DDLETB Further Education Colleges and EUCOPP

Teachers from our Further Education Colleges are currently involved in a European project with education partners in Norway and Estonia.  The project known as EUCOPP (European Communities of Professional Practice) aims to build communities of professional practice for teachers within DDLETB and at a European level.  The focus of the project is on the Healthcare and Childcare vocational areas and includes examining how our European partners incorporate core non vocational subjects into vocationally specialised courses.  The project was launched in October 2017 and in November, teachers from 8 DDLETB colleges became involved in the first stage of the programme.

EUCOPP is a two-year project during which teachers from Estonia and Norway will visit Ireland to spend time job shadowing our teachers in a number of different FE colleges.  Teachers from DDLETB will travel to Trondheim in Norway and Haapsalu in Estonia to learn about vocational education in these countries and observe teaching methodologies and practice.

On the 13 th  of November a group of seven teachers and managers from two vocational colleges in Trondheim, Norway (Kristen Videregående Skole Trøndelag (KVT) and Orkdal Videregående Skole) came to Dublin for a three-day job shadowing visit with our FE colleges. During the visit, teachers exchanged a lot of ideas and information about their specialist vocational areas, their teaching practice and of course, their students.

Before their departure the Norwegian teachers thanked DDLETB for the warm welcome they received and the quality of the programme planned for their visit.  They reported positively on what they had learned from practice observed in the classes they visited and were particularly impressed with the relationships evident between.