2 stop dropout
INTRODUCTION
TARGET GROUP OF TESTING
PEOPLE INVOLVED:
COMMENTS ON THE TESTING PROCEDURE:
ORGANISATION OF THE PILOT TESTS
INVOLVEMENT OF STAFF WITHIN THE PILOTING INSTITUTION
ADMINISTRATION OF THE TOOLS – INTELLIGIBILITY FOR THE TARGET GROUP
RESULTS
FEEDBACK AND RELEVANT INFORMATION RECEIVED FROM THE TEACHERS/COUNSELLORS
INVOLVED 7
OBSTACLES EXPERIENCED DURING THE TESTING 7
6
6
5
5
4
4
PROBLEMS WITH THE TOOLS
FUTURE COOPERATION
APPENDIX
3
3
8
8
9
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

3 stop dropout
The trainees that attend AMS measures are older than 16. As the original risk detector is designed and validated for pupils until the age of 16, we adapted a completely new version of the risk detector that has not been validated so far from the developer of the original risk detector in Iceland. This new draft version can only be regarded as questionaire as it needs years of testing and validating on the hand of a high number of testees to create a statistical valid test like the risk detector. Nevertheless this new questionaire can supply trainers working in the field of adult education with some hints that can be useful to detect trainees who are at risk of droping out of long term training - measures mainly performed by institutions working for the Austrian labour office. Due to our target groups we tested this new draft version of the first tool (risk detector for persons older than 16) and the second tool (Personal Profile). The Personal Profile is a coaching intrument based on William Glasser’s Choice Theory taking into perspective the
Five Needs. As this tool could easily be implemented into our training schemes as it fits to different kind of target groups we mainly focused on the validation of this coaching instrument.
We tested the first two tools (Risk detector and Personal Profile) within the following training measures on the hand of a wide range of target groups with different issues and problems:
 Wiedereinstieg mit Zukunft
This training course is designed for returners, who want to find a job again after maternity leave. Female trainees of this course are aged from the middle of 20 until the middle of 40. One training measure lasts for 12 weeks. Each trainee of this course gets individual coaching from a coach and attends together with other persons the course. The main contents of this training measure are job orientation, strengths and weaknesses and job application training. Due to this target group there is also space to work on the attitude towards changing roles in the family and analysing the context that enables or hampers changing processes.
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

4 stop dropout
 Speak! is a course based on self directed learning. Female and male trainees of this measure are aged from 18 until 60. The main contents of this course are business
English, job orientitation and job application training. Each trainee of this course also gets individual coaching from a coach. As the age of the trainees differ one main goal of this measure is also to help the trainees belonging to divers generations to learn from each other.
 back to the future ( www.back2future.at
) is a project for young disadvantaged persons aged from 17 until 25 years. The focus of this project is set on the history of the town Tulln trying to detect how the people managed periods of crisis and to find strategies of citizens that helped them to overcome adversities. By getting in contact with solution oriented strategies of common people participants can select among these strategies in order to find those that fit best into their momentary life. In some cases our youngsters have experience in school leaving. Trainers also have to deal with alcohol and drug abuse of their trainees
In each trianing measure there was mainly one coach involved who tested the draft version of the risk detector and used and validated the Personal Profile during her/his coachings.
While in the first two training measures mentioned above the target groups of testing exist of adult persons in the measure back to the future in two cases the coach also contacted in consultation with his coachees the parents of the youngsters.
As we were using the draft version of a new questionaire aiming to detect possible reasons for dropping out of an education for the target group adult people we only had the possibility to test this tool in a paper pencil version. Together with our trainees we
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

