The main goal of this TLA is to enable students to acquire the skills of self-evaluation and to help them to self-evaluate their own performance potential and set that against complex environmental requirements.

These are the ‘role-play’, through which students can assess their potential and weaknesses in facing possible problems on the basis of a real case; the ‘Employee of the month’ exercise, which underlines the trainee’s/student’s gaps and shortcomings in relation to becoming a good employee; and the ‘self-assessment’, which encourages students to  make a self-assessment on a basis of a concrete working experience.

The main and most useful approaches are: simulation (through the role-play), performance (through the ‘employee of the month’ exercise) and the interview (self-assessment). All these three approaches – individually and together – help develop this social skill.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. This question is intended to help you to reflect on the current state of your teaching. Social competencies, particularly team-working competencies, are one of the most important key competencies for apprentices in VET. Self-evaluation is required if students are to compare themselves with the requirements of and feedback from a complex environment of students on an ongoing basis. The ability to perceive oneself and others is an important part of self-assessment and evaluation and of assessment and evaluation of others. It enhances the skills of judgment and criticism but also it gives the student the ability to engage in depth with a feedback culture and makes him/her aware of problems and of his/her own limitations and potential. These competencies will be particularly important not only in the retail sector but also, more generally, in everyday activities.

I would link the given exercises with increasingly interrelated everyday life experiences and requirements and with different situations the student may face during his traineeship. Improvements may also be achieved by developing additional specific concrete cases relating to a particular field of the retail sector taught in our VET school.

Against this background, the question arises as to how you intend to plan and implement long-term learning processes.

Which concrete personal and social competencies should be promoted?
Which learning opportunities should be used to achieve this?
Which support systems play a decisive role?
What obstacles have to be overcome?

Create a strategy plan and document it. This plan can provide you with an important basis for planning further lessons.