The original language of this blog is German

In November 2017 we founded the REVEAL association based in Göttingen, which promotes innovative, competence-oriented teaching/learning arrangements and the validation of competences in informal and non-formal learning contexts. The association is based on a more than decade-long cooperation among project teams from school, vocational, higher and adult education from 27 European Member States and partner countries.

With REVEAL we are now formalising our network in relation to the competence-oriented teaching/learning validation concept LEVEL5, which since 2007 has been implemented in more than 25 funded, European educational projects.

LEVEL5 has already been used in more than 150 local learning projects, with more than 1,000 learners; ranging from innovative projects for the development and validation of social and core competences in informal learning contexts (e.g. Active Citizenship and Entrepreneurship Education), learning in mobility settings and voluntary service, cultural education, through to research and development projects for the professionalisation of European adult educators which feature the use of modern technologies.

We are founding REVEAL at a time when, from 2018 onwards, validation structures and tools are set to be introduced in all European partner countries.

We have often reported, based on our research and development projects, that most European Member States are still some way short of being ready for this step, and that competence validation has not yet taken root at a practical level. This is also particularly the case with adult education institutions.

At the same time, there is great need for professionalisation in the field of adult education. The European Commission reacted to this within the framework of the ERASMUS+ KA1-mobility project, which offers adult education institutions the possibility to provide continuing training to their staff on a European level.

One problem, however, lies in the difficulty in finding high-quality learning opportunities in Europe. There is no longer any centralised platform for this purpose and there are a lack of shared quality criteria which would guarantee that the competences envisaged in the European development plans are actually developed and validated.

For this reason, in autumn 2017, we launched the ERASMUS+ REVEAL project to address these two challenges—based on the combination of LEVEL5 and a quality concept developed since 2010 by GINCO (Grundtvig International Network of Course Organisers).

REVEAL will combine the European approaches and tools for competence validation (EQF and specifications, ECVET, EUROPASS, competence and learning results orientation) with a comprehensive approach to the professionalisation of staff in the field of adult education and provide a platform for this purpose which will offer the three central stakeholders the following practical possibilities:

• Providers of continuing education can present their courses and learning opportunities in accordance with goal- and quality-related criteria, and disseminate them throughout Europe. If needed, they can gain access to learning technologies (e-portfolio, LMS and validation software) for professional use in blended learning arrangements which support competence-oriented learning and validation.
• European adult education institutions (i.e. the providers of KA1 projects) can select suitable learning and professionalisation services on the European platform, coordinate the competences that they themselves expect with their European development plans and document them in a special e-portfolio.
• The course participants find professional continuing education opportunities which are tailor-made to complement their competence profile and which are documented with a corresponding validation. They, along with the institutions, gain access to individual documentation of their competences in the e-portfolio.

The intention is to develop REVEAL into a European network for adult education that makes the existing tools for professionalisation available to its members and member organisations.

Website: www.reveal-eu.org

Contact: info@reveal-eu.org

In the last 20 years the author Tim Scholze has worked in various areas of education on projects relating to the research and development of innovative and practise-oriented fields of learning in adult, vocational and higher education. He currently works as a researcher at the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE). He holds a PhD in Educational Sciences and is chairman of the Blended Learning Institutions’ Cooperative (blinc eG) He is a founding member and chairman of the REVEAL association, which concerns itself with the validation of informal and non-formal learning.