5 stop dropout focused on the items of the questionaire in order to detect those which can be helpful for the further work with the Personal Profile. We also asked our trainees to add questions which they would regard as helpful for detecting possible dropouts of the education they were attending. As mentioned above our main focus was set on the second tool, the
Personal Profile. This tool was used in a face to face situation during the coachings. The coaches regularly invited the coachees to give feedback to this method.
In all courses mentioned above the pilot testing of the Risk Detector first took place in small groups. Trainees were invited to dicuss the items used in the questionaire and to underline those which they would regard as helpful. In a second phase this tool was tested in a face to face situation during the coachings. Trainees answered the questions of the questionaire by themselves and afterwards talked with their coach about their answers.
The second tool was introduced to the participants of our courses during the coachings.
One coaching unit took place for 50 minutes and each participant of our courses worked with her/his coach one time per week. During the coaching this method was used and tested from the coach and the choachee and there were regular feedback cycles in order to find out if this tool was helpful for the coachee or not.
In our courses mainly the coaches were involved in the testing of the two tools except the first testing of the Risk Detector mentioned in point „Organisation of the pilot tests“.
To all the trainers the tools were introduced during a workshop which Susanne Linde made. During this workshop the use of the instruments was practised and the theoretical background of the Personal Profile was discussed.
On the third of November 2010 three trainers of our staff also attended the workshop in
Vienna organised by bhak wien 10. During this woorkshop the developers of the original methods gave a profound lecture about theirs instruments and explained in detail how to use these tools once again.
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

6 stop dropout
1.
Risk Detector
The risk detector was introduced by two trainers to the whole group. This was embedded in a phase of biografic work and ressource analysis. The students were free to answer the questions or not. All students decided to work with PPS. After that every student got a questionnaire in hardcopy and the trainers perused the document together with the students in order to improve the intelligibility. To guarantee privacy every student had her/his own place and after filling in the trainers collected the questionnaires and gave them to the counsellor.
2.
The Personal Profile
Because we didnt have any digital analysis the counsellor evaluated the questionnaires on the basis of the clusters. So this analysis is certainly different from the digital studied scientifical version but it was at that time the only possibility we had to test the personal profile. The counsellor was not really able to evaluate the scores of risc but he could highlite the clusters that were salient. In the second step he acted like it is suggested in the handbook and as it was presented at the workshop.
We cannot prove that any student was prevented from dropping out but we are sure that the personal profile improved the quality of counselling. Using the Personal Profile in coachings in many cases leads to more self awareness and to a higher self responsibility of the coachees which improves the choaching process as a whole.
Turning the perspective of the coachees systematically to things that went well in their lives and giving them a clear structure on the one hand and the possibility to choose among those topics and to add important issues on the other hand influences the the whole person in a positive way. People who are able to change their way of thinking can react more flexible to upcoming problems.
More than 60 per cent of our trainees redarded this coaching tool as helpful or very helpful. (See apendix - Evaluationsbogen Zusammenfassung)
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

7 stop dropout
The draft version of the Risk Detector could deliver some important hints for the following coachings.In two cases as mentioned above in the measure for young disadvantaged people we contacted the parents of the students because of the results of the Risk
Detector. This was very important for the students and helped them to find a better communication with their family and to clarify their aims.
At the beginning the trainers were very motivated and confident in the meaningfulness of
PPS but also skeptik about the reception of the students. So they layed high cautiousness in the introduction of the tools. The feedback of the students was better than they have expected, the students found the Personal Profile was very supporting and saw that the questionnaire was necessary to get the informations for counselling. As many measures that are organised for the labour market are associated with pressure trainers have to deal with this topic befor they can work with their trainees on other topics. Especially the coaching tool the Personal Profile helped to improve the communication between the coaches and the coachees because the special design of this tool on the one hand offers a clear structure, which is helpful for persons who are not very experienced in attending coachings – often people have difficulties to find topics they want to work on during a coaching unit – and on the other hand the freedom of choice which topic they want to work on first led the coachees to more self-responsibility focusing on the question: „Which of these topics is important for me now, while I have the chance to work on it with my coach.“
In trainings measures we often experience that some trainees in a way fall back to the behaviour they had when they were pupils. School experiences often influence how trainees perceive the training measure Trainees often expect from trainers to act in the same or at least in a similar way as their teachers did. This behaviour is not a matter of age. Even people who have left school decades ago are prone to this kind of reaction.
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

