Methodology · Part B §1.2

Two protocols, one quantitative spine, one analytical device

NECx (Narrative Evidence Collection) and HACx (Historical–Archival Collection) set against the Meso Competence Survey (MCS), integrated by the prescribed/lived competence gap. Round 1 evidence is carried to the policy layer through the Science-Meets-Politics conference and returned to the field in the Responsive Collection (ReCx).

A Sharing Circle: energy-sector workers seated together in a workplace, one narrating while colleagues and a facilitator listen

Three layers, one analytical device

The prescribed layer assembles what Europe says workers need; the lived layer captures what workers and communities actually mobilise, where competence is formed; the longitudinal layer supplies the time depth neither has. Between prescribed and lived sits what is taught, which turns the prescribed/lived distance into a decomposition — translation failure at framework level, transmission failure at provider level. For each site and territory the gap is quantified as a meso–macro gap against an O*NET-based baseline, then explained with the full mixed corpus.

Prescribed

What Europe says workers need

RQ1, RQ2

ESCO-mapped EU and national policy corpus; O*NET green-task baseline transposed through the EC×USDOL ESCO–O*NET crosswalk

WP6 · T6.2, with D6.1

Taught

What provision transmits

RQ5

Site dyads; curriculum response interval; access gradient; curricular record

WP2 · D2.3, D2.4; WP4 · D4.5; WP8 · D8.5

Lived

What workers and communities mobilise

RQ1, RQ7

NECx: 54 Sharing Circles and 130–145 biographic interviews; three researcher-presence conditions

WP2 · D2.1, D2.2; WP3 · D3.1; WP4 · D4.2

Lived, quantified

The same layer at survey scale

RQ2, RQ3

MCS: ~1,800 respondents after Round 1; TCS: ~700 in the last round, policy-fed; ETLS/EWCS/O*NET-interoperable

WP6 · D6.3; WP8 · D8.4, D8.9

Time depth

How competence was acquired, unlearned and relearned before

RQ7

HACx: situated historiography and the CNAM / Musée des Arts et Métiers curricular record

WP2 · D2.4; WP8 · D8.3

Integration

The gap, measured and explained

RQ3, RQ6

Meso–macro gap analysis; Digital–Green Competence Matrix and homogenisation test; Observatory; Competence Equity Monitor

WP8 · D8.1–D8.11

Return

Evidence carried back to policy and to the field

RQ4, RQ8, RQ9, RQ10

Science-Meets-Politics conference; feedback to the EU skills infrastructure; xEET formats with pre/post GreenComp-mapped assessment

WP5 · D5.1, D5.8; WP9 · D9.1–D9.3

Condensed from table 1.2a of the proposal. Reading the labels: an “x” after a name marks what gathers from the field (NECx, HACx, ReCx); an “x” before it marks what returns evidence to the field or to policy (xEET, xRoadmap, xGuidance, xProPol); labels without an “x” stay inside the project.

NECx

Narrative Evidence Collection

Sharing Circles and biographic interviews · WP3, WP7

  1. NECx is the IRES protocol, based on the NCMx Sharing Circle method developed and tested at Green Forum Sweden and formalised for this project in D2.2. Circles meet in venues participants already use, seated in a circle without tables: one voice at a time with a talking object, an explicit right to pass, and hospitality and shared food as part of the design. Sessions may run up to four hours if the group chooses. Where a Circle proves inappropriate, an adapted focus group running the same guide is substituted and recorded as an analytic variable.
  2. Each of the 18 meso sites hosts one four-day site-week: three Circles on successive days (5–8 participants each), followed by ~75–90-minute biographic-narrative interviews in the participant's language: 54 Circles (about 350 participants) and ~130–145 interviews, about 490 contributions and 360 hours of recordings in seven languages.
  3. Every guide separates Strand I (individual narratives: what was acquired, unlearned, relearned, and what it felt like) from Strand C (collective narratives: how the site, the trade or the community accounts for the same transition). Guides also carry appreciative prompts, vignettes for stigma-laden material and place-based mapping.
  4. Each Circle is co-facilitated by two paid community insiders, recruited locally, who recruit their own participants and moderate in the source language. Across the three Circles of a site-week the researcher progressively withdraws (table below), with two audio recorders throughout. Researchers have no access to material before full local moderation is complete.
  5. Coding uses a three-register frame (competence events; affective register; transferability claims) fixed at the M6 calibration workshop and applied in the source language. At least 15% is double-coded per register and language pair; registers whose Krippendorff's α interval falls below 0.800 are re-calibrated and recoded before analysis, 0.667 bounding tentative interpretation only.
  6. Coded segments are tagged to ESCO through ESCOX, accepted only above F1 ≥ 0.70 and routed otherwise to a human-in-the-loop fallback. The tagging serves comparability, not falsification: the OCTAB frame and the segments the extractor cannot place carry the test of the frameworks.
HACx

