The project intends to support the professional development of teachers by strengthening their relational competences through a training programme combining the methodologies of e-learning, micro-learning, and gaming. The training programme will deal with the following themes: 1] education (teacher-pupil relationship); 2] participation (communication with the pupils’ parents; 3] co-operation (relationship between peers and between the diverse organisational levels).During the project an online course for teachers will be designed and produced, along with a simulated practice educational game and guidelines for transferring the project results by implementing sustainable Permanent Laboratories for Soft Skills. Institutional stakeholders will be engaged in a participatory design process for developing a medium-long-term strategy to incorporating soft skills in the curricula of training course for teachers.The project intends to train 300 teachers during the educational experiment, and imoact on the participants in terms of improvement of relational skills, development of reflective practice, improvement of assertive response to stressful situations, improvement of thr quality of the relationship with the pupils and with the pupils’ parents; increase in self-esteem; effective communication in everyday’s professional practice.

ContextThe COVID-19 pandemic took virtually everyone by surprise. In the face of unprecedented disruption to work, life and well-being, one of the key features of the response to COVID-19 disruption was the rapid acceleration of digital technologies into all aspects of human activity – from shopping through education to medical consultations. Many people were left behind as a result of this shift – from families on low income with no means to afford the digital tools needed for home schooling to older people who did not know how to access health services online. In this context, there is a need for education and training systems to become more flexible and resilient so as to deliver high quality and inclusive learning particularly for those affected by ‘dual exclusion’ – the process through which structural inequalities are exacerbated by lack of access to digital technologies and digital skills. This process of re-adjustment needs to start with educators, who need to acquire the digital and pedagogical competences needed to work effectively with people who suffer 'dual exclusion', and who need support to transition into a rapidly evolving digital economy. Objectives•To build on existing EU competence frameworks – in particular 'DigCompEdu' – to develop a flexible digital competence framework for educators working in the VET sector•To incorporate a set of competences that enables educators to use digital tools to work with vulnerable groups, so as to in turn improve their digital competences and knowledge•To embed the framework in ‘situational knowledge-based practice’ so as to support educators to understand how to apply digital competences in real teaching and learning situations•To develop an online learning programme – using micro-learning and game-based learning - to enable educators to acquire these competences and apply them in practice•To pilot the programme with 200 learners in four different VET contexts – school-based vocational training, college and further education training, vocational training for vulnerable young people and continuing vocational training for adult learners•To disseminate the project results to a wide stakeholder constituency including policy-makers, educators, youth organisations and the research community•To develop a Toolkit for scaling the programme up and outParticipants200 VET educators from school through to higher education, particularly those working with vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, who take part in the FLEXI-COMP training programme, with an additional 200 educators trying out the programme through a 'Call for Participation' in the second half of the projectActivitiesReview of state of the art to assess relevant digital competence frameworks and training programmes for disadvantaged learners and digitally excludedLifeworld analysis, working with digitally excluded groups to identify their digital needs and the barriers to participation in the digital economyDevelopment of digital competence framework and pedagogic model Development of learning platform and tools to run the training programmeDevelopment of training programme, including micro-learning, blogging and online gameProgramme piloting with 200 VET educatorsEvaluation of programmeDevelopment of sustainability Plan and Transferability ToolkitFLEXI-COMP combines two overarching methodologies to deliver project objectives and results. Firstly, design thinking' applies a five stage process to solve the ‘presenting problem’ of dual exclusion in 'human-centric' ways, by focusing on what’s most important from the perspective of 'users' and by applying 'out of the box' and 'disruptive' ideas to address the presenting problem. Secondly, ‘Theory of Change’ provides a road map for the project, specifies its key milestones and outputs; what’s needed to achieve these and what changes are expected as a result. Within this overall framework, the project applies a number of methods, including a ‘situational knowledge-based’ model of defining competences; ‘lifeworld analysis’ to capture the needs, lived experience and 'critical incidents' faced by people who are digitally left behind; co-design methods to develop the pedagogy for the training programme and a combination of micro-learning, blogging and an interactive game to deliver it.Expected Results90% of 200 programme participants successfully complete 70% report high satisfaction Educators increase their understanding of how digital tools can be applied in teaching practice, and how they can be used to deliver quality and inclusive learningEducators increase their core and inclusion-specific digital competences Long term benefitsDisadvantaged learners improve their digital skills and life opportunitiesVET institutions improve the quality and inclusiveness of their provision

Developing a fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly food system represents a key priority of the European Green Deal. This is expressed in particular through the ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’, which recognises the need to empower consumers to make informed, healthy and sustainable food choices and to reduce food loss and food waste. FOODMISSION aims therefore to use multi-actor and inclusive Transformation Labs and blend citizen science, learning and gamification approaches to understand citizens’ food practices for initiating behavioural changes, and ultimately engage and motivate to accelerate the uptake of more sustainable food behaviour. The project objectives are the following: (1) Setting up Transformation Labs that will support the project through all its phases from co-design to uptake, (2) Design of a comprehensive citizen science data framework, collecting and processing citizen-generated data on their food practices and development of a technical data infrastructure and data visualisation tools to support data sharing and analysis, (3) Design of a citizen motivation and engagement framework for empowering individual and collective change, (4) Co-development of a gamified educational virtual platform prototype and its content and activities, (5) Piloting and evaluation of the gamified educational virtual platform in 6 European countries, (6) Promotion of FOODMISSION’s key exploitable results and their impact to engage citizens for fair, inclusive, healthy, and sustainable food system in Europe and uptake of the outputs beyond the project and consortium. FOODMISSION will further contribute to the Food 2030 pathways for action. The interdisciplinary consortium is composed of 10 members based in 8 European countries, bringing together universities, innovative companies and various stakeholder organisations representing consumers, food retailers and food enterprises, and covering diverse socio-economic and demographic contexts.