Cáritas Coimbra’s project IGCAL launched Manual of Good Practices
In June 2021, the IGCAL – Improving Guidance and Counselling in Adult Learning project launched the Handbook of the best practices to map background-learning parameters. Cáritas Coimbra is one of the consortium partners of this international project, and the manual launched aims to constitute itself as a pedagogical tool to map the skills acquired and developed throughout the life of adult students and expand and develop the skills of educators involved in the processes of guidance and counselling. It is available in English and in the official languages of the consortium countries (interested parties can consult you in the various languages here).
The good practice manual served as the basis for the online pedagogical tool, which will be available in August 2021. Both the manual and the online tool will be available to all interested parties free of charge, and best practices can be replicated in services and institutions working on guidance and advice on lifelong learning, provided they are not used for commercial purposes.
Cáritas Coimbra collected good practices from some of its centres, such as the Community Centre of S. José, located in Bairro da Rosa and the Community Insertion Center (CCI), located in downtown Coimbra. It has also collected national good practices from partners such as CEARTE – Vocational Training Centre for Handicrafts and Heritage, particularly with regard to its Qualified Centre. The good practices collected by the project consortium served as the basis for the first version of the pedagogical tool, which was later adapted/reformulated after the testing phase. In Portugal, the tests of the first version of the tool were carried out at the JRC, in October and November 2020, with the participation of users and technicians, with the objective of evaluating its applicability and effectiveness.
On June 8, 2021, the consortium published the article “Parameters to map background learning of adult learners”, in Portuguese, “Good practices for mapping skills acquired and developed throughout life”, at EPALE – Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe, which is available at: https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/resource-centre/content/parameters-map-background-learning-adult-learners-0.
Igcal, funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus+: KA204 – Strategic Partnerships for Adult Education, aims to develop innovative and effective ways to improve the process of guidance and advice on lifelong learning. The project was a cooperation between four institutions: Cáritas Coimbra (Portugal), AFEdemy (Netherlands), Ljudska Univerza Celje (Slovenia) and Työväen Akatemia (Finland), coordinating body of the project.
