The central educational mission of the vocational education is to impart comprehensive action competence, which enables learners to "act in professional, social and private situations in an appropriately reasoned, individually and socially responsible manner“. In the VET, this competence to act takes the form of active and flexible participation in shaping a constantly evolving professional and social environment and this is initiated through action-oriented and situational teaching. The concrete implementation takes place through a problem-based and exemplary entry scenario of the “EDLS”.

For the active design of knowledge building, a situational embedding of the learning process takes place. The students work with Kuniberg Berufskolleg ‘s Weltladen as a model company in order to offer the learners a situational space for action and experience for entrepreneurial decisions and also to reduce the complexity of the operational reality. In addition, the learners receive authentic work material that has a direct application reference. This design maxim requires the learners to deal with usual professional processes in a structured and appropriate manner and has the effect of making them more aware of the organizational aspects of their everyday working life. The conception of the “EDLS” is based on a constructivist teaching-learning philosophy, according to which learning takes place in an active and social construction process. The learners are thus enabled to deal with varying action situations and to develop a solution from them. Against this background, they design their learning process largely independently, applying already acquired action strategies in a relationship between instruction and construction that is conducive to learning.

In order to enable the learners to construct the professional reality in a holistic and sustainable way, a multi-perspective and multi-contextual examination of the learning object takes place. Learners are thus enabled to penetrate macroeconomic linkages and to derive reciprocal relationships between microeconomic decisions and macroeconomic consequences.

Fundamental to the conceptual decisions are also the professional and private present and future significance of the subject matter for the trainees. We are confident that the "EDLS" will be in high demand since the digital world and the EU are here to stay and the next generations of VET students need to be prepared for this digitalized Europe (world). So there have to be well-considered, tried, and tested pedagogical concepts on which teaching is based in order to prepare the next generations for the digitalized EU. At the same time, it is not enough to add "European Content" to existing curricula. By practicing the EDLS, the "European Idea" is integrated into the VET process so that it is not perceived as "additional indoctrination" (criticism that is often expressed) - but as an organic and necessary part of the job (and of life) in the modern world. That is why digitalization and Europeanization is integrated in the EDLS.

Small print

Connecting VET for the European Digital Single Market (Connecting EU) Erasmus+ project © 2022 by Kuniberg Berufskolleg Recklinghausen is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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