Embedding Key-Competences in Adult Trainers Teaching Practices appropriate path to further specialization / professionalization Mihai Predescu1 Ioana Drjan2

Abstract. Professionalization of adult educators has to take place in a changed economic and social environment. Between State and Market adult teaching has to respond to contemporary requirements. Adult educators have to cover both the development of personal and professional skills, and the development of key-competences of their trainees. The practice of teaching key-competences embedded in specific, particular content could be a meaningful manner of further professionalization of VET trainers and adult educators In this paper we analyze the new requirements of adult teaching, the way embedded teaching of key competencies leads to professionalization of adult education. We present here data from two European projects, in order to illustrate modalities in which adult education could respond to contemporary state and market requirements. Key-words: embedded key-competences, literacy education, political involvement training, adult education, continuing professionalization

The adult educator is a complex and changing profession not only because the raised complexity of todays society that requires more complex learning in order to adapt to it, but also because it is still a new profession and we tend to add new meaning and roles to it. We expect adult education to cover a wide area of subjects and topics from literacy to health and active citizenship. The widening of adult education means those adult educators has to develop their teaching competences in new areas and to blend their previous teaching with new subjects and methods. In June 2009 we have participated to a very interesting workshop about teacher and trainers competences between state and market. The discussions led to the conclusions that teachers and trainers for adults has to perform multiple roles in order to empower their students to participate fully to social and professional life. There roles includes traditional ones, like VET training and basic adult education teaching, and new ones, such as community facilitators and consulting, political educator, social activists, etc. In this paper we will analyze the implication of state and market on developing new competences of adult teachers/educators and the way that these new competences change the meaning of professionalization in adult education. The overarching key competences European policies in the educational field have profound effects in the way we organize national education systems, we conduct research and ultimately on how we conceptualize major educational themes. Lisbon 2010 strategy has two major implications from the point of view of our paper: the raising role of life long learning in targeting a knowledge society; the competence model of learning. The knowledge society, as major target of education, places it in a central part of a wider social, political and economical project that has as final destination a different society. From economic point of view, we are approaching a New Economy Era, based on information rather than manufacturing, from social point of view, we are developing new ways of solidarity and a new model of citizenship, and from political point of view we are moving toward a participatory democracy. As ambitious as it is, this new project requires its citizens to become proficient in information use, to be innovative and critical. The society is continuously changing now,
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Lecturer PhD, West University of Timisoara, Romania Lecturer PhD, West University of Timisoara, Romania

and not only for youngsters, but for every categories of citizens. This means that adults have to learn in the same time and to adapt to the new requirements of the workplace, of civic action and social participation. The competence model shifted the focus of education from both content (declarative knowledge of what is it type) and skills (procedural knowledge on how to do it) to what we call competences (a blend of knowledge, skills and attitudes). Some of the competences are general and transgress different activities (those based mostly on metacognitive skills), others are specialized for different areas. European framework on key competences lists eight competences that are vital for educational and professional success. The competences could be categorized on two main categories (literacy competences and social competences), and one overarching competence (learning to learn): Learning to learn is the most pervasive competence because any learning experience is exercising this competence. The metacognitive knowledge and skills are necessary for any learning attempt; Literacy competences include communication in mother tongue, communication in foreign language, mathematical competences (numeracy) and digital competence; Social competences include civic competence, cultural awareness and entrepreneurship All eight key competences are treated as equally important and all of them are necessary for successful developing of professional or social competences. In this light, no one is totally incompetent or competent, as long as the competences are subject of continuous development and specialization, in terms of new knowledge and skills acquisitions and more refined attitudes added. The conclusion, quite obvious, is that adult educators must become proficient in training key competences alongside the training of professional or specific ones. From our point of view, this is the main issue in adult educators professionalisation because training the key competences requires new knowledge and teaching skills for trainers. Teaching adults in specialized field has a long tradition and it is founded on modern teaching know-how and experience. The best way to train basic skills during basic adult education or professional training is still a debatable issue; there are a lot of new experiments and findings waiting for validation. Training for the state: Political involvement teaching skills The democratic society requires active participation of its citizen not only to community life but also to the state main issues. Active political participation is viewed by most people as voting, but that it is a dangerous idea. Voting, at its core, is the act of delegating others to represent your position in political debate. The vote is expressing an option but the voting is not enough to cover an active political participation. Active political involvement requires competent citizens that are political literate, that are able to critically judge social situation and are proficient in social cognition. Several questions have to concern adult educators: there is such thing as political competence? if yes, is it a specialized form of civic competences? who is responsible with political competence training? Political competence is quite difficult to grasp. The traditional competence model combines knowledge, skills and attitudes to define specific competence. For political competence that means a specific set of knowledge and some practical, observable skills. The knowledge could range from characteristics of state institution to knowledge about the ways propaganda works. Exemplary political skills should be using of political tools to