Historical–Archival Collection

Situated historiography and the time depth of the taught layer · WP2, WP4

  1. HACx is not a separate archival project running beside the fieldwork: it gives each site its own time, and it is delivered as a reusable protocol rather than as a national archive study.
  2. Situated historiography. At every site the trajectories collected in the Circles are read against the account the site gives of itself, and both are anchored in documentary series held locally: works-council minutes, training and apprenticeship records, plant and municipal archives, union collections, occupational risk registers and mandatory health-check protocols.
  3. The result is a site historiography: the history the site tells, the history its records carry, and the distance between the two, which is itself a finding and not an error to be corrected.
  4. The time depth of the taught layer. CNAM's holdings and those of its Musée des Arts et Métiers document how energy-related occupations were defined, taught and displaced from coal to oil, electrification, nuclear and renewables, establishing whether today's curriculum response intervals are historically fast, slow or without precedent.
  5. Each interval is reconstructed in five dated sequences: T0 inheritance; T1 problematisation; T2 public instrumentation; T3 pedagogical translation; T4 real work. HACx answers RQ7 with records where retrospection alone cannot (D2.4).
MCS

Meso Competence Survey

The quantitative spine · WP6

  1. Two instruments: the Meso Competence Survey after Round 1, answered by ~1,800 respondents (~300 per country across six countries), and the Transition Choices Survey after the policy return, sampled at ~700 in the last round from the same sites. Respondents are workers in the energy ecosystem and young people, recruited through the case sites with panel top-up.
  2. Four prescribed blocks: GreenComp- and DigComp-derived constructs (the frameworks under test); EWCS-comparable working-conditions items; validated O*NET scales; and a canon-replication module mirroring the founding green-jobs study.
  3. Interleaved with them sits the field layer: the competences Round 1 found that the classification does not name, delivered as the Competence Visibility Module (D6.4). The ETLS learning-participation battery is adopted verbatim, so results are reported as benchmarked deltas.
  4. Deposits: MCS v1 at M27, final at M46; Transition Choices Survey at M40.

Three Circle conditions: the researcher withdraws

Each site-week runs three Circles of 5–8 participants on successive days, all recorded on two audio recorders (one fixed, one itinerant with the talking object). Each country contributes three observations per condition across its three site-weeks: 18 Circles per condition across the project. Condition III is the only one in which the peer register holds the room.

I · ReM-ICO

Circle 1

Researcher moderation + insider co-moderation

II · IM-ReCO

Circle 2

Insider moderation + researcher co-moderation

III · IM+PCI

Circle 3

Insider moderation, no researcher present + post-Circle individual interviews (PCI)

Coherence is not the acceptance criterion

An account can always be made coherent by discarding what resists it. Narrative inference is therefore held to a declared demarcation criterion (D2.1). Cases that do not fit the emerging account are logged at the site-week in a discordant-case register and reported, including where the analysis ends with two mechanisms at different scales or a deviant site. The register is reviewed at MS6 (M26) before any narrative-derived category enters the Observatory, and a project reporting no discordant cases fails the criterion.

Two fieldwork rounds, one return to the policy layer

The evidence arc runs collect → treat, twice: WP3 Opening → WP4 Reading in Round 1, WP7 Return → WP8 Synthesis in Round 2. WP2 holds the apparatus fixed before the field and closes at M9; WP6 Measurement runs alongside from M10 to M28. Two pipelines run on that evidence: WP5 Translations carries the experiential arc, WP9 Policy the decisional one. WP1 (governance) and WP10 (impact) are cross-cutting.

  1. Step 01 · Calibration · M6–M7

    The M6 calibration workshop fixes the three-register coding frame and the narrative-analytic framework (MS1). The field manual, Circle protocol and dyad protocol (D2.2, WP2) are accepted at M7 (MS2), with a signed access agreement on both sides of each of the 12 Round 1 dyads. This gates all fieldwork.