8 stop dropout
When using the draft version of the Risk Detector some of our trainees associated this situation with tests they had to pass in their school time. Fears to be not good enough or to give a wrong answer came up causing a lot of insecurity.
As many items of this tool have a reference to very personal topics, a number of trainees were suspicious about what the trainers would do with the outcomes of this questionaire.
Therefore our trainers put special eyemark on how to introduce these two instruments to our targetgroups.
Some of our trainees belonging to the target group with a migrant background had difficulties to understand the questions of the first tool. For them it was necessary to get support from our trainers.
Deployment ideas for the period after the end of the project
The Austrian labour market offers a lot of professional trainings in several sectors to their clients. These trainings have a duration from one to two years and are very cost-intensive.
Allthough the labour market can provide their clients with trainings of a high quality they have to face the fact that in many of these educations they have a dropout rate higher than 50 per cent. In some sectors the dropout rate reaches even a mark of 75 per cent and more. Being confronted with such high numbers of drop outs the Austrian labour market is seeking for possibilities to reduce this rate. During our dissemination activities we contacted Mag. Mario Danler, the head of the education management of the Lower
Austrian labour market, and suggested to develop an education based on the outcomes of our project for trainers and councellers working in professional trainings mentioned above.
Mag. Danler is interested and there will be further talks at the end of our project.
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

9 stop dropout
EVALUATIONSBOGEN - Zusammenfassung
Die Coaches werden gebeten, den folgenden Evaluationsbogen für jede am Personal
Profile teilnehmende Person auszufüllen.
1. Wie wurde die Person ausgewählt?
Personen machen sich mit der/dem Coach am Ende jeder Coachingeinheit den nächsten
Termin aus. Jede Person hat pro Woche einen Termin beim / bei der Coach.
2. Welches sind die Haupt-Risikofaktoren der Person (warum läuft diese Person Gefahr, die
Ausbildung abzubrechen)? o Demographische Faktoren
8% o Familienfaktoren
30% o Vergangene Erfahrungen in der Ausbildung
68% o Gegenwärtiges Benehmen in der Ausbildung, Einstellung zur Ausbildung
3% o Persönliche/Psychologische Charakteristiken
12% o Weitere. Spezifizieren Sie “Weitere”.
18%
Probleme mit Drogen, Langzeitarbeitslosigkeit, gesundheitliche Probleme,
Mobbingerfahrungen, Betreuungspflichten in der Familie
3. Woher wissen Sie über die Risikofaktoren der Person?
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

10 stop dropout o Vom TrainerInnenstaff
41% o Vom AMS
6% o Von anderen TeilnehmerInnen
3% o Weitere. Spezifizieren Sie “Weitere”.
50% von den TeilnehmerInnen selbst, Risk Detector, Eltern,
4. Wie viele Sitzungen wurden gebraucht?
10
5. Wie lang war jedes Gespräch?
50 Minuten
6. Welcher Cluster wurde von der Person zuerst ausgewählt?
Ausbildung
7. Welcher Cluster wurde von dem Psychologen/der Psychologin zuerst ausgewählt?
Stärken und Schwächen
8. Welche weiteren Cluster hat die Person ausgewählt?
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

11 stop dropout
Es wurden alle Themenbereiche behandelt
9. Welche weiteren Cluster hat der Psychologe/die Psychologin ausgewählt?
Es wurden alle Themenbereiche behandelt
10. Wie war die Person zu Beginn des Interviews (So wie Sie die Person sahen)?
(Es ist möglich Wörter wie positiv/negativ, gesellig/vorsichtig, sicher/unsicher, interessiert/uninteressiert, gesprächig/zurückhaltend, heiter/traurig zu verwenden) breite Streuung, keine besondere Gefühlsregung hervorzuheben
11. Wie reagierte die Person während des Gesprächs (Es können mehr als eine Antwort ausgewählt werden)? o gesprächig o heiter o sicher o gelangweilt o o o o zurückhaltend ehrgeizig unsicher gestresst o o o o einflussreich ignorant ruhig weitere breite Streuung, keine besondere Gefühlsregung hervorzuheben
12. Was waren die Lernerfahrungen der Person durch das Personal Profile? Was waren seine/ihre nächsten Schritte? in vielen Fällen Perspektivenwechsel hin zu einer ressourcenorientierten Betrachtung der eigenen Person
Schwächen können auch Stärken sein
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität

12 stop dropout
Lernerfolg hängt mit vielen Faktoren zusammen
Ich kann Ordnung in meinen Alltag bringen
13. War das Personal Profile für diese Person sinnvoll? o Nicht passend
3% o Nicht besonders passend
12% o Teilweise passend
22% o Passend
48% o Sehr passend
15%
Vielen Dank!
Validation Report | Blickpunkt Identität