As societies age, the development of resources and strategies that foster healthy ageing from the beginning of life become increasingly important. Social and healthcare professionals are key agents in this process; therefore, their training needs to be in agreement with societal needs. We performed a scoping review on professional competences for social and health workers to adequately promote healthy ageing throughout life, using the framework described by Arksey and O’Malley and the Joanna Briggs Institute Guidelines. A stakeholder consultation was held in each of the participating countries, in which 79 experts took part. Results show that current literature has been excessively focused on the older age and that more attention on how to work with younger population groups is needed. Likewise, not all disciplines have equally reflected on their role before this challenge and interprofessional approaches, despite showing promise, have not been sufficiently described. Based on our results, health and social professionals working to promote healthy ageing across the lifespan will need sound competences regarding person-centred communication, professional communication, technology applications, physiological and pathophysiological aspects of ageing, social and environmental aspects, cultural diversity, programs and policies, ethics, general and basic skills, context and self-management-related skills, health promotion and disease prevention skills, educational and research skills, leadership skills, technological skills and clinical reasoning. Further research should contribute to establishing which competences are more relevant to each discipline and at what level they should be taught, as well as how they can be best implemented to effectively transform health and social care systems.
Article for the Albanian Studies Days 2021 of the European University of Tirana. Higher education supports students in acquiring competences; a mix of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Experience has shown that it is precisely attitude and skills that ensure a better connection to the labor market, in whatever sector in whatever country.
In het TEPE-jaarboek Teacher Education Policy in Europe : a Voice of Higher Education Institutions , beschrijven Marco Snoek, Ursula Uzerli en Michael Schratz hoe op Europees niveau een proces van peer learning tussen lidstaten impulsen probeert te geven aan de nationale beleidsvorming rond lerarenkwaliteit en lerarenopleidingen. In hun artikel beschrijven ze het peer learning proces van het Cluster Teachers & Trainers van de Europese Commissie en reflecteren ze op uitkomsten en belemmeringen van dit peer learning proces dat deel uitmaakt van de Open Coördination Method die de Europese Commisie gebruikt om impulsen te geven op het terrein van onderwijsbeleid.
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.