  2. Step 02 · Round 1 · M8–M14

    Round 1 (WP3; task 3.1) opens two meso sites per country in all six fieldwork countries (FR · BE · LV · PL · SE · ME): 12 dyads, 36 Sharing Circles in twelve four-day site-weeks. NECx and HACx run together, with on-site survey dissemination under signed employer agreements; collection is complete at M15 (MS3). The curriculum response interval is measured at all 12 Round 1 dyads. The instrument is built in the statist family (FR, BE, SE) and tested against the post-transition CEE and Baltic regimes (PL, LV) and the accession candidate (ME). The liberal pole enters only through the macro layer – O*NET, and Canada's OaSIS through POLYGON (task 6.4) – a limit the design declares.

  3. Step 03 · Extraction gate · M19

    D6.1 (WP6) reports precision, recall and F1 for ESCO tagging on narrative text, on ~300 expert double-annotated segments per pilot language. No machine-tagged material enters the Observatory before this gate (MS4).

  4. Step 04 · Return to the policy layer · M24

    The Science-Meets-Politics (SMP) conference is held once, in Brussels at M24 (MS5), built on the Policy-Readable Handout and forward options (PRH; D4.3, IRES, M20; WP4). What can reach the field within the window is the findings, the fact of their submission and the polity's early reactions; the frameworks' considered response largely postdates the fieldwork, which is why the feedback dossiers and the Roadmap are timed after it.

  5. Step 05 · Demarcation review · M26

    The demarcation criterion is applied to the Round 1 corpus and the discordant-case register is populated, with its disposition recorded (MS6). No narrative-derived category enters the Observatory before this review.

  6. Step 06 · Round 2 · Responsive Collection · M29–M36

    The Responsive Collection (ReCx; WP7, task 7.1) returns to the same skill ecosystems and site dyads and opens a third meso site per country, only after the SMP conference (MS5): six four-day site-weeks and 18 further Circles under the same three moderation conditions, 54 in all (MS9). Each site-week closes, after its three Circles, with a recorded confrontation session: a mixed panel of returning Round 1 participants and newly recruited participants from the same catchment is shown the Round 1 findings, what was carried to the SMP conference and what came back. Response intervals are re-measured at the Round 1 dyads. Round 2 is then treated in WP8 and translated in WP9. The field manual fixes the Round 2 country order in advance, so that pre- and post-feedback observations are distributed by design.

  7. Step 07 · Integration and release · M27–M48

    MCS v1 deposited at M27 (D6.3); Observatory v1 released at M32 (D8.1, MS7); xEET replication kit and Academy model at M36 (MS8); Transition Choices Survey deposited at M40; taught layer, Digital–Green Competence Matrix, Roadmap and Competence Equity Monitor at M44 (MS10); final Observatory release as linked open data and final MCS at M46; final deposits at M48 (MS11). The Expo-Action is staged at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in the closing phase of the project.

  8. Step 08 · Open science · throughout

    Preprints for all papers, open peer review where venues permit, and pre-registration of the MCS analysis plan and the homogenisation test. The derived narrative layer (pseudonymised transcripts, coded segments, codebooks) and the survey datasets go to CESSDA/EOSC under FAIR principles; raw recordings are never deposited.

The green–digital matrix and the homogenisation test

The Digital–Green Competence Matrix (DG-CoM) crosses GreenComp and the ESCO green subset with DigComp 3.0, using both survey responses and ESCO-tagged NECx segments. On it runs a pre-registered, falsifiable test of the call’s premise that skills vary strongly by sector: where work is AI-mediated and the interface speaks the language of the workplace, competence profiles are expected to converge across sectors; where it does not, the same technology arrives as an additional literacy demand and profiles diverge. The six fieldwork countries span high-resource language settings (French, English), mid-resource (Polish, Swedish) and low-resource (Latvian, Montenegrin), and the result is reported whichever way it falls.

Declared bias: design parameters, not contaminants

Greenpulse’s field epistemology, based on the IRES NCMx Sharing Circle method developed and tested at Green Forum Sweden and formalised for this project in D2.2, inverts the standard reflex: several classic biases are treated as design parameters instead of contaminants, declared, varied and reported rather than pretended away.

