Responsibility in internationalization of Vocational Education and Training

The EU is committed to striving for a green and inclusive economy and to delivering on the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. VET has a prominent ...

By implementing the RIVET project, partners aimed to take a step forward into more responsible internationalization of VET, by engaging more organizations to consider sustainability in their internationalization strategies. Therefore, the following project-specific objectives were defined: - Improve Partners’ internationalization strategies by considering sustainability criteria and indicators - Build Partner’s capacity to apply Peer Review method to evaluate international strategy and other activities - Integrate Peer Review in Partner’s Quality Management Systems as a method to evaluate strategies and other activities - Improve Associated Partners and other European initial VET (iVET) and continuous VET (cVET) organizations’ perception of how to integrate sustainability in internationalization strategies - Improve quality relationships among Partner’s peers, teachers and students - Strengthen international cooperation between partners - Improve all project partners participants’ language, intercultural and team work skills - Improve all Coordination Team members’ project management skills

During the project, the following activities were implemented to achieve the specific objectives set: Project Result 1 (PR1) focused on assessing the current status of responsibility aspects in VET internationalization across participating countries. Building on PR1's findings, criteria and indicators for responsibility were defined (PR2). Despite not being mandatory, the partnership decided to incorporate a digital tool (PR3) to enhance the Peer Review process digitally and allow independent assessment of the defined criteria. Additionally, during PR4 training materials were developed, offering practical guidance on integrating responsibility into VET internationalization strategies. Peer Visits, serving as Learning, Teaching, and Training (LTT) activities, were used to pilot the criteria and gather insights for improvement and for the training materials. Transversal to all these, effective dissemination activities were crucial for maximizing the project impact, including the organization of multiplier events and engagement with wide networks at local, regional, national, and European levels to ensure broad accessibility and sustainability of project outcomes.

During the project, a set of products were developed, tested and disseminated and formed the major outputs of the RIVET partnership initiative. The following project results were developed: • PR1 - Report about state of the art of internationalization and responsibility aspect in partner countries. This report will be used as the baseline for the development of PR2 (see ANNEX 1). • PR2 - Criteria and indicators catalog for social, environmental and economic responsibility in internationalization of VET. Applying the Peer Review method to a strategy or activity implies the existence of criteria and indicators against which the evaluation is made. The partnership delivered this innovative resource which is a fundamental tool for the application of the Peer Review method (see ANNEX 2). • PR3 - Digital self-evaluation tool for social, environmental and economic responsibility in internationalization of VET. The first step of any Peer Review method is a self-evaluation activity, based on the criteria and indicators that will form the catalog for social, environmental and economic responsibility in the internationalization of VET. Partners developed a digital tool that can be used as stand-alone or integrated into the Peer Review method (see ANNEX 3 with the specification and https://www.rivet-project-selfevaluation.eu/ to access the tool). • PR4 - Learning material for peer review methodology application for social, environmental and economic responsibility in the internationalization of VET. The partnership developed learning material that allows easy access to the peer review methodology developed (see ANNEX 4). Additionally, during the project, the following tangible outputs were also delivered:  7 iVET and cVET institutions working together in internationalization and responsibility  25 Partners’ experts competent in applying Peer Review method to evaluate international activities  6 Partners’ reports on international activities with improvement opportunities  707 VET organizations and other stakeholders reached by the partnership dissemination activities and multiplier events