MAKING ADULT SKILLS VISIBLE: IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE AND POLICY

Many current European Union priorities focus on lifelong learning, making skills visible as well as supporting mobility of workforces within Europe including the integration of migrants and refugees [1] [2]. Supportive, transnational processes for the recognition and validation of learning provide an opportunity to maximise human capital and to benefit labour markets and societies generally leading to improved economic performance. However, many authors have pointed to the difficulties in terms of the limited use of recognition or validation of prior learning in Europe as well as the lack of consistency and coherence in approaches [3]. Visible Skills of Adults (VISKA) is an Erasmus+ Key Action 3 Project, filed under the call priority theme of "Employment and Skills: validation of informal and non-formal learning in Education and Training." The project partners, from Norway, Iceland, Belgium and Ireland will address European policy priorities by cooperating to make existing knowledge, skills and competences of adults more visible through consideration of the practice of validation of informal and non-formal learning and the implementation of some planned field trials. An initial mapping process has provided a baseline set of data on the existing processes, procedural information and resources related to the validation of learning of migrants, refugees and those with low qualifications within partner jurisdictions prior to implementation of the various interventions planned by the project team [4]. This initial information provides a context for the action-based interventions and a framework for the evaluation of the outcomes. This paper details the five planned interventions drawn up by the project partners and the positions them in relation to the data collection processes and the potential for the project to contribute to policy at a local, national and European level. It addresses how well these interventions map to the European Guidelines for the Validation of Non-Formal and Informal Learning [5] and inform the national responses to these guidelines, and previews the project outputs and outcomes.