The document outlines the Iconet and IcOVet projects, which aim to validate and make visible the informal skills and competencies gained by disadvantaged young people outside traditional education settings. These initiatives target adolescents transitioning from school to vocational training, along with educators and policymakers, to enhance their employability by acknowledging their informal learning experiences. Funded by the Leonardo da Vinci program of the European Union, the projects utilize a blended approach to support skill validation, thereby increasing opportunities for these young individuals in the job market.

1. CASE STUDY
ICONET
by
Katharina Nasemann
This document is part of the overall European project LINKS-UP - Learning 2.0 for an Inclusive
Knowledge Society – Understanding the Picture. Further case studies and project results can be
downloaded from the project website http://www.linksup.eu.
Copyright
This work has been licensed under a Creative Commons License:
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This
publication reflects the views only of the author(s), and the Commission cannot be
held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained
therein.

2. Young people tend to acquire a range and variety of skills and competences through
processes of non-formal and informal learning. These skills may be developed when
they take on certain responsibilities within their own family, when they meet up with
friends, or when they get involved in sport, music-making, through involvement in em-
ployment or indeed as a result of voluntary or community work. These skills may be re-
lated to being able to work in a team, being able to organise things, being flexible, and
being reliable. Young people are often not even aware of these skills themselves.
These competences that have been acquired therefore may well be extremely relevant
in terms of the formal arena of vocational education and training. These skills and com-
petences however cannot be used systematically, because these competences tend to
be invisible. This is especially the case for disadvantaged young people, for whom the
experience of engaging with the formal environment of the school or training centre has
not been successful.
Case profile – ICONET in a nutshell
ICOVET
Informal Competences and their Validation
ICONET
Informal Competencies Net
http://www.icovet.eu
Website
http://www.iconet-eu.net
Both closed (Icovet: 2004-2006; Iconet: 2007-2009; but websites
Status
still live)
Dr. Randolph Preisinger-Kleine, Project Manager, p&w praxis und
Interviewed person
wissenschaft projekt gmbh
Funded and promoted by… Leornado da Vinci programme of the European Union
Combination of formal setting (e.g. schools) and informal setting
Location of the Learning Activities
(e.g. home)
| disadvantaged young people at transition stage between school
education and vocational training,
Target group(s) | experts working in institutions and policy makers
| human resource departments of companies, chambers and
similar institutions
Number of users n. k.
Educational Sector(s) Secondary School, Vocational Education & Training [VET]
Category of the Learning Activities Combination of formal, non-formal, informal
Web 2.0 technologies used... Online tools, forums, additionally face-to-face workshops
Validation and certification of informal skills gain inside or beyond
Methods to support inclusion
the regular education system
2

3. Short description and key characteristics
The ICOVET (and the later ICONET) project examined strategies to make these informally
or non-formally gained competences visible in order to enable disadvantaged young
people to better understand their own competences and to learn how to use them in
engaging with the formal world of vocational education and training, give teachers in
schools of general education a better understanding of pupils` competences acquired
outside schools and enable teachers to systematically use these competences in prepar-
ing for VET, give disadvantaged young people better access to training and employment
in companies, likewise enable companies or training institutions to systematically use
these competences in VET.
The target group of this project is on the one hand disadvantaged young people at
transition stage between school education and vocational training, i.e. adolescents that
have been excluded from regular, vocational qualifications due to unsuitable school edu-
cation, social disadvantages, or structural discrimination and have not risked to find sup-
port matching their particular conditions and requirements.
Secondly, the project targets experts working in institutions that offer relevant oppor-
tunities, and policy makers of the educational sector, social welfare, labour administra-
tion on a regional, national and European level responsible for the design of such sup-
port programmes.
The third target group form human resource departments of companies, chambers and
similar institutions. Target sectors are institutions that offer specifically support pro-
grammes for disadvantaged young people. In Germany these are: polytechnics, youth
welfare service, companies; Together these institutions share the desire to recondition
the support for social disadvantage, to develop and build on social and personal skills,
tackle learning deficits and offer opportunities to catch up on missed educational quali-
fications, helping to find suitable professional perspectives and relevant training, medi-
ation of basic skills necessary for successful learning.
Key characteristics
Icovet and Iconet are funded by the Leornado da Vinci Programme of the European Uni-
on (Icovet ca. 300.000 Euro; Iconet ca. 400.000 Euro). The project is international, part-
ners involved are:
| Ausbildungs- und Kulturcentrum Berlin (Germany)
| BFI Peters GmbH & Co. KG (Germany)
| CRED Centre for Research and Education Development (United Kingdom)
| Deutsches Jugendinstitut e.V. (Germany)
| Ergon Kek (Greece)
| INDOR (Spain)
| Institute of Educational Sciences Bucharest (Romania)
| Knownet (United Kingdom)
| Nexus Research Co-operative Dublin (Ireland)
| p&w praxis und wissenschaft projekt gmbh (Germany)
3

