Between the years 2023-2026, five partnering debating societies and vocational schools from Croatia, Germany, Italy the Netherlands and Serbia have designed extensive amounts of teaching and coaching materials for debating in the classroom and/or competitive environment. This Erasmus+-funded project produced three major components specifically for vocational schools: a methodological guide (what is debating?), a toolkit with pre-designed teaching units (how is it taught?) and a self-guided set of online courses for teachers and/or other facilitators of debating specifically from the vocational sphere to be able to learn the ways of debating at their own speeds and through their own available resources.

    These materials are the product of many LTTA meetings (Learning, Teaching, Training Activities) across Europe and numerous trial and feedback cycles by many teachers from the partnering countries.

    Feel free to navigate through these items. Given the quality of an Erasmus+ program, they are entirely free of charge.

    Methodological Guide (engl.)
    Methodological Guide (dt.) 

    Toolkit with prepared class units (engl.)
    Toolkit with prepared class units (dt.)

    Visit Voice of Vocation self-teaching online courses here (still undergoing trials, will be completed in OCT 2026):
    https://vov-2026.webflow.io/

     

    The Erasmus+ "Voice of Vocation" project is moving ahead, as we have conlcuded the Debating Tollkit for educators as Work Package 3 (WP3) and prepared WP4 (Online materials) on location in Zagreb, Croatia. Following this meeting, the toolkit was trialled by over 20 vocational teachers from different schools all over the state of Baden-Württemberg to cater to the needs of vocational schools as best as possible.

    The Debating Society Germany e.V. is partnering with Croatia, Serbia and Italy to establish a copmprehensive and free of charge supply of teaching materials in the context of debating, specifically designed to fit the requirements of vocational schools in Europe and the world. Chairman Christopher Sanchez represented DSG (3rd from the left).

     

     

     

    The Voice of Vocation (VoV) partners met in Belgrade to finalise WP3 (Work Package) items, most prominently planning the completion of the Debating Toolkit, which includes over 80 pages of pre-designed debating-related teaching units in vocational schools. Debating Society and their German partner BSZ Bietigheim will be able to send eight vocational teachers to the next LTTA meeting in Croatia at the end of May 2025.

    Furthermore, WP4 will see the creation of self-guided online courses for teachers, for which the partners also have set the pegs.

                  

       

    Project partners attend planning meeting in Rimini, Italy (7-9 JUNE 2024)

    As part of the "Voice of Vocation" project, Debating Society Germany e.V. and members of all other participating nations attended the second mandatory half-annual meeting in Rimini, Italy to confer on future proceedings. After the kick-off event in DEC 2023, the team now advances to the Work Package 2 stage (WP2), which will lead to the creation of a Methodological Guide for vocational teachers to learn about the contents that debating has to offer to their respective subjects. Further work packages include the design of an in-class toolkit (WP3), e-leaning lessons (WP4) and the publication and distribution of all items the project has to deliver (WP5). 

    It has been discussed to further re-read and ratify a final version of the Methodological guide ('what to teach') before determining content items of the toolkit ('how to teach it') in the end of 2024 and into 2025. For its success, the working group designed a timeline to include and invite a maximum of 32 vocational teachers from all participating countries (Croatia, Germany, Italy, Serbia) to Pisa, Italy in October 2024 to instruct and train them in an LTTA (learning, teaching, training activity) event. This includes eight teachers from Germany. As a follow-up, they will be asked to put the guide into use in class and give feedback to the Erasmus+ working group. 

    The next meeting of planning partners is scheduled for the first weekend in February 2025 in Belgrade, Serbia.

    The Debating Society is a member of the Erasmus+ Voice of Vocation KA2 partnership

    Voice of Vocation addresses the needs of VET teachers, students, and NGOs in debate education looking to work with VET schools in line with needs identified by a string of EU policy recommendations and reports by the Commission, Parliament, and Council recognizing VET students' need for strong foundations for resilience, lifelong learning, lifelong employability, social inclusion, active citizenship and personal development. Partners all share an interest in introducing debate methods to VET but are limited in training, teacher education and teaching materials tailored for the purpose and tested by teachers and students in VET.

    To concisely introduce more debate methods in VET education, the KA2 „Voice of Vocation“ project (VoV) aims to increase VET teachers’ capacity to support students in the development of transferable soft skills and becoming active and informed citizens through the use of interactive, debate-based teaching methods and tools.

    Specific objectives are:

    • Support VET teachers in acquiring the knowledge they need to increase vocational students’ up-skilling capacity, lifelong learning skills and resilience through the development of self-confidence, critical thinking, presentation, and argumentation skills;
    • Increase partners’ capacity to extend their programmes into vocational schools and facilitate the merging of formal methods in VET with positive non-formal debate-based methods;
    • Empower VET students to become active and informed European citizens with knowledge about their rights and European values

    The partner consortium of this project includes 4 youth/debate associations (CDS, SNDI, DSG and OK), 4 VET schools (ŠCP, BSBB, IISS PS, ETŠ) from Croatia, Italy, Serbia and Germany and an umbrella debate organisation (IDEA) from the Netherlands. All the debate organisations have previous experience in adjusting debate methodology into the formal education system. Vocational schools will be key contributors in the development, testing and gaining feedback on the implementation toolkit. IDEA's experience in providing educational solutions and tools will be of key importance in designing e-learning courses as one of the results of this project. Our project includes VET schools and NGOs that work in different circumstances. We take this mix of experiences into account to produce tangible project results that can be used beyond our project.  CDS - Croatian Debate Society is a leading partner organisation.

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