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The EDUCAIR (Assessing the
EDUCational Gaps in Aeronautics and AIR Transport)
project is built on the belief that the alignment of the
educational and formation offers with the European air
transport and aeronautics sectors' competence needs is
the key for overcoming the current challenges impacting
the world air transport system.
The purpose of EDUCAIR is to
improve
the match between needs (demand) in human resources and
the educational and training offer (offer) of skills
across Europe and other regions in the World. EDUCAIR
will identify the air transport and aeronautics needs in
terms of staff training and education in the horizon of
2020, in order to recommend improvement in the current
educational offers.
EDUCAIR will identify the mismatch -
or competence gap - between the needs (demand) of
competences and the offer (supply) of educational
curricula. The rationale of EDUCAIR is built on the
belief that there is not one competence gap, but there
are actually four competence gaps. These gaps result
from the mismatch of the four entities (or players) in
the market and education systems, being: the companies
(corresponding to the employer), the employee (that
works for the company), the student (or prospective
employee) and the educational institution (such as:
universities or research centres).
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A framework of analysis was
developed and discussed to assess the various competence
gaps. One of the EDUCAIR outcomes will be
evaluating the
gap between the number of students graduating from
European schools and universities, and the needs of
engineers and scientists in European industry, education
and research centres, at present and in the future.
EDUCAIR team has a
long experience
in the participation of European funded research
projects and it also actively involved in the production
of educational contents.
EDUCAIR is structured in seven work
packages: one with a managerial nature, one with a
dissemination nature, and the remaining five with a
scientific nature. The scientific work started with the
elaboration and detailing of the assessment framework.
Follows three parallel work packages that are
responsible for analysing the educational offer (one
dedicated to the graduate and master level, and lifelong
learning; and another dedicated to the doctoral and
research education) and the industry needs. The final
work package will assess the competence gaps based on
the conceptual framework and the information meanwhile
gathered. Finally, recommendations for new curricula or
for changes in the existing ones will be proposed. |