Researcher-presence (ethnographic) effect

measured

The three Circle conditions run at the same site, with the same insiders and the same guide, and differ only in who enters the room, so the researcher-presence effect on narrative depth and variety is measured directly: 18 Circles per condition across the project (task 3.3; D4.1 for Round 1, consolidated in D7.1).

Similarity & selection bias

deliberate

Insider recruitment narrows local variance so that personal and affective enunciation becomes possible; comparison is then made across sites and regimes rather than within a synthetic national middle.

Language bias

insider moderation

Circles are moderated in the source language by local insiders, and coding is applied in the source language by the national coders present in the field.

Hawthorne & recording effects

addressed and reported

Recording is necessary. An acclimatisation period, two audio recorders (one fixed, one itinerant, passed with the talking object), the insider-moderation condition, and reflexive memos and debriefs after every session address it, and all of these are reported.

Availability heuristic

displaced

Researchers have no access to material before full local moderation is complete, which displaces the availability heuristic from the analyst to the field. Three Circles on successive days limit political, seasonal and sectoral volatility.

Participant safety

governs throughout

SOGIESC-related and status-related content is elicited only in individual settings, never in Circles, under the consent architecture of task 1.2, and is reported in aggregate only.

Data, ethics and AI use

  • Raw audio and video are working material, not deposited data: recorded only under explicit oral and written consent, held by the collecting beneficiary and destroyed at the retention horizon fixed in the Data Management Plan. What is deposited is the derived layer, with direct and indirect identifiers removed.
  • A Data Protection Impact Assessment is completed before any collection begins, and research-ethics clearance is a hard gate on fieldwork. The COREQ checklist governs reporting of the qualitative strand.
  • Declared AI uses are ESCOX/LLM-assisted taxonomy extraction and machine-translation support in coding. Inference is self-hosted, so no personal data reaches a third-party model provider, and every AI-derived coding that enters analysis is human-verified.
  • IRES runs an open-weight European model locally as an assistant that proposes where a narrative segment bundles green and digital competences, for human coders to confirm or reject (TRL 2 to TRL 3). Its readings are returned to participants, labelled as machine-generated, so that people can contest how the machine read their accounts.

Lineage and reading

Lineage named in the proposal

Sharing circle

Lavallée 2009

The Indigenous research lineage of the Circle; its transposition to European industrial settings is not established and is tested here.

Blended circle / focus group

Hunt & Young 2021

The adapted focus group substituted, with the same guide, where a Circle proves culturally or institutionally inappropriate.

Change Laboratory · ergology

Virkkunen & Newnham 2013

Named as the European analogues of the Circle.

Clinique de l'activité

Clot & Kostulski 2011

The distinction between prescribed task and real activity, developed at CNAM, behind the prescribed/lived gap.

Narrative science

Morgan 2017, 2022

Narrative as an instrument of scientific reasoning, and the reason coherence is not the acceptance criterion.

Background reading · narrative interview methods

Further qualitative methods behind the thinking; they are background reading and are not named in the proposal.

BNIM

Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method

Wengraf

Opens the interplay between individual agency and societal structure through life-moment narratives.

Life History

Life History Narrative

Captures the chronological historicisation of the self.

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry

Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987

Its four markers — what is · what might be · what should be · what can be.

Métissage

Métissage — braiding accounts across difference

Donald, 2009 · Glissant · Zuss

Braided autobiographical accounts, conjoint identities, artifacts, places and metaphorical thinking — attentive to where institutionally powerful discourse collides with a respondent's own representations.

Narrative Inquiry

Narrative Inquiry

Clandinin & Connelly

Experience told and retold over time.

Literature & sources

The first group lists key references cited in Part B §1.1–1.2 of the proposal, in its own wording. The groups after it are background reading.

Cited in the proposal (Part B §1.1–1.2)

  • Bianchi G., Pisiotis U., Cabrera Giráldez M.; Bacigalupo M., Punie Y. (eds) (2022), GreenComp – The European sustainability competence framework, EUR 30955 EN, Publications Office, JRC128040, DOI 10.2760/13286.

    The framework under test: by design “a non-prescriptive reference”, with no assessable learning outcomes (§1.1.5)

  • Cedefop (2026), Beyond skills development: unleashing human potential. First findings from Cedefop's European Training and Learning Survey, Cedefop ref. 129, Publications Office, DOI 10.2801/9704111.