achieve political goals, voting skills and so on. What should be stressed is the fact that knowledge and skills are not sufficient to act as a competent citizen. The most important aspect of this competence is the positive attitude toward politics. Other models of competences regards knowledge and skills as a mid-level of a pyramid that is founded on aptitude and personal characteristics and has behavior on its top as an objective expression of competence (Lucia, Lepsinger, 1999). From this perspective, the evidence of the acquired competence is the overt behavior that implies, for the specific case of political competence, some form of political behavior. Adult educators attitude toward political teaching The positive attitude toward politics and an overt political behavior are the main concern of a European founded Grundtvig project named EuroPol (www.politicscanbefun.eu). One of the projects aims was to conduct a survey on adult educators about experience and attitudes toward political teaching. The survey was conducted in eight European countries, on a sample of 60 experienced adult educators. The results led to the following conclusions: 1. the adult education field is quite apolitical since most of adult educators are not politically involved or representative; 2. there is a scarcity of training courses in the field of political education and in the field of political involvement education; 3. accordingly to the former conclusion, there is a lack of training material in the field of political education; 4. some topics that we are willing to approach in our materials are already present in the field of adult education, but not in the context of political involvement. The best examples are ecology, gender, disability or human rights; 5. the perception of political education is two sided, positive (social action, empowerment) or negative (ideology, propaganda). The difference in perception could be a result of different cultural backgrounds; 6. political education is perceived as a way to accomplish specific goals, the value of it for general development of competences is overlooked; 7. the proposed topics differ in popularity among adult educators. Topics that are better known and more usual are better rated; 8. four underlying topics could be noted: current political issues, international affairs, justice and special population (EuroPol, 2009); Adult educator as political activist Political education has different meanings in Europe and in the world. Countries all over the world that still has reminiscent memories of dictatorship tend to perceive political education as a state led activity, based on propaganda with indoctrination as a final goal. That is the main reason that there is no consistent network of political teachers. In the same time, analysis of pattern of voting shows a descending curve of voting participation. In the case of Romania, a country that was formerly a communist one, the level of knowledge and skills in politics and political participation led to a generalized disappointment about politics and a sort of disengagement from politics. Even for younger generation, democracy has a social representation that is founded on the effects of it rather than on opportunities to act (Predescu, 2006). Active citizenship is a broader topic and there are a lot of projects and programs on active citizenship that promotes some political topics too. But active citizenship can be realised without political involvement. In fact, the idea of political free educational institution makes politics an undesirable topic.

In a globalised society the role of adult educator changes constantly (Kock, 2006). As paradigm of education and learning changes so that happens to the role of adult educators. For political teaching the critical paradigm can prove a powerful instrument emphasizing the need of social transformation and critical rethinking of social historical determinants of our lives. Constructivism, deconstructivism, experiential learning are other valuable approaches in teaching politics. There are three main reasons adult educators should be interested in political teaching: Political participation is required to adults not to children. Any attempt to involve children in politically is ethically controversial Political participation requires competence and must be learned Political knowledge is usually acquired informally, with no intention of learning. Political teaching is a better way to make competent citizens.

