The targeted sector is the sector of marketing and sales management (field of education and training 342). One of its specificities is to be a professional sector (transversal), and not an economic sector (to the contrary of field 341 “wholesale and retail”, which is an economic sector, with restricted professional mobility to the economic sector). Most qualifications in this sector address the needs of professionals working in all economic sectors, representing a population of more than 6 million workers in Europe.
The project aims at bringing an improved comparability of qualifications between those actors developing qualifications in the field of marketing and sales management and the final users (labour market, companies and professionals), through the development of visibility, mobility and mutual trust. For this purpose, it will test the development of a zone of mutual trust among the key National and Sectoral actors of marketing and sales management qualifications, from 7 countries, including the different categories of stakeholders being involved in the development of qualifications: national authorities and frameworks, universities and higher professional education, and a European sectoral qualifications framework.
It will test the project with a significant number of existing qualifications in terms of reference levels, but mainly in terms of the comparability of learning outcomes used by those qualifications. This comparability will be potentially validated by reference to commonly agreed upon occupational standards, including the reference to professional mappings / occupational standards. The methodology developed for the comparison of learning outcomes descriptors of qualifications will be applicable to this sector, but also to other sectors, mainly including transversal (professional) sectors.
Project Description
Mobility of professionals, mutual understanding and mutual trust between actors in the field of qualifications, depend upon a clear identification of the professional objective of any qualification in terms of labour opportunities accessible through a specific qualification, at any level, including higher levels. Levels are useful generic (vertical) descriptors for the identification of the level of a qualification. Learning outcomes are useful specific (horizontal) descriptors for the identification of a qualification. EQF provides stakeholders with common European level descriptors (EQF descriptors).
EQF doesn’t provide with learning outcomes descriptors. This is partly due to the variety of existing sets of learning descriptors for qualifications related to the different existing sectors. This is also due to too recent developments of learning outcomes based qualifications in Europe. Nevertheless, qualifications belonging to a specific field, and mainly those targeting a specific sector or a specific range of occupations, use a limited number of learning outcomes. Moreover, those learning outcomes can be related to the description of occupations or occupational standards existing within the sector and developed either by governmental organisations in charge of labour, or by sectoral organisations themselves.
The current project will provide stakeholders in the field of marketing and sales management with learning outcomes descriptors based on commonly agreed upon standards applicable to other sectors and mainly occupational sectors. The need for mutual trust in the field of sectoral qualifications being mostly restricted to the stakeholders of a specific sector, there is a rationale for the development of commonly agreed upon learning outcomes descriptors, providing actors with translation device for locally used learning outcomes.
Those descriptors have to be related to professional mappings/occupational standards. In the field of marketing and sales management, those needs have been raised by project partners and relate to already implemented or planned devices bridging learning outcomes based qualifications to occupational standards, and, in particular:
- National French qualifications are based on “référentiels d’activités”, sets of learning outcomes based on business needs targeted through various sources (sectors, ROME – occupational descriptors developed by the Ministry of labour, various experts).
- Qualification actors in UK use occupational standards as references for the development of vocational and professional qualifications.
- Actors dealing with social inclusion, or with the identification of labour market opportunities, use various tools to identify qualifications matching labour market opportunities.
- EMC, as a European sectoral organisation, has developed a sectoral qualification framework for marketing and sales management using a mapping of the marketing and sales management profession developed through a previous Leonardo program. This mapping will be used to build a comparison methodology for the testing of sectoral learning outcomes comparison.
The current project will provide stakeholders in the field of marketing and sales management with commonly agreed upon professional mapping or occupational standards applicable to other sectors and mainly occupational sectors. Globally, the development at National or sectoral (national or European) level of learning outcomes descriptors can be considered:
- as a key factor for the development of related zones of mutual trust, through increased transparency
- and an additional element to quality assurance.
The current project will provide stakeholders in the field of marketing and sales management with a “ZMT guideline”, the principles of which will be applicable to other sectors and mainly occupational sectors.