Article written by Sue Lawrence and Nol Reverda, Directors of the Macess programme. The validation of awards and courses within higher education has traditionally and, to a great extent, continues to be a national issue, with each country using its own protocol for determining standards and academic levels, and validating courses according to its nationally recognised and agreed system. Institutions in some countries, however, are able to validate courses which are delivered in an institution in another country. This practice has led to some useful collaborative arrangements in developing European postgraduate programmes for the social professions, particularly in countries where education for social professionals takes place outside of the university system, for example, in The Netherlands. Largely as a result of such collaboration, facilitated by the Erasmus programme, there is now a proliferation of courses for social professionals, which have ‘European’ in their title or as a major component of the course content. What, then, makes a programme ‘European’?
This article describes a European project which was aimed at improving the situation of persons with psychiatric or learning disabilities with regard to social participation and citizenship. The project took place in three countries (Estonia, Hungary and the Netherlands) and four cities (Tallinn, Budapest, Amersfoort and Maastricht). The project included research and actions at the policy level, the organizational level and the practice level. At the policy level, the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2006) and the European Disability Strategy (European Commission, 2010) were used to look at national and local policies, at the reality of the lives of those with disabilities and at the support that professional services offer with regard to participation and inclusion. The project generated a number of insights, recommendations and methods by which to improve the quality of services and increase the number of opportunities for community engagement. In this article, we present some of the lessons learned from the meta-analysis. Although the circumstances in each country are quite different with regard to policy, culture and service systems, it is remarkable that people with disabilities face many of the same problems. The study shows that in all three countries, access to services could be improved. Barriers include bureaucratic procedures and a lack of services. The research identified that in every country and city there are considerable barriers regarding equal participation in the field of housing, work and leisure activities. In addition to financial barriers, there are the barriers of stigma and self-stigmatization. Marginalization keeps people in an unequal position and hinders their recovery and participation. In all countries, professionals need to develop a stronger focus on supporting the participation of their clients in public life and in the development of different roles pertaining to citizenship
OBJECTIVE: We investigated smoking cessation rates in coronary heart disease (CHD) patients throughout Europe; current and as compared to earlier EUROASPIRE surveys, and we studied characteristics of successful quitters.METHODS: Analyses were done on 7998 patients from the EUROASPIRE-IV survey admitted for myocardial infarction, unstable angina and coronary revascularisation. Self-reported smoking status was validated by measuring carbon monoxide in exhaled air.RESULTS: Thirty-one percent of the patients reported being a smoker in the month preceding hospital admission for the recruiting event, varying from 15% in centres from Finland to 57% from centres in Cyprus. Smoking rates at the interview were also highly variable, ranging from 7% to 28%. The proportion of successful quitters was relatively low in centres with a low number of pre- event smokers. Overall, successful smoking cessation was associated with increasing age (OR 1.50; 95% CI 1.09-2.06) and higher levels of education (OR 1.38; 95% CI 1.08-1.75). Successful quitters more frequently reported that they had been advised (56% vs. 47%, p < .001) and to attend (81% vs. 75%, p < .01) a cardiac rehabilitation programme.CONCLUSION: Our study shows wide variation in cessation rates in a large contemporary European survey of CHD patients. Therefore, smoking cessation rates in patients with a CHD event should be interpreted in the light of pre-event smoking prevalence, and caution is needed when comparing cessation rates across Europe. Furthermore, we found that successful quitters reported more actions to make healthy lifestyle changes, including participating in a cardiac rehabilitation programme, as compared with persistent smokers.
MUSE supports the CIVITAS Community to increase its impact on urban mobility policy making and advance it to a higher level of knowledge, exchange, and sustainability.As the current Coordination and Support Action for the CIVITAS Initiative, MUSE primarily engages in support activities to boost the impact of CIVITAS Community activities on sustainable urban mobility policy. Its main objectives are to:- Act as a destination for knowledge developed by the CIVITAS Community over the past twenty years.- Expand and strengthen relationships between cities and stakeholders at all levels.- Support the enrichment of the wider urban mobility community by providing learning opportunities.Through these goals, the CIVITAS Initiative strives to support the mobility and transport goals of the European Commission, and in turn those in the European Green Deal.Breda University of Applied Sciences is the task leader of Task 7.3: Exploitation of the Mobility Educational Network and Task 7.4: Mobility Powered by Youth Facilitation.
Designing cities that are socially sustainable has been a significant challenge until today. Lately, European Commission’s research agenda of Industy 5.0 has prioritised a sustainable, human-centric and resilient development over merely pursuing efficiency and productivity in societal transitions. The focus has been on searching for sustainable solutions to societal challenges, engaging part of the design industry. In architecture and urban design, whose common goal is to create a condition for human life, much effort was put into elevating the engineering process of physical space, making it more efficient. However, the natural process of social evolution has not been given priority in urban and architectural research on sustainable design. STEPS stems from the common interest of the project partners in accessible, diverse, and progressive public spaces, which is vital to socially sustainable urban development. The primary challenge lies in how to synthesise the standardised sustainable design techniques with unique social values of public space, propelling a transition from technical sustainability to social sustainability. Although a large number of social-oriented studies in urban design have been published in the academic domain, principles and guidelines that can be applied to practice are large missing. How can we generate operative principles guiding public space analysis and design to explore and achieve the social condition of sustainability, developing transferable ways of utilising research knowledge in design? STEPS will develop a design catalogue with operative principles guiding public space analysis and design. This will help designers apply cross-domain knowledge of social sustainability in practice.
Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