Training for the market: Content embedded literacy teaching skills The training for the market suggests that any learning process, any educational activity should be worthy, the benefits / costs balance should be positive. The modern adult educator / trainer should teach a specific subject (vocational, civic, health education, education for democracy, etc.) and yet should access as many as possible from transversal, key-competences of their trainees to improve / enhance them. One available way to attain this bold objective is the practice of embedding some basic, key-competences into a specific content. In the context of the Skills for Life strategy, the Adult Basic Skills Strategy Unit (ABSSU) says: Embedded teaching and learning combines the development of literacy, language and numeracy with vocational and other skills The skills acquired provide learners with the confidence, competence and motivation necessary for them to succeed in qualifications, in life and at work (ABSSU, March 2004). The content embedded literacy education, a practice promoted and indicated by the Leonardo da Vinci ToI Project CELiNE as suitable and desirable for VET system, represents such type of strategy. Embedded literacy refers to a particular kind of teaching that focused not only on a certain specific subject but also, explicitly is concerned with developing literacy skills (QIA, 2009). Mainly, there are two important aspects in learning to embed literacy in professional training: First of all, embedded literacy education requires two different goals of instruction: The specific training objectives (that have to be reached in order to develop professional skills and competencies); The literacy objectives (that have to be tailored to respond to the literacy needs of the trainees, to the characteristics and requirements of theirs future occupations). The second important aspect is that didactical approach and strategy has to mach both sets of activities and objectives. The motives for continuously improving your own literacy competency could be found eventually at any levels: individual, social and organizational. At individual level, the motives are easy to identify, just thinking of potential benefits brought by enhanced / improved literacy competences. Using the Maslow hierarchy of human needs (physiological, safety, love / belonging, esteem, self-actualization), therefore ultimately motives we can trace them. We

could observe that, except for physiological needs, all other needs are literacy sensitive: this means that they are influenced by the individuals literacy competency and levels of literacy competency. The literacy competency and, especially, the literacy levels of competency determine the ways individuals appraise themselves and are perceived and appraised by the others. The strategy of enhancing literacy competences through / during VET courses looks like worthy practice, according to the main benefits that seem to be obtained by the trainees: economy in time and energy; respect and valorize trainees previous experiences, knowledge and skills; close related with trainees interests, preoccupations, talents building on previously acquired knowledge and skills and developing for practical and immediate effects like improved job specialization, better work efficiency, greater adaptability; better chance for employability, job re-orientation, job promotion; even if accessed and developed close related with a job specificity, being a keycompetence, a higher level of literacy competence will have eventually positive effects in other personal contexts and stances (personal, familial, community, professional, etc.). At social level, there are, also, some important gains, only mentioning the quality of literacy to raise active, autonomous citizens and to empower the oppressed, discriminated or minority groups. Paulo Freire, one of the most influential thinkers about education in the late twentieth century, has been extremely preoccupied by the particular situation in which illiteracy represents an expression of human lower condition, due to different arbitrary, discriminatory criteria, such as social class, economical and financial challenges, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, sexual or any other minority appurtenance. Paulo Freire had a strong confidence in the emancipator power of education, especially of literacy (in this case, literacy being used as the clear antonymous of illiteracy), by connecting into his theoretical framework the education practice with liberation. Hence, he became particularly popular with informal educators due to his emphasis on dialogue and his concern for the oppressed (Smith, 2001; Taylor, 1993). His work and legacy present a number of important theoretical innovations that have had a considerable impact on the development of educational practice, especially on informal and popular education. As long as the gains and benefits on personal and social levels might imply that the only motivated should be the individual, its necessary to explore some potential gains and benefits for the organizations who encourage and promote continuous education of theirs employees (also known as learning organizations). According to Peter Senge (1990:3, apud. Smith, M.K., 2001), learning organizations are organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together. Farago, J.; Skyrme, and David J. (1995) consider that learning organizations: Are adaptive to their external environment; Continually enhance their capability to change/adapt; Develop collective as well as individual learning; Use the results of learning to achieve better results. If the employees will improve theirs literacy competences, the more valuable benefits at the organization level are: more competent and more efficient workers, fewer work accidents and scraps, raised job satisfaction, clearer employees commitment to the organizational interests, lower job-related stress and insatisfaction.

In the light of all above-mentioned benefits, it seams obvious that this embedded education of the key-competences (literacy, in the particular case of CELiNE Project) represents a valuable and appropriate option for further specialization of adult trainers. Embedding literacy education in vocational content The CELiNE Project intends to transfer the innovative teaching practice of training literacy competences by integrated them into specific content, mainly in vocational content. During the testing training sessions held within CELiNE Project, for assessing the strengths and weakness of the developed products, designed to sustain and to assist the implementation of content embedded literacy education practice into VET system, some conclusions were drawn out3: due to theirs ubiquitous character, the literacy competence seem difficult to be treated isolated, apart from vocational activities / tasks in which they played an important role; without the instruments and skills to assess the entrance levels of theirs trainees literacy competences, the trainers consider those competences as implicated assets of the trainees. The accommodation of the teaching methods and materials to different levels of literacy competences depends on trainers perspectives; the most difficult task for VET trainers was to conceive literacy objectives. The difficulties arose in identifying the literacy abilities involved in vocational activities / abilities taught in vocational course and in deciding what type of literacy activities or component had to be trained; another major difficulty was for the VET trainers and VET teachers to adapt themselves to different types of didactical strategies, more appropriated for embedded literacy education. It seems that VET trainers tend to favour strategies that they are used with, such as demonstration and lecture. The cooperative learning and pairings are not very usual. Even if they succeeded in designing instruction in a professional area, they seem to have difficulties in designing instruction containing literacy education, too. In order to become more proficient in designing teaching sequences that use content embedded literacy, all trainees received a booklet of activities that contained suggested activities and models. After a period of two weeks, all responded reported an improvement in their understanding not only of literacy, but also of professional requirements. When required to describe how literacy could help workers to overcome risk factors, the trainees considered that literacy would help workers to cope with stress and professional solicitations. Concluding, there are three main points that have to be emphasized and take into account in future training sessions: Most of the VET trainers perceive the literacy in a narrow perspective, as a professional requirement. Most of them did not take into consideration the impact of literacy on everyday life; The participants to the testing sessions tend to approach literacy as a professional competence, more then as a key-competence (transversal); Most of the VET trainers conceive literacy mostly in terms of written communication and computing perspective (numeracy) and seldom as ICT skills and even oral communication. Conclusions: The changing nature of adult teaching From state and market to individual adults who want to learn, there is a lot of pressure on adult educators to perform a widening range of teaching. The new areas of teaching respond to different needs, both individual and institutional.
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Note that the training sessions were held in Romania and Greece, therefore the somehow restricted, regional character of the conclusions!

The New Economy requires more literate workers, the postmodern society requires citizen capable of constructing meaningful projects of society and the globalised world needs cultural aware and tolerant nations and peoples. More than that, education becomes more and more important in international discourse as a tool to diminish poverty, to assure social cohesion, to empower disadvantaged groups and to raise the efficiency of world economy. The adult educators are facing the need to upgrade their professional skills to adapt to this changing environment. The question that arose is: What should adult educators teach? One possible answer is that adult educators must be proficient in teaching basic or key competences, from literacy to civic competence and cultural awareness. Embedding key competences training in regular teaching could be a valuable practice. Helping students to become more involved in politics makes them to act as critical observers and as agents of change. In this paper we tried to demonstrate that the adult educators competence must widen to comply with state and market requirements. But, like any other profession, ultimately adult educators have to choose a path for professionalization, a path that is both congruent with their needs and drives and also with the needs and believes of students.

References: Adult Basic Skills Strategy Unit (2004) Skills for Life at http://www.niace.org.uk/projects/Learningfromexperience/EBS/Introduction.htm CELiNE Project (2009) Training Curriculum and Training Materials, www.celineproject.eu EuroPol: rethinking politics (2009) State of Play. EuroPol Survey Report, http://www.politicscanbefun.eu Farago, J.; Skyrme, David J. (1995) The Learning Organization, accesed at http://www.skyrme.com/insights/3lrnorg.htm ***KEY COMPETENCIES FOR LIFELONG LEARNING. European Reference Framework (2006) accessible at the address http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/publ/pdf/ll-learning/keycomp_en.pdf Kock, R. (2006) Education and Training in a Globalized World Society, Frankfurt, Peter Lang Lucia, A., Lepsinger, R (1999) The Art and Science of Competency Models, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) (2009) Skills for Life program, accessible at the address: http://sflip.excellencegateway.org.uk/ Maslow, A.H. (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation, in Psychological Review 50(4) 37096. Predescu, S. (2006) Mecanisme psihosociale ale sugestibilitatii politice, Bucuresti, Universitatea Bucuresti, PhD thesis Southwood, S (2008) Developing literacy, language and numeracy in the workplace, in NIACE lifelines and adult learning, No22 Smith, M. K. (1997, 2002) 'Paulo Freire and informal education', the encyclopaedia of informal education www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm Smith, M. K. (2001) 'Peter Senge and the learning organization', the encyclopedia of informal education www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm. Taylor, P. (1993) The Texts of Paulo Freire, Buckingham: Open University Press. UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (2007) Literacy Initiative for Impowerment LIFE 2006-2015, accessible at the address: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001529/152921e.pdf