    The European Training and Learning Survey: its learning-participation battery is adopted verbatim in the Meso Competence Survey for benchmarking (§1.2.4)

  • Garattini L., Mota J. de M. A. (2026), “The inchoative failure of climate governance: Artificial Immanence and the ontological challenge of the post-COP30 Amazon”, Novos Cadernos NAEA 29(3), 201–230 (quotation p. 219). DOI 10.18542/ncn.v29i3.20529

    A system that refuses feedback-as-information receives feedback-as-catastrophe: why the return of evidence is built into the design (§1.1)

  • Garattini L. (2026), “Somatic Politics: Beyond Capacity Building Traps: Lessons from the Gender Reversed Bootcamp in Madagascar”, in Gonfroid A., Bañón R. (eds), Advancing Women’s Political Participation and Empowerment in Africa – Collection of Articles 2, European Network of Political Foundations (ENoP) and Hanns Seidel Foundation, Brussels, June 2026, 32–51, ISBN 978-2-9603925-2-4.

    Source of the Gender Reversed Bootcamp (GRBC) method: statistical translation of documented indicators into experiential constraints (§1.2.1, §1.2.7)

  • European Commission (DG EMPL) and USDOL, *The crosswalk between ESCO and O*NET*, technical report, December 2022. O*NET database CC BY 4.0, USDOL/ETA.

    The official ESCO–O*NET crosswalk: 3,008 ESCO occupations mapped to 923 O*NET occupations, with no green or competence concept; carries the O*NET baseline (§1.2.1)

  • Morgan M.S. (2017), “Narrative ordering and explanation”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62, 86–97; and Morgan M.S., “Narrative: A General-Purpose Technology for Science”, in Morgan, Hajek and Berry (eds), Narrative Science, Cambridge University Press, 2022, 3–30, DOI 10.1017/9781009004329.002.

    Narrative as an instrument of scientific reasoning, and “too easy coherence is not a virtue”: the basis of the demarcation criterion (§1.2.3)

  • Eurofound (2026), European Working Conditions Survey 2024: Overview report, Publications Office, DOI 10.2806/8618665.

    Source of the EWCS-comparable working-conditions items in the Meso Competence Survey (§1.2.4)

  • Vona F., Marin G., Consoli D., Popp D. (2018), “Environmental Regulation and Green Skills”, JAERE 5(4), 713–753, DOI 10.1086/698859; and Consoli D., Marin G., Marzucchi A., Vona F. (2016), “Do green jobs differ from non-green jobs in terms of skills and human capital?”, Research Policy 45, 1046–1060, DOI 10.1016/j.respol.2016.02.007.

    The canonical green-skills measures, mirrored in the survey's canon-replication module (§1.1.6, §1.2.4)

  • Chen Z., Marin G., Popp D., Vona F. (2020), “Green Stimulus in a Post-pandemic Recovery: the Role of Skills for a Resilient Recovery”, Environmental and Resource Economics 76, 901–911, DOI 10.1007/s10640-020-00464-7.

    The canon's authors on why green-skill requirements cannot yet be computed for Europe (§1.1.6)

  • Marin G., Vona F. (2019), “Climate policies and skill-biased employment dynamics: Evidence from EU countries”, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 98, 102253, DOI 10.1016/j.jeem.2019.102253.

    EU sector-level (NACE) evidence used as a benchmark (§1.1.6, §1.2.4)

  • Dierdorff et al. (2009), Greening of the World of Work, National Center for O*NET Development; green designations dropped by 2019, 2022 Green Topics successor retired.

    The archived O*NET green-task designations behind the occupation-level baseline (§1.2.1)

  • European Commission (2022), Green Skills and Knowledge Concepts: Labelling the ESCO classification, ESCO, January 2022 – 571 green-labelled concepts.

    ESCO's green concept labels (§1.1.6, §1.2.1)

  • European Commission (2025), ESCO dataset v1.2.1, 10 December 2025, and v1.2.0→v1.2.1 change log (green scheme: 629 released concepts; churn +110/−72).

    The version of ESCO pinned locally for all project lookups (§1.2.1, §1.2.8)

  • Busemeyer M.R., Carstensen M.B., Kemmerling A., Tosun J. (2025), “Foundations for a green economy: how institutions shape green skills”, npj Climate Action 4:27, DOI 10.1038/s44168-025-00234-5.

    Regime type and the production of green skills, left as “a promising question for future research” (§1.1.6, §1.2.2)

  • ESCOX (esco-skill-extractor), Software Impacts 25 (2025), 100772, DOI 10.1016/j.simpa.2025.100772 – SKILLAB GA 101132663.

    The ESCOX extractor, which the project extends from job-market text to narrative corpora (§1.2.4)

  • Busemeyer M.R., Trampusch C. (eds) (2012), The Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, DOI 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599431.001.0001.

    The skill-formation regime typology behind the seven-country design (§1.2.2)

  • Kavargyris D.-C., Georgiou K., Angelis L. (2026), “Do we have an agreement? A comparative analysis of the ESCOX skill extraction tool with expert-labeled EU labour market data”, Applied Sciences 16(17), 8388. DOI 10.3390/app16178388

    The authors' benchmark of ESCOX against expert-labelled vacancy data, extended in the validation sub-study (§1.2.4)

  • Sandberg J. (2000), “Understanding human competence at work: an interpretative approach”, Academy of Management Journal 43(1), 9–25. DOI 10.2307/1556383

    Competence as a way of understanding work: the ontological register (§1.2.1)

  • Sandberg J., Pinnington A.H. (2009), “Professional competence as ways of being: an existential ontological perspective”, Journal of Management Studies 46(7), 1138–1170. DOI 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00845.x

    Competence as a way of being (§1.2.1)

  • Dillon S., Craig C. (2022), “Storylistening: how narrative evidence can improve public reasoning about climate change”, WIREs Climate Change 14(2), e812. DOI 10.1002/wcc.812

    Narrative evidence and storylistening, cited for NECx (§1.2.1)

  • Delamare Le Deist F., Winterton J. (2005), “What is competence?”, Human Resource Development International 8(1), 27–46. DOI 10.1080/1367886042000338227

    The holistic competence typology the OCTAB registers start from (§1.2.1)

  • Winterton J., Delamare Le Deist F., Stringfellow E. (2006), Typology of knowledge, skills and competences: clarification of the concept and prototype, Cedefop ref. 64, Publications Office.

    The Cedefop typology of knowledge, skills and competences (§1.2.1)

  • Cheetham G., Chivers G. (1996), “Towards a holistic model of professional competence”, Journal of European Industrial Training 20(5), 20–30. DOI 10.1108/03090599610119692

    The holistic model of professional competence (§1.2.1)

  • Illeris K. (2015), “The development of a comprehensive and coherent theory of learning”, European Journal of Education 50(1), 29–40. DOI 10.1111/ejed.12103

    The incentive dimension restored as the affective register (§1.2.1)

  • Clot Y., Kostulski K. (2011), “Intervening for transforming: the horizon of action in the clinic of activity”, Theory & Psychology 21(5), 681–696. DOI 10.1177/0959354311419253

    Prescribed task and real activity: the clinique de l'activité developed at CNAM (§1.2.1)

  • Dejours C. (2006), “Subjectivity, work, and action”, Critical Horizons 7(1), 45–62. DOI 10.1163/156851606779308161

    The gap between prescribed and real work as the place where competence is formed (§1.2.1)

  • Passeron J.-C., Revel J. (eds) (2005), Penser par cas, Éditions de l'EHESS, Paris, DOI 10.4000/books.editionsehess.19901.

    The prescribed/lived gap constructed as a composite object (§1.2.1)

  • Cedefop (2026), The impact of learning-outcomes-based curricula on work and practice-based IVET, Cedefop research paper, Publications Office, DOI 10.2801/9049937.

    Intended, achieved and realised learning outcomes: the taught layer the design inserts (§1.2.1)

  • Bruner J. (1991), “The narrative construction of reality”, Critical Inquiry 18(1), 1–21, DOI 10.1086/448619.

    Narrativising as an irreducible mode of ordering experience (§1.2.3)

  • Czarniawska B. (2004), Narratives in Social Science Research, Sage, London.

    Narrative fitted to social processes rather than to states (§1.2.3)

  • Lavallée L.F. (2009), “Practical application of an Indigenous research framework and two qualitative Indigenous research methods”, International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8(1), 21–40. DOI 10.1177/160940690900800103

    The Indigenous research lineage of the Sharing Circle (§1.2.3)

  • Hunt S., Young N.L. (2021), “Blending Indigenous sharing circle and Western focus group methodologies for the study of Indigenous children's health”, International Journal of Qualitative Methods 20. DOI 10.1177/16094069211015112

    The adapted focus group substituted where a Circle proves inappropriate (§1.2.3)

  • Virkkunen J., Newnham D.S. (2013), The Change Laboratory: a tool for collaborative development of work and education, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam. DOI 10.1007/978-94-6209-326-3

    The Change Laboratory, named with ergology as a European analogue (§1.2.3)

  • Hayes A.F., Krippendorff K. (2007), “Answering the call for a standard reliability measure for coding data”, Communication Methods and Measures 1(1), 77–89, DOI 10.1080/19312450709336664.

    Krippendorff's α, with acceptance at α ≥ 0.70 for double-coded material (§1.2.3)

  • Tong A., Sainsbury P., Craig J. (2007), “Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ): a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups”, International Journal for Quality in Health Care 19(6), 349–357, DOI 10.1093/intqhc/mzm042.

    The COREQ checklist, which governs reporting of the qualitative strand (§1.2.8)

  • European Commission (2026), Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026–2027, 5. Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society, topic HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-TRANSFO-07 “Fostering competences for the green transition”, pp. 144–147.

    The topic text: HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-TRANSFO-07

Background reading · Narrative science & narrative epistemology

  • Morgan, M.S., Hajek, K.M. & Berry, D.J. (eds.) (2022) — Narrative Science: Reasoning, Representing and Knowing since 1800. Cambridge UP

    The ERC programme (AdG 694732, LSE 2016–2021) and its capstone — the calibrated narratology core of the apparatus

  • Morgan, M.S. (2022) — 'Narrative: A General-Purpose Technology for Science', ch. 1

    Narrative as a general-purpose technology for science: colligation, configuring, and the demarcation between an explanatory narrative and a merely coherent story

  • Morgan, M.S. (2017) — 'Narrative Ordering and Explanation', Studies in History & Philosophy of Science 62: 86–97

    Narrative ordering · juxtaposing · the puzzle/switch element

  • Morgan, M.S. (2026) — 'Travelling Tales?', LSE Public Policy Review 4(1):7

    Insider vs outsider narratives · tellability · particular-yet-generic — the travel-of-competence argument

  • Hajek, K.M. (2022) — 'What is narrative in narrative science?', ch. 2 (+ wp002, psychological case writing)

    Narrative-identification protocol · story vs discourse

  • Berry, D.J. (2022 / wp001) — Narrative positioning, ch. 16

    Chronicle → genealogy → narrative · field-positioning, applied to policy-discourse analysis

  • Paskins, M. (2022 / wp004) — Breakdown narratives

    Case-typology for failure/disruption — fits transition-disruption documentation

  • Crasnow, S. (2017 / 2022, ch. 11) — Process tracing & causal-claim defence

    Translates narrative inference into the language reviewers expect

  • Wise, M.N. (2017 / 2022 / wp003) — 'Cat's cradle' diagrams; narrative form of simulations

    Relational visualisation for opaque causal mechanisms

  • Jajdelska, E. (2022, ch. 18) — Narrative performativity & conceptual remodelling

    Causation built at narration · reconceptualization (Churchland/Boden) · affect in narrative

  • Bonnin, T. (wp005) — Eukaryote-origin narratives

    Narrative-Science working paper · evidence-binding in deep-time science

  • Dillon, S., Craig, C. & Tasker, A. (2026) — 'From Storytelling … to Storylistening and Narrative Evidence', LSE PPR 4(1):5

    Storylistening · the four cognitive functions of narrative evidence

  • Anthology I — Case Book of Narrative Science (2019), eds. Paskins & Morgan, LSE

    Worked narrative-science cases

Background reading · Individuation, relation, dialogue

  • Simondon, G. — L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information (ILFI, 1958 / Millon 2005)

    Individuation · transduction · disparation · metastability — competence as operation, not structure

  • Simondon, G. — L'individuation psychique et collective (IPC, Aubier 1989 / 2007)

    The transindividual — why competence forms between people; emotion as the germ of the collective

  • Simondon, G. — Du mode d'existence des objets techniques (MEOT, Aubier 1958 / 2012)

    Analogy as identity of operations vs resemblance as identity of structures · the allagmatic

  • Simondon, G. — Communication et information (Les éditions de la Transparence, 2010)

    Information as the formula of individuation · the communicational being of machines

  • Jacques, F. — Dialogiques: recherches logiques sur le dialogue (PUF, 1979)

    Interlocution · co-reference · the person constituted in address — the relational stake of the circle

  • Ricoeur, P. — La métaphore vive (Seuil, 1975) · Temps et récit (1983–85) · Soi-même comme un autre (1990)

    Live metaphor as semantic innovation · emplotment · narrative identity — meaning made anew, the self constituted in the telling

  • Leonelli, S. — Philosophy of data-centric science; 'data journeys'

    How data travels and is re-used across contexts without losing provenance: background for the provenance chain from narrative segment to ESCO to survey

Background reading · EU competence frameworks & VET

  • Council of the EU (2018) — Recommendation of 22 May 2018 on key competences for lifelong learning (2018/C 189/01)

    The foundational competence ontology: knowledge, skills and attitudes

  • GreenComp — The European sustainability competence framework (JRC, KJNA30955) + GreenComp in Practice (EC, 2024)

    12 sustainability competences · the relational/values competences taxonomies name but cannot measure

  • DigComp 3.0 (JRC144121, 2025) + DigComp 2.0 (JRC101254) + DigComp at Work + Mapping DigComp to ESCO

    21 digital competences · the published competence→ESCO crosswalk template (Zenodo 10674444)

  • EntreComp (JRC, EUR27939) + EntreComp at Work + EntreComp Playbook

    Competence as value-creating action · the LoopMe quant↔qual loop · the Spider diagram

  • LifeComp (JRC120911) + LifeComp into Action

    Personal · social · learning-to-learn competences · 'collaboration is impossible outside group work' — the nearest cousin to NECx

  • ESCO — European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations classification (EC)

    The European classification that coded segments are tagged to through ESCOX

  • 'Competences at once' — scaffold deck-of-cards technique (JRC)

    Vygotskian unbundle/re-bundle · the 'Good with' cross-reference

  • Cinque, V., Carretero, S. & Napierala, J. (2021) — Non-cognitive skills and other related concepts (JRC working paper)

    Conceptual map of soft/socio-emotional/non-cognitive skills · the admitted measurement/identification failure

Background reading · EU skills evidence & labour-market data

  • Cedefop (2023) — Skills in transition: the way to 2035

    Energy among the sectors most reshaped by Green-Deal skills demand

  • Cedefop — Second European Skills and Jobs Survey (ESJS2, 2021/2023)

    Cedefop's worker survey on skill use and mismatch: background to the mismatch vocabulary. The Meso Competence Survey itself is benchmarked on the ETLS learning-participation battery and on EWCS working-conditions items

  • Pouliakas, K. & Santangelo, G. (eds.) (2026) — Human-centred digital transitions and skill mismatches (Cedefop WP 28)

    ESJS-based · skill underutilisation & overqualification — the 'overskill' construct

  • Eurostat — Adult Education Survey 2022 (participation)

    39.5% of adults 25–64 trained over 12 months excluding guided on-the-job training — the measure that monitors the 60%-by-2030 target (46.6% counting it in)

  • Eurostat — Labour Force Survey, adult learning (2025)

    13.7% of adults 25–64 in training in the last 4 weeks — the monthly snapshot, not the target indicator

  • Eurostat — Adult Education Survey 2022 (reasons for non-participation)

    42.4% neither trained nor wanted to; 75.9% of them cite no perceived need — the meso-level symptom of the register gap

  • Flash Eurobarometer 529 — skills shortages in SMEs (2023)

    95% of SMEs value having workers with the right skills (82% very / 13% moderately) — the belief side of the participation paradox

  • Baltina, L. & Hogarth, T. (eds.) (2024) — Re-thinking Europe's Skill Needs (Quaderno 67, Fondazione G. Brodolini)

    Post-European-Year-of-Skills reflections · PES profiling · LLL participation

  • JRC (2022) — Towards a green & digital future: key requirements for the twin transitions

    Background EU-policy reading for the Digital–Green Competence Matrix (DG-CoM, KER5), which crosses GreenComp and the ESCO green subset with DigComp 3.0

  • SkillsPULSE D2.1 & D2.2 (2025) · OSKA (Estonia) · UK Unit for Future Skills

    Shortage / internal-gap / over-skilling vocabulary (SkillsPULSE) · sectoral-foresight comparators

Background reading