture and Food Council reports that more than one in three producers in the agricultural sector is in need for qualified labor. At the same time, we are facing a youth unemployment in the EU-27 at 15,1% according to Eurostat, most of them without any vocational training and education. Students who choose an agricultural education experience a skeptical attitude toward their choice. In teachers’ learning activities, we will focus on how we support students’ skills in arguing of the importance and relevance of their choice of occupations, so that they experience pride in the choice of vocational education and training. Vocational education connects smart hands with smart minds, and FARMER connects smart minds with a stronger profile for sustainable development in Europe. According to the report,” Primed for Sustainability – A New Narrative about Technical and Vocational Education and Training”, drafted and published by The Danish National Commission for UNESCO, vocational institutions committing themselves to create a distinctive sustainability profile, they can attract more students. Moreover, teaching sustainability helps to produce insightful students with their own convictions, equipping them with the skills needed to identify new approaches to enhance sustainability. FARMER has the potential to influence the entire value-chain in the green sector, i.e., students, VETs, companies, society and at stakeholders. By mapping the needed skills of the future ‘green’ farmer, according to societal and political demands, training the educators to increase motivation and implement a green curriculum, improving the image of agricultural education in the narratives, training the enrolled students cross-cutting skills, and supporting their green, innovative, entrepreneurial mindset alongside with improving their competences with regard to language, IT and acting in a European community, the impact of the project FARMER will affect Europe's future sustainable growth and cohesion. Therefore, this project will focus on the sustainability goal No. 4, and, in particular, on No. 4.7, which ensures that all students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to promote sustainable development through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyle. The project focuses on EU partner countries, that are already experiencing the difficulties of recruiting, motivating, and retaining students. This fact guarantees that the partners will be committed to ensuring that the project is an unconditional success.<< Objectives >>The main target group of this project is educators, who are the main persons involved in educating, motivating, and retaining students. That is why all our activities are educator-oriented and can only be accomplished with their participation. The aim of the activities is to enable the educators gaining knowledge and methods that they can use in their present and future training-curriculum. With modern teaching and ability to utilize new teaching technologies, the students will also gain essential skills that are adapted to the challenges they face after graduation.The basic purpose of the project is to train teachers/educators in developing a more practical approach to teaching. There is a focus on the exchange of teaching techniques as well as respect and understanding of the different partner countries' way of tackling the environmental and climate challenges and adding more knowledge through the exchange of best practices. The teachers will own and recognize the richness and diversity of various pedagogical and didactic approaches achieved through transnational cooperation.The projects aim at:- Supporting educators, educational leaders and support staff in communication and education to recruit and retain students. - Further strengthen key competences in initial and continuing VET.- Supporting VET educators to implement environmental and climate goals to the education and communication practices.The specific objectives of the project are:- Encouraging the establishment of a more hands-on approach teaching.- Focusing on our recruiting, motivating, and retaining students facing the environmental and climate change challenges.- Implementing the project as a goal and complementary tool to develop pedagogical and didactic methods among the participants.- To promote entrepreneurial learning directly in the participating countries and through dissemination on the webpage also in other European countries, engaging students to become true agents of change.- Raising the students’ awareness regarding possibilities of studying at an agricultural school.Therefore, the 10 partners in the project convey the knowledge gained and involve others in activities, in the effort to recruit, motivate and retain in practice. An estimated number of 50 people will benefit from the mobility activities directly. With the efficient dissemination, the best practices will be shared more widely in national and transnational contexts.Our partners represent contrasting social and economic backgrounds, and a diverse collection of communities from across Europe. Working together delivers our aims of developing new pedagogy and didactic methods and benchmarking the best practices.The project methodology is based on the concept of interdisciplinary teaching to enhance the quality of education. We aim at approaching key issues from the perspective of different subjects taught by participating educators using digital technologies and learning methods.It is expected to be a strong cooperation among institutions, municipalities, district governorships, district national education directorates, NGOs and farmers during the preparation, implementation, and sustainability of our project.<< Implementation >>Our studies and activities will be carried out with the support of all partners. They will integrate the activities into their daily lives, as one of the objectives of these EU projects suggests. Teachers will develop and exchange practical teaching and learning methods/ideas. The results will be presented digitally, and creative work will be carried out not only with the partners, but also with their own students to ensure that the recipients of teachers' development work achieve the optimal benefit. At the same time, there will be national sparring between colleagues at the schools, so that we ensure that the schools benefit fully from participating in the project, and that there will be more ambassadors who can spread the project's message and results. The focus is to raise teachers' awareness of the possibilities of choosing vocational training, as well as the reasons why young people must choose vocational training, and to start focusing more on sustainable development in education using the UN17 SDGs. This will be achieved by producing a pedagogical and didactic manual with reflections and suggestions for active methods that are invaluable for improving key Lisbon competences, such as learning to learn, interpersonal, intercultural, and social and civil competences. These will be achieved by addressing the following topics:- Competence-mapping of existing skills in agricultural education today with the aim of identifying current skills needs/gaps.- Identification of the future need for educational skills, with a particular focus on the challenges posed by the climate challenge.- Setting up personal educational skills to suit the needs of the future.- Establishment of a new framework for agricultural learning content.- Political recommendation.Throughout the project's three-year life, we will work to exchange experiences and best practices in relation to the development work of the teaching. We will look at the skills we train according to today, as well as examine what skills future farmers require. We do this to adapt our transnational development work to bridge the gap between today's cross-cutting skills and the cross-cutting skills of the future. The main focus will be on digital and technological competences, as well as on innovative and entrepreneurial competences, as they are part of the competences of the 21st century. Moreover, these competences are sought after both by the agricultural profession itself, but also by politicians as they are inscribed both in national learning strategies as well as in the EU's ""European skills agenda"". We will use surveys among teachers, students, and parents for underage students according to each WP in order to measure the effect of the work done during the mobilities, ensuring the policy recommendation answer to the needs in all partner countries.<< Results >>The project is expected to deliver four results:1)We expect to provide an analysis of the competences we teach after today. •each partner will provide data on labor market indicators:oyouth unemployment rate oactivation percentageounemployment rates by ageounemployment rates by occupationoanalysis of training programs and levels.oanalysis of the percentage intake at the different levels of education.We will achieve a demographic analysis by country but also in general for the EU, as partners are distributed throughout the EU. This will give us a picture of what recruitment is like for education in the EU, as well as where we are in relation to achieving the EU's strategy that about 30% of a youth year should take vocational training, and how many will choose an agricultural education. 2)We expect to provide an analysis of the competences that future farmers need to possess.•we will develop a matrix of the competences we expect young people to possess in the future. oanalyze the pedagogical and didactic tools we are going to teach by. oanalyze possible methods e.g., Peer-to-Peer learning, digital methods, etc. oanalyze and test methods in relation to greening the curriculum and support SD regarding environment and climate change.We will achieve the development of a matrix that contains proposals for a toolbox, from which the teachers can be inspired, and where there is a focus on different methods that strengthen the cooperation competences, as well as a focus on the professional competences in relation to the environment and climate change. 3)We expect to deliver an educational and didactic manual with a focus on a more hands-on approach to teaching that matches the skills and competences of future farmers.•we delve into the methods from paragraph 2 concerning teaching methods in relation to the environment and climate change. oanalyze the methods we are already using today and which we expect to continue with in the future. opractical transnational co-teaching to develop partners' practices across partners.oanalyze how we can produce in a ""different way"", cf., the French Ministry of Agriculture.oexamine the mechanism of ""test space for settling as a farmer"" cf., Member of Pays Graines oexplore new technologies e.g., drones, ICT platforms, etc. oprepare an educational and didactic manual. We will gain an insight into some programs launched in France, with the aim of developing the personal and professional competences of the students to meet the needs of the future. The work is picked up in Belgium, where a manual of recommendations is written after testing the different methods in each partner country.4)we will conclude by drawing up a political recommendation that proposes, how the political side can support recruitment to vocational education and training, as well as the upskilling of trainers in vocational education and training. •we will make some policy recommendations based on the work we have carried out on the previous three points. orecommendations on how to support recruitment to vocational training from the political point of view. orecommendations for curriculum improvements in relation to work on the environment and climate change.We will achieve the development of policy recommendations, that we can present to relevant national and transnational stakeholders, who will support us in developing agricultural education and training to make it more attractive and facilitate access to a university education."