Erasmus+ and Vocational Secondary Education: Analyzing Participating Students’ Views. A Case Study of Students’ Mobility in the Prefecture of Preveza, Greece

Abstract

After the advent of the knowledge society there has been a lot of debate, among countries and supranational organizations, on the promotion of lifelong learning policies and cooperation policies on education and training issues. In this context, training policies and mobility programmes at all levels of education and/or training are high on the international political agenda.

At the same time, it is well known that vocational education and training is inextricably linked to the labour market and undoubtedly to employability (Stamelos, Vasilopoulos, Kavasakalis, 2015). Within this broader framework, many policies and programmes have been developed and implemented at European level to defend this objective, with the most contemporary of them, Erasmus+. This article presents a case study of a students’ mobility programme.

In detail, the purpose of this article is to investigate and analyse the participating students’ views in individual mobility actions under the Erasmus+ programme in secondary vocational education in theprefectureofPreveza, regarding the effectiveness in achieving the objectives set by the programme itself.

The text is divided into two subsections. The first section analyses the most important parameters of the issue at European and national level, as well as the basic structures and actions implemented within the framework of the European Erasmus+ Programme, while the second presents the research methodology and the primary results extracted from the descriptive and statistical analysis of the research tool, i.e. the questionnaire answered by Erasmus+ participants after the mobility.