One of the greatest assets of the TA3 alliance is partners’ ability and willingness to share practices in vocational education and training, to promote innovation in relation to regional economic development, benefiting from global contacts. From 2006, partners have held annual conferences for educators, business partners, innovators and faculty, venues alternating between the United States and Europe.
Apart from the conferences being the source of fruitful discussion, they have always been an incentive for cooperation between partners, in many cases leading to joint projects and exchanges of faculty, students and educational content.
There has been a consistent line of themes relating to developments on the labour market and the role to be played by educators in equipping the workforce for rapid and profound changes in the world of work. Participants have shared good practices and discussed these themes in depth, often after keynote speakers set out their views on expected change.
The titles of the last five conferences speak volumes in this respect:
- ‘Preparing the Future Global Workforce — Bringing Employers and Educators Closer Together’, 2015 Belfast, Northern Ireland
- ‘Reaching the Millennial Workforce – New Ways of Learning, Earning, and Interacting in the Digital Age’, 2016 Birmingham, Alabama
- ‘Crafting new Learning Environments – Be an Entrepreneur of your Future’, 2017 Dordrecht, The Netherlands
- ‘International Encounters on Vocational Training – Anticipating the Future’, 2018 San Sebastian, Basque Country
- ‘Education 4.0 – Preparing Learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’, 2019 Green Bay, Wisconsin
Themes that matter more and more with respect to present and future global economic developments.
