Knowledge Systems and Knowledge Sharing

As part of the legally stipulated review of basic vocational education in the occupational field of agriculture and farming professions, OdA AgriAliForm, a public-private partnership that supports agricultural education, commissioned HAFL and the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (EHB) to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of basic vocational education in the farming sector. Having formulated a sound evaluation strategy, we first conducted a survey of trainees, trainers, teachers, commission members, cantonal representatives and other professionals in the field. The results of this written survey were subsequently discussed and analysed in thematic workshops.

Resource efficiency is one of the major challenges the Swiss farming sector will be facing over the coming years. The REDES project commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture is to create essential new impetus in this field and generate advice for practical implementation. Amongst other project activities, a working group involving interested farmers addressed concrete questions about knowledge needs and knowledge transfer to practitioners. We guided and documented this process and produced general advice for knowledge transfer between the scientific community, the political arena, and practitioners.

One of our core activities is the training and implementation of didactic and methodological training and staff development programmes. These include, for example, courses for examiners and teachers, teaching assignments in higher vocational education and the introduction of new methods and teaching aids in in-company continuing training. We have developed a broad repertoire of methods for guiding groups of different sizes and composition in workshops on a variety of issues.

In collaboration with lmz-media we are involved in various subprojects in which we are helping the people and institutions involved in agricultural vocational training to identify and exploit the potentials of digital teaching materials. We evaluate and test the opportunities open to them; by 2019 the results will be incorporated into didactic guidelines and templates for teachers in vocational colleges.

In international cooperation on vocational training we have for the past 20 years been making our expertise available to various partner organisations and countries. Our workshops in Switzerland and in partners’ countries provide important input for vocational training specialists in the private sector, training institutions and government agencies. Our current activities include helping Georgian universities to set up a course for vocational school teachers at Tbilisi University, assisting with the development of two basic training courses (milk processing and veterinary assistance) in southern Armenia and improving the quality of training at five agricultural colleges in Laos.