Reflections What has been learned about good practice in life skills competencies in teaching and learning? Very important to be a good teacher Once teachers recognised they were using these skills in their teaching they realised they were – Important Interesting Powerful Effective Pleasurabale

Reflections What has been learned about good practice in life skills competencies in teaching and learning? People accepted them because they: Improved / enhanced their teaching skills Develop their techniques for teaching Become more sociable You can know about good practice but the chance to try it outis

Reflections How well did we meet project objectives? High level of interest and acceptance from teachers Not always easy to integrate life skills in teaching (if it is not an obligation to include life skills some have not the time do it) General willingness to implement life skills Excellent evaluation reports from teachers Effective dissemination procedures (website / pack / cd) Need to influence organisations / regions / national organisations

Reflections Have we developed the project resources and how good are they? Good use of training pack as it has been translated into many different languages Positive evaluations of resources – they are practical, useable, fun and flexible Good examples and activities – well received – would be useful to have more guided examples and activities added Website is a good instrument to develop aims of project. Need to make sure more teachers know about the website and add to it – important it is in all languages – more organisations link to website

Reflections What has been gained from working with other colleagues in your own and other countries? Good to understand other points of view Good source of ideas Different countries have different needs and these met Countries working together have enriched activities and process of working together Worked together to solve common problems but also learnt from each other how to solve own problems Learned how VET works in other countries and how Life fits into that – how life skills have been integrated e.g. in Spain the project fits with a regional policy

Reflections How do we know this project is and will continue to be known about across VET in Europe? Important and big step for all of Spain and Lithuania so very important to succeed Helps in terms of developing teacher mobility – especially Lithuania National government in Cyprus planning to introduce Life Skills as part of the development of national standards In UK we will be continuing to a review of national teaching standards

Reflections How have the results improved teaching and learning in your country / organisation / practice? Cyprus – use of mind map / visual approaches; use of ‘how to remember what you have read’ activity helped students manage their own learning Spain – pilot course with group of teachers. This took place in their own time, but they demanded extra activity / exercises and produced activities to add to the life materials Lithuania – activities in pack were all enjoyed and liked by teachers and students in Lithuania UK – teacher adapted ‘healthy eating’ activity with a group of hard to engage learners and this engaged them Developed awareness and the understanding that training programmes should be extended / developed to all teachers

Reflections How can this be helped to continue in the future? In a time of economic crisis life skills are more important than ever Education budgets are being reduced so it will not be easy We need to argue that work like life skills is very important and use evidence from projects like this Life project is a great example of well spent educational funding which has brought the best out of all involved

Reflections