"East Meets West II: Towards a Joint Research Initiative"

Co-ordination: ISE Bucuresti & ITB Bremen

1. Rationale

The integration of East- and West-Europe remains one of the major challenges for future European policies.
As described in our first meeting, the experiences with the change in East Europe prove that within the move to a labour market system the vocational education and training in CEECs must not only be reorganised in all institutional elements but it must be based on new concepts of the interrelations of work knowledge. At the same time, the shift towards new social ideas in East-Europe is confronted with similar economic, social and technological challenges facing societies in West-Europe, including all the far reaching consequences for vocational education and training.
The joint challenge of a "European society" makes it long overdue to enhance the collaboration between east and west research on VET.

2. Conference objectives

The conference tries to further build ways to a closer co-operation between East- and West European researchers in the domain VET.
As the aim of this conference is to identify concrete possibilities for future co-operation between east and west Europe in the domain of VET research, the meeting will be focused on the exchange of ideas concerning major research issues for the contribution of VET to the social, economic and technological changes in east and west Europe, which need to be investigated in the near future.
Thus, the expected outcome of this conference will be to initiate joint research projects under the 5th Framework Programme and LEONARDO DA VINCI II.
As it is the aim of this meeting to identify common research issues between East- and West-European VET research and to initiate further research collaboration a rather broad conference theme has been chosen. The papers presented will be focused on suggestions for 4 to 6 future research issues addressing the following VET policy domains:

• VET in the knowledge based society
• VET, unemployment and social exclusion
• The impact of European integration on VET and VET-systems
• Social trends, structural changes and VET

The conference is organised in co-operation between the "Central and Eastern European `Club` of VET Research Institutes" and the "FORUM for European Research on VET". The "European Training Foundation" is supporting this conference. CEDEFOP, DG 12, 4th Framework TSER projects and LEONARDO DE VINCI projects (DG 22) will attend the meeting. Other networks will be contacted.
The conference will take place in Bremen, on 4 December 1999, from 9.00 to 18.00 hours (following the Leonardo da Vinci workshop "Shaping
Social Innovation and VET – the Contribution of Survey & Analysis Projects", and preceding the 6^th yearly meeting of the CEE Club of VET Research Institutes). A preparatory evening session will precede the conference, with the aim to better organise details and let the opportunity for an informal introduction of the participants.
The official language of the Conference will be English.
All participants are asked to send a short abstract which should have approximate length of 500 words until 31 October 1999. The proceeding containing abstracts will be published and handed out to the meeting participants at the registration desk. The proceeding containing full texts will be published after meeting.
 

If you are interested, please contact one of the organisers, below:
 

Liliana VOICU Institutul de Stiinte ale Educatiei Str. Stirbei voda, nr. 37, sector 1 RO 70732, Bucuresti – ROMANIA Tel: +40 1 313 94 91 FAX: +40 1 314 14 47 E-mail: liliana.voicu@ise.ro

Michael KUHN Institut für Technik und Bildung - Bremen University Wilhelm-Herbst Strasse 7 D 28359, Bremen – GERMANY Tel: +49 (0) 421 218 7804 Fax: +49 (0) 421 218 9019 Email: mkuhn@uni-bremen.de