Description
Leonardo da Vinci partnership project – “Experience the Retail Sector within the European Union” (LdV PERLE)
Partners of this project are
- Staatliche Berufsschule 2 Passau, Germany
- Kaunas Trade and Business school, Lithuania
- Institut für Bildungsforschung der Wirtschaft Austria
- Kokkolan kauppaopisto (Kokkola Business Institute), Finland
- Colegiul National Economic “Gheorghe Chitu”, Romania
- Niels Brock Copenhagen Business College, Denmark
Coordinator of the project: Kaunas Trade and Business school, Lithuania
Associated partners are – companies of retail business
- Metro Group Düsseldorf (Germany);
- LTC trade net RIMI (Lietuva);
- FIRMAXI – The New Enterprise Agency in Central Ostrobothnia (Finland);
- Hypermarket PIC (Romania);
- Kaunas Chamber of Commerce (Lithuania);
- WKÖ Wirtschaftskammern Österreich – Austrian Federal Economic Chamber.
The basis for the partnership project is the vocational training in the field of shops and shop assistants speciality. All participating schools are vocational schools with the speciality of shop assistants/customer service/retail. After the extension of the European Union, as new members joined in, the labour market of this area expanded too. Having LdV student placements, common problems were noticed in all the countries. Similar demands for students work placement were required from the companies, but the curriculum of all the countries for the same speciality contains differences, since it is based on the national research and demands.
In the discussion between different schools from different countries, we found a need for comparison of curriculum in our schools, tracing common points and demands.
Objectives of the partnership are: following common goals through European cooperation, a better understanding of each other by learning how students in the retail sector are taught differently and what they have in common. In the framework of this partnership the project group will also research the need of labour market in the retail sector. Within the discussions, the common points will be found and differences between every country will be identified.
For this task questionnaires will be made for students in every school about their needs and expectation of the labour market in retail. The questionnaire will also be done according to the needs of the employers – trade nets and supermarkets in the every partner country.
The cooperation between European schools can give a possibility for upgrading teaching programs according to the demands of European labour market and according to the European dimension in the curriculum.
The benefit could be to have a look at how different participating people work together, how they teach, tackle a problem, how questionnaires are created and applied in Germany, Finland, Romania …., what are the innovative teaching methods in different countries, how the teachers can benefit from each other, how our students and the training officers can benefit from our new knowledge; to broaden our insight in different vocational training systems, to share common practice, to widen horizons and improve teaching and mutual understanding of each other.
European added value will be gained: training systems in Europe can be compared and appreciated, this would be called “output”; we can extend our expertise to other subjects, trainees would be better qualified; the “outcome” would be that we (teacher, students, trainers) could adapt easier to foreign training systems and keep up with the changes in Europe regarding new foreign shopping habits, intercultural dialogue, understanding of different mentalities; students could adapt more easily in their new training companies, as they were taught the intercultural way, they will have more success working in companies and they can be important employees as they can express themselves properly towards foreign customers.
The result of this partnership – research – will be the starting point for a further project in Transfer of Innovation.