May 2023 – Asociația pentru Sprijinirea Inițiativelor Educaționale

Between May 23-25, 2023, the transnational learning meeting within the SOLARIS project took place, hosted by our partners, CESUR, in Malaga. 24 teachers from 6 European countries worked together actively for 3 days to develop a training program on age management for those who work in the education sector.
Many ideas and examples were discussed at the European level, the teachers shared their experiences and proposed methods and approaches that could be implemented both at the individual, personal and organizational level, to create a culture of caring for the elderly and of an age friendly environment.
Within this project, a qualitative research was carried out, based on case studies, which revealed the current state of affairs regarding specific age management problems in the 6 countries involved in the project: Czech Republic, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Turkey.
Many relevant aspects were discovered and analyzed, the problem of the aging of the education staff being a real and increasingly pressing one at the European level.
The research also highlighted possible solutions – already implemented or suggested by the investigated case studies. These will be found in the Training Program that will be perfected and finalized in the next period, following the discussions and debates within the international meeting.
The participants – mainly teachers involved in the VET sector – were very satisfied with this meeting and were able to share their expertise with colleagues from other countries, this meeting also being a good opportunity to connect, get to know each other and relate at the European level.

The first transnational meeting of the iHETP project took place in Rome, between May 10-11, 2023, in a hybrid format. The meeting was a good opportunity to review the most important aspects related to the first result of the project, which includes a complex research, based on focus groups and questionnaires, regarding the issue of university teachers working with young people with disabilities. In this research, many relevant aspects were discovered, especially related to the needs that teachers feel, regarding the resources and training needed to work effectively and in an integrative way with young people with special needs.

Paradoxically, although the concern for the integration of people with special needs – especially young people – is not new at the European level, all the partners involved in the research discovered deficiencies and needs that manifest themselves especially in the university environment. Even universities with tradition and good practices in offering special study conditions have discovered the fact that there are still many problems that students feel, from those related to learning to those related to everyday life on campus.

Therefore, the following stages of the project, which include the development of a curriculum adapted to the training needs of university education professionals and an online and autonomous training program, become of crucial importance in offering concrete solutions and resources for the discovered problems.