FEWL - Enhancing Research on the Integration of Formal Education Programmes and Workplace Learning

The project aims to enhance scientific excellence and research potential in the field of research on integrating formal education and workplace learning (WPL) for students in basic and secondary schools. Facilitating multifaceted capacity building at the School of Educational Sciences (SES) at Tallinn University (TLU) in this field will be achieved through partnership with two internationally leading research institutions with complementary theoretical and methodological expertise: Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER) at the University of Jyväskylä (JYU), and Institute of Educational Sciences at Paderborn University (UPB).

Since the emergence of Industry 4.0, unleashed by the technological advances of the information age, there is an increasing research interest in enriched learning in various authentic environments. The proposed project will pay special attention to students’ participation in authentic work environments outside the school. In the context of integrating learning at school and work, previous research activities have internationally mainly focused on vocational education. Our project intends to widen the scope of research on this area by extending the target group and including besides VET students also students in basic education and upper secondary general education.

The project’s activities involve common research activities in the area as well as various forms of knowledge sharing and communicative activities such as training, guiding PhD students, workshops, conferences, common publications etc. The project will introduce novel approaches and methodologies in workplace learning research, and provide new insights by applying the social ecology approach for the research in the field of integrating learning at school and at work. The methodological knowledge and experiences gained will be applied in planning future international research projects within the framework of the EU research agenda.