4. | Waterford Youth Service (Ireland)
whereas different countries pursue slightly different objectives and target groups. This
case study focuses only on the German objectives and outcomes of the project.
Exact number of user are not available due to the fact, that the project’s approach fo-
cuses on train the trainer system, means, that provides tools and information guidelines
for the interviewer (most cases teacher) how to use the validation tools and how to con-
duct the interviews with the actual target group. Far that reason no exact numbers of
users are documented.
Dimension of learning and inclusion
The aim of ICOVET was to develop and test validation procedures for vocational skills of
young people gained outside the framework of institutional education. Research of the
Deutsches Jugendinstitut on vocational integration of disadvantaged young people has
shown, that integration can be successful if the funding and support network is matched
to the requirements and background of the young people in question. One of the
obstacles here is the lack of reliable information on the skill level of individuals. School
leaving certificates in particular at the level of lower education often don’t accurately
validate the factual skill level of individuals in particular neglecting the level of basic
skills and procedural knowledge. Furthermore there often is an extreme difference in
achievement within one level of certification as well as high uncertainty whether one’s
basic skills can be matched to vocational and business requirements. In particular there
is a lack of information on skills gained during extra-curricular experiences (e.g. employ-
ment, voluntary work, the use of new media). According to Deutsches Jugendinstitut
these are very relevant for increasing someone’s employability. For young people the
lack of specifically tailored support for their individual skills often results in negative un-
derstanding of their abilities and low self-esteem that can influence further learning.
Educational institutions on the other hand are not aware enough which young people
would ultimately benefit most from their programme i.e. to which it would neither be
over nor under challenging.
With the validation and documentation of informal skills the young people increase also
their prospects on the labour market. Most of them have – due to bad school leaving
certificates - low changes to find apprenticeship or a job.
Innovative elements and key success factors
Icovet/Iconet follows an innovative, train-the-trainer, blended approach. The project
therefore focuses on different levels.
On the one hand it provides a training and guideline for the interviewers and a best
practice how to use the validation tool. On the other hand it is also possible for individu-
al students to access the website and validation tool to record their informal skills:
4

5. Figure 1: Online tool for the validation of personal (informal) skills
Source: http://www.pw-projekt.de/validationtool/login.php?lang=en
With the help of this tool, students can validate their skills and abilities step-by-step on
their own and by doing this, they become aware about their capacities.
One example for validated and documented skills:
Figure 2: Example for a validation of activities
Source: http://www.pw-projekt.de/validationtool/example.php?
lang=en&PHPSESSID=802cf32b8ceb21d86e270499cac1bb95
One of the difficulties for the students during the process of validation was the problem
of verbalisation. Some of the students needed the help of a teacher or a mentor with
putting activities and abilities into words.
The produced data are document and can be transferred into the EuroPass
(http://www.iconet-eu.net/), a certificate, which can help to increases the students´
prospects on the job market.
But Icovet/Iconet also focuses on the opposite site of the interview: the teacher or in-
terviewer. There is a Best Practice Guide available, which has been designed to help
5

6. those who wish to use the validation tools. The term ‘best practice’ is perhaps
something of a misnomer. It could be better stated as a guide towards appropriate and
effective practice. There can be no single blueprint for best practice: rather, practice has
to be guided by the individual purposes and contexts of activity. The guide is based on a
series of studies of the use of the validation tools with socially disadvantaged groups of
young people: with young people form the Roma population in Romania and in Greece
and with young people from the Travellers community in Ireland. The guide is intended
to help practitioners in adapting and using the validation tool as part of their own prac-
tice.
Another important tool is the Train-The-Trainer Module1. The participants of the course
are to learn in the facilitator training - based on already existing knowledge, abilities and
hands-on skills – basic methods and techniques, with the help of which informal com-
petencies of disadvantaged young people can be made visible. Participants/target group
of the course are teachers, social education workers and other members of the com-
munity of practice who want to support in their job young people during the transition
from school to work.
On the one hand the specific objectives comprise the imparting of the educational
policy background, the pedagogical principals, the pedagogical process and the normat-
ive- ethical principles of making competencies visible, as on the other hand of skills and
abilities which build the basis of a successful realization of the procedure proposed here
to make competences visible. The contents were assigned to specific levels, which on
the one hand permit a change and rhythm, so care for the fact that the participants are
not uninterruptedly and in all topics preoccupied to the same extent, lay down the rela-
tion between self-learning and attendance stage, as well as facilitate the future evalu-
ation of the realization of the course and the results by transparent instructions refer-
ring to learning objectives to be achieved.
Problems encountered and lessons learned
There were no major problems encountered during the project. The project received
wide acceptance and was a success and therefore there will be a succeeding project fo-
cusing on the institutional and political level. One objective will be to develop a valida-
tion procedures or standards which are valid in general, e.g. same tool used in all
schools.
1
Informal Competencies and their Validation (ICOVET) – Train the Trainer Curriculum –
http://www.icovet.eu/Downloads/Cur_en.pdf
6

7. Collaborating institutions in LINKS-UP
Institute for Innovation in Learning, Friedrich-Alex-
ander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen,
Germany
www.fim.uni-erlangen.de
Arcola Research LLP, London, United Kingdom
www.arcola-research.co.uk
eSociety Institute, The Hague University of Applied
Sciences, The Hague, The Netherlands
www.esocietyinstituut.nl
Servizi Didattici e Scientifici per l’Università di Firen-
ze, Prato, Italy
www.pin.unifi.it
Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft, Salzburg,
Austria
www.salzburgresearch.at
European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN),
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
www.eden-online.org
7