The CLEAR Consortium met in Thessaloniki for the second Consortium Meeting
The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, was hosting a 2nd Consortium meeting of the CLEAR research project.
The members of the Consortium were greeted on the first day, March 29, 2023, by the organiser Prof. Georgios K. Zarifis from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the coordinator Prof. Parreira do Amaral from the University of Münster, and, later that day, by the Vice Rector of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Prof. Stratos Stylianides.
After discussing the project’s management (Work Package 1) and publication and dissemination activities (Work Package 9), the day was devoted to the discussion on the conceptual and theoretical bases of the project summarised in the State-of-the-Art Report (Work Package 2) and to the quantitative analyses for selecting the regions and sites for the empirical fieldwork (Work Package 3).
To train the Partners in interpreting quantitative data necessary for the selection of research sites, Nikoletta Jablonczay from the Work Package 3 Core Team briefed the Partners with empirical examples. The day was closed with a Team-Building Exercise prepared and organised by Francesca Zamboni and Cristina Cavallo from CODICI, which strengthened the intercultural and interdisciplinary team of CLEAR.
The second day of the meeting, March 30, 2023, was devoted to the preparations of expert survey to be conducted later this year (Work Package 6) and to the implementation of participatory actions with the use of Transversal Participatory Approach (Work Package 8). The plenary session of Work Package 8 was further extended by capacity-building session led by the Core Team, which reflected with the Partners on various aspects of implementing participatory activities, including a careful estimation and preparation of settings, language, group dynamics etc.
The Consortium Meeting was joined by our External Advisory Board members, both in person and online, who met in parallel session to discuss the project’s progress and provide critical feedback on its crucial parts. In general, the feedback highlighted the productive and warm working atmosphere, the coherence of the research design, and suggested to embrace the complexity of learning outcomes, also in terms of young people with special needs.
The meeting ended with a closing session, summarising the main decisions, achievements and next steps to be followed. Overall, the meeting has successfully contributed to the ongoing work in the project, strengthened the internal cohesion of the Consortium, and outlined the next research phase to be completed.
In the final day, March 31, 2023, the members of the CLEAR research project have jointly organised a meeting with RYOT network, which encourages early career stage researchers to share their experiences and work on joint projects.
The joint meeting finished with an online Book Event devoted to the presentation of the edited volume: Landscapes of Lifelong Learning Policies across Europe: Comparative Case Studies, which resulted from cooperation of CLEAR researchers. During the online event, chaired by Sebastiano Benasso (University of Genoa), two distinguished discussants – Patricia Loncle-Moriceau (École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique) and Vitor Ferreira (University of Lisbon) – contextualised the debate surrounding youth opportunities, skills, and lifelong learning policies and walked the readers through the book’s ambitions, challenges, and main achievements.
