Move Up

Bac Educ and strategy

Bachelier en éducation spécialisée en accompagnement psycho-éducatif

Strategic priorities for the modernization of higher education

1. Adapt the qualification levels to form the graduates and researchers Europe need.

The discovery of different social practices by our BacEduc students has already been approached in our formation at the Institute, through explanations of what is done in other countries.

However, mobility seems essential to fix a fine perception of social practices in which intervene so unquantifiable and unmeasurable factors : how can people from another culture become aware of psychological aspects or non-verbal characteristics otherwise but by practice ?

Going and seeing what happens abroad or welcoming in exchange someone who is going to explain us concretely what they live daily in their country is more useful. The impact of the personal relations on the learning in a section like BacEduc is essential and we have noticed that the more the students have interactions they can “feel” and that match directly their preoccupations on the field, the more they develop motivation, capacity to adapt to their field and distance. This adaptability is essential, because of the mixing of populations in Europe and seems to have to be reinforced by the points of view of social workers exterior to our country.

Finally, other educative approaches could bring our students an expertise in a new way of accompanying, which could create jobs in a specific orientation, or eventually institutions which could propose “another” way to accompany the demanding person.

2. Improve the quality and pertinence of Higher Education

One or our BacEduc section's aims is to bring our students to take initiatives, to be able to resolve complicate situations and to manage a team, in accordance with the 6^th level of the European Frame of Certifications.

Therefore, it seems obvious that the share of experiences beyond the borders is important to improve our practices : our students and our educative team will then be able to build a permanent and regularly improved reservoir of different practices they will be able to adapt to their professional reality.

The quality of the BacEduc formation will therefore be improved, we will be able to transmit good practices to others and so constitute a productive net in social resources, with the aim of a reinforced matching between the academic pole (formation) and the field (professional practice).

Another way of improving is held by the former students : for most, we keep in touch with them and with their place of social-educative work, we regularly invite them to come and share their experiences or their expertise as members of testing juries. Our future graduates can then take advantage of a practical approach essential to the building of their identity as specialized educators, linked with the field preoccupations. This aspect corrects a gap which sometimes exists between the formation programs and the professional world.

To come back to the formation itself at the Institute, we use an E-learning platform which makes the students' follow-up easier in a background where it is not always easy to work out studies, practical internships, couple's life, children, professional life, … This platform proposes, among other things, downloadable workbooks, online exercises and pedagogic paths, exchange forums, … We also created a “Virtuothèque”, kind of online library, which proposes documents in form of texts, tapes or videos, a basis to deepen and actualize the courses or a precondition to the research works. Quality integrated works (end-of-studies works) can be consulted there and give ideas to our future graduates. We can also find there downloadable current documents, information on the courses, courses presentations.

We think that direct relations are essential and nothing can replace them but the numeric tool and home work can be useful, available 24/7, whatever the moment and the place.

Finally, we are lucky to work with a pedagogic team who exchanges and forms itself (brainstorming groups, pedagogic coordination, collaborations, consultations,…) and an active and encouraging direction. Our students are certainly the first to benefit from this positive attitude.

3. Improve the quality thanks to the mobility and transnational cooperation

We pay much attention to the recognition of knowledge (formal, informal and non formal) as provided for in our legislation : RCA (recognition of acquired capacities) for the students coming from other schools for example or VEP (valorisation of professional experience) for students having a field practice (Belgium and abroad) allowing them to be exempted from some learning units.

A member of our pedagogic team is specifically in charge of this task.

Some of our students who followed a formation abroad have their experience recognized for a learning activity in a close relation with the formation (ECTS credit). This process is of course an incentive to go abroad : discover other practices without accumulating too much work. Practices brought from abroad and thought over to be adapted to our national realities open possibilities as well as those we export and give to the questioning of other social workers.

4. Activate the knowledge triangle : link high education, research and the enterprises to make quality and regional development easier ?

Regularly, we try to create and maintain a maximal coherence and complementarity between our education net in general, our Institute in particular, our regional or professional partners and the themes and methods treated in our students' end-of-studies works.

In this view, the research file we ask to our BacEduc students and which will become their end-of-studies work, has to show an important part of reflexion on the field remarks. The research subject can therefore come from the student himself, but also from the internship place or field professionals who would like a faced problematic to be studied, but who don't have the time or opportunity to do so and then ask it to our students. They can then coordinate theoretical research and practical application.

Consequently, the student is often engaged by his internship place, the professional employs then someone he knows, who is in the heart of the subject, and who can bring a theoretical-practical light , who can take functional decisions.

The internship supervisors of our Institute are regularly in contact with the field people, our students take part to activities where they meet employers… in a win-win goal.

More widely, our Institute is part of the higher education “Pôle Hainuyer” and benefit of useful academic exchanges.

For example, in 2016-2017, we agreed for a partnership with the Haute Ecole en Hainaut (pedagogic campus) on a formation on the snoezelen method and massotherapy for disabled people.

We are also part in the co-organization and co-graduation for the “Social worker Bachelor” as reference school with three other regional schools.

5. Improve the governance and funding

The Quality approach has been installed in our Institute since 2012-2013 and all the parts try to go on with this approach. The very positive audit in the BacEduc section, with the European Experts' visit in 2015-2016, comfort us.

The Direction's 5-year strategic plan worked out in this framework shows the governance practices as well as the means to maintain and develop them, in accordance with the missions and values of the Promotion Sociale and in the line of the Marcourt's Decreet defining Higher Education in the Communauté Française. In particular, apart from the formations aimed to valor and certify the knowledge and capacities of European level 6, apart from steps taken in the research and innovation, the Institute wants to “assure services to the collectivity, thanks to its high expertise and its independence, to the listening of social needs, in collaboration or dialogue with the educative, social, economic and politic circles”. (2^nd article of the Decreet).