TTnet - Training of Trainers Network

Synthesis of the TTnet workshop[1]

‘Quality of the training and skills of teachers and trainers’

Segovia, 10 and 11 October 2002

Synthesis of the TTnet 2002 Workshop

Segovia, 10 and 11 October 2002

Quality of the training and skills of teachers and trainers

The Segovia workshop is one of the thematic workshops organised by the TTnet network in 2002.

It takes as its theme the new competences required by teachers and trainers in a situation where individuals, companies and society itself are increasingly calling on training to define itself not only as a place for the transmission of practical and theoretical knowledge, but also – and primarily – as a place for promoting quality, which can support the personal, professional and social changes taking place nowadays.

It is this theme of the quality of training, closely linked to the development of the skills and competences of teachers and trainers, which the TTnet network, at the urging of the European Commission, has adopted as one of its main priorities for 2002-03.

The Segovia workshop thus brought together experts and practitioners from the Member States to consider the following questions:

·  the quality approach in vocational training:
key points and the impact on the organisation of training systems;

·  the quality of the organisation of the system of training and competences for teachers and trainers:

what is the specific role of teachers and trainers?
have competences changed as a result of the introduction of quality approaches?

·  criteria for the quality of trainers’ training and competences in open and distance training schemes.

On these issues, which are common to the majority of the Member States of the European Union, it was possible to make three main findings.

  First finding: Quality in training should be considered as a whole


In 2001, the European Commission, in partnership with Cedefop, set up a group of experts to conduct analyses and research on questions relating to quality in training. Since September 2001 the group, called the ‘European Forum on quality in VET’, has been exploring four main themes:

  1. the theme of ‘quality indicators’; there are 220 parameters used in Europe to describe and quantify training outcomes in terms of employability, better access to training and flexibility of services;
  2. the theme of ‘the quality of schemes for assessing prior learning and certification schemes’;
  3. the theme of ‘quality systems’, used by organisations to improve their results;
  4. the theme of ‘quality approaches’, applied in vocational training systems.

This discussion on quality management approaches used by vocational training organisations allowed a common definition to be established: the quality approach itself is based on ‘an integrated set of policies, procedures, rules, criteria and tools for measurement suitable for ensuring, when used together, the desired level of quality’.

The work of the group of experts was not so much focused on the details of the systems and approaches as on the strategic decisions underlying them. The experts’ main conclusion is that the quality approach should be seen as a sort of ‘logic circle’, where the process itself is necessarily continuous, from the definition of the organisation’s objectives to their implementation and assessment, with constant feedback.

What is important is not the type of quality approach adopted, but the choice of an approach which is applicable to all the activities in the process.

The European Forum on quality in VET thus concludes by making three recommendations:

  1. quality management approaches should perform an essential function in education and vocational training;
  2. they should be systematic;
  3. such approaches should themselves be assessed and their objectives defined at all levels within the vocational training system.

The experts concluded that what was most important was the systematic and comprehensive application of the approach adopted rather than the time spent determining the approach to be implemented.

That conclusion appears to depart from the recommendations of the Spanish experts, who stressed the need for a new model for quality systems to the extent of proposing a ‘European Charter on Quality in Training’. That recommendation is based on two findings:

  1. the quality management culture in Europe embodied in the EFQM and ISO 9000 approaches, is not in keeping with the characteristics of training processes because they do not take into account the social impact of training activities;
  2. a new model of training organisation and quality is required to meet the objectives of the Commission’s White Paper on education and training – Teaching and learning – Towards the learning society: quality as a pre-condition for improving competitiveness within Europe, and in relation to the phenomenon of globalisation; quality as a means for combating inequality; quality as a means for constructing a European culture.


This Charter lays down a number of principles for action, which are equally valid as principles for action in the field of training:

  the objective of transparency (of diplomas and qualifications) and democracy (equal opportunities);

  the objective of versatility and flexibility (taking into account the peculiarities of the various target groups and adapting to their needs, with the aim of ensuring equal rights to lifelong training );

  the objective of commitment and co-responsibility (involving the individual responsibility and motivation of all actors in the training process);

  the objective of self-learning and improvement: ‘The quality of training must take into account not only learning to be, to do, to think and to transfer, but also learning to unlearn, as capacities for autonomous lifelong learning’;

  the objective of proximity and efficiency as regards centres of interest and horizontal themes (meeting the expectations of the participants by starting off from centres of interest which satisfy them, by making them more capable of coping with new situations);

  a cultural objective with regard to new technologies so that they are not treated only as tools, but are made transferable to new situations.


It should be noted here that the two approaches are complimentary: a ‘management’ approach or a ‘praxiologic’ approach which turns the quality approach into a tool for constantly improving training processes and systems; a ‘normative’ or ‘axiologic’ approach which associates quality with a transformation in the design of training in order to bring it closer to the objectives that have been set for it in Europe.

  Second finding: Quality comes through a necessary linking of two functions, internal control and external control.

(a)  The internal control function

The concept of quality in training is inextricably linked to the two complimentary functions of internal assessment and external control of training.

The conclusions of the European Forum’s work show that today management practices in training organisations tend more towards self-assessment methods:

‘Self-assessment is defined as a process or methodology implemented by a vocational training organisation on its own responsibility to assess the performance of the organisation in relation to two dimensions: an internal dimension (micro level dimension) covering products, resources, customers, internal and policy and organisation, development project; an external dimension (macro level dimension) covering analysis of the education offer in relation to that of others, the position within the actors’ local system, the type of labour market and the VET needs, information network, etc.’

According to the main conclusions of the Forum, these self-assessment approaches to quality may be considered as tools for piloting VET organisations and their outcomes. This principle is applicable both to initial training (training organisations are assessed on the basis of self-assessment reports showing their contribution to national education priorities) and to VET (training organisations choose the self-assessment approach in order to improve their outcomes and position on the training market).

(b)  The external control function

The notion of quality also acts as a regulator of the training market under the pressure of external factors: those imposed on it by the legislature (normative regulation which is necessarily general, in so far as it applies nationally or even supra-nationally with the aim of providing a minimum of protection for individuals) and those imposed by the consumer (competitive regulation which is necessarily practical and reactive, in so far as it adapts to demand and fights for market shares by providing a maximum competence for the institution’s ‘clients’).

In the case of France, the notion of quality in training developed in this way in the 1990s as a reaction to the poor image of vocational training in the minds of potential buyers. As a result the State felt the need to introduce, as with any profession, a quality approach based on three key principles:

  1. the quality of training organisations must regulate the training markets;
  2. the individual must be the focus of the training;
  3. the training supply must be analysed as a comprehensive service, covering both what comes before and after the actual training.

There is thus a dual interaction between the role of the State and the role of the market on the one hand and the role of the State of the profession in constructing quality in training.

  Third finding: Quality as an approach at the service of professionalisation of the training sector.


To talk of quality in this context is thus also to seek a balance between this function of dual ‘State-market’ regulation and the professionalisation of the sector itself. A quality approach is in fact inefficient if its role is not to support the professionalisation of organisations, schemes and actors in the field of training, understood as being a capacity to define for themselves the quality criteria appropriate to them, and to communicate quality signals in their environment.

(a)  The quality of training organisations

In Spain, in connection with the transfer of powers in the field of training to the autonomous communities, all training organisations must now be accredited according to models based on the ISO 9000 standard or the EFQM approach.

In Italy, too, the regions have started to authorise and accredit training centres, which is seen as support for development of a training policy.

In Portugal there are more than 2000 organisations that have been certified and which have recognised the formative nature of the accreditation process.

In Belgium, VDAB (Flemish public network for employment and vocational training) has met the need for a quality label for all organisations involved in the use of European public funds: the EFQM excellence model is used here as the key to a strategy to evolve towards ‘total quality’ based on a system involving managers in self-assessment and continuous improvement.

(b)  The quality of training systems, materials and courses

The workshop on ‘Quality criteria and indicators for trainers and training processors’ established by the Spanish TTnet network adopted four ‘competence units’ corresponding to four complementary levels for improving the quality of training courses:

  1. plan each training course by linking it to other training courses of the organisation, in line with the needs of the environment;
  2. offer learning opportunities adapted to the characteristics of individuals and their qualification needs;
  3. verify and assess the qualification level attained, as well as the programmes and courses implemented so as to facilitate decision-making in order to improve training;
  4. finally, make an active contribution to improving the quality of training processes and innovation.


Moreover, the French work on eLearning is reviving the debate on the quality of training courses by taking the following findings as starting points:

  eLearning training schemes turn traditional forms of training upside down by disrupting the unities of action, time and place;

  multi-partnership constitutes an essential component of the construction of distance learning offer (new technical, educational and organisational aspects);

  the learner, as an actor in his or her own training, becomes a co-producer of the quality of the service delivered;

  the distance training market is recent, complex, without a defined frontier, and its culture is still taking shape;

  the geographical territory of eLearning is thus a global market which is unregulated and highly competitive.

Three complementary approaches have been established in France in response to those specificities:

  1. the development of a quality model for eTraining geared to the client;
  2. the development of a vocational eTraining qualification: this is a qualification approach by the organisations taking into account the specific technical, methodological and pedagogical characteristics of new eLearning organisations, and it is geared to the supplier and peer certification;
  3. the development of ISO standards in the field of eLearning: this approach is part of the international negotiations launched in 1999 in Seoul to establish standards for on-line learning.

(c)  The quality of training actors

The question of the contribution of teachers and trainers to the quality of training, whether within organisations or within courses, should also be mentioned here for three reasons:

  The competence of actors is a component part of the quality of education and training

In Italy, the preparation of a directory of trainers’ competences is considered to be an important part of the process of the certification of training centres. Its aim is in particular to facilitate the identification of emerging functions in the running and coordination of training systems.

In the quality control system established by the Flemish Community, the profiles and skills of teachers of vocational training are considered to be tools for monitoring the quality of education. Changes in the environment and their consequences for the skills required of trainers require the development of assessment approaches that take into account the ‘non-measurable’ aspects of the act of teaching, according to the principle of the technical/interactive rationality. The technical dimension lays the stress on measurable parameters of education, since this interactive dimension relates to the system’s capacity to adapt to contexts, on the basis of the personal contribution of training actors.

  The competence of training actors is a key point in the quality of
eLearning courses

In the matter of distance learning, beyond the work of the TTnet network, the question of the competences of the actors in training has still not yet been sufficiently explored.

In particular a link must be established between the work seeking to define the technical and economic quality criteria for e-learning and the work on the new roles of training actors.