SHARING KNOWLEDGE  FOR VOCATIONAL TRAINING TEACHERS

Vocational training education provides numerous challenges in the field of teacher training programs. Our professional competence as teachers will result in skillful students ready to perform their duties successfully. Therefore, some of the tasks which can help teachers improve their teaching methods are:

·         Analyze how procedural knowledge is taught, so it becomes even more challenging for our students.

·         Build a more meaningful learning process reflecting the professional reality that our students will face. We cannot overlook this challenge, especially in the light of the difficult labor market situation.

·         Develop cross-curricular capacities that help show the students’ abilities. These capacities should be developed through the use of new technologies and procedures  related to students’ professional skills, such as assertiveness workshops, creativity workshops, implementation of lean manufacturing, etc.

It should be noted that this vast amount of information cannot be handled by a single teacher, we need to work cooperatively in order to achieve the best results.

Institutions such as CEFIRE in the Valencian Community offer courses which can meet most of our needs; however, we can also request our CEFIRE to design courses that suit the demands of professional modules, which usually involve a high degree of specificity (unless they are cross-curricular courses which are intended for teachers of different modules).

Erasmus+ is also a great opportunity to share knowledge, especially in modules which encourage mobility of professionals across Europe.

Certainly, different resources such as: cooperative learning among teachers from the same field of knowledge, the promotion of discussion topics in social networks or blogs where teachers can share information about their experiences, the establishment of seminars or work groups on CEFIRE platforms where teachers can seek advice, the implementation of projects, or the way new challenges are faced, can serve as examples for a better approach to regional educational reality, to help teachers research different topics and also due to the ease of use of these resources.