Page 5 - euroguidance-insight-newsletter-2015-autumn

in connection with transnational changes and job profiles are becom- from a number of projects – e.g.
projects. ing more and more specialised, these financed through the ESF and IN-
groups are increasingly becoming TERREG – on how to organise and
All of this has for many years been marginalised. We know that learning implement learning mobility for this
addressed both at national and mobility can be a very powerful tool target group but there is still a way
European level but not always in for enhancing their employability to go before we have worked out the
a systematic way. Moreover, the and developing their competenc- implications for guidance practices in
interventions tend to get concentrat- es and attitudes but at present it relation to this.
ed around learning activities where constitutes a real opportunity for
there already is an established de- only an infinitesimal number. We are Søren Kristensen, Techne, and
mand – the usual suspects – rather currently harvesting experience Birtha Theut, Euroguidance Denmark
than involving new target groups.

So you are saying that more effort
needs to be put into extending guid-
ance provision to involve new target
groups for learning mobility?

There has been some development
over the last decades. For a long
time, there was an emphasis on
developing mobility for students in
higher education. In the last 10-
15 years or so – for a longer time
in some countries – transnational
mobility has also become integrated
into the learning trajectories for stu-
dents and apprentices in vocational
education and training and guidance
provision has been upgraded accord-
ingly.

The new challenge is people with
fewer opportunities: dropouts and
early school leavers and those with
learning handicaps or suffering from
other problems of a psycho-social
character. As the labour market

Dr. Søren Kristensen has for many years been occupied with learning mobility, both at national and European level. In
1999-2002 he worked at the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training in Europe (Cedefop) as an
expert in transnational mobility in a VET-context, and in 2004 he defended a PhD-thesis at the Danish University of
Education with the title “Learning by leaving – placements abroad as a pedagogical tool in the context of vocational
education and training in Europe”. His thesis was later published Europeanwide by Cedefop under the same title. He
was involved in setting up the first Euroguidance centre in Denmark in the early 90s and has over the years partici-
pated in several major national and European-level studies on mobility in the field of education, training, and youth.
He has frequently worked as an evaluator of mobility programmes and projects and has published extensively on the
subject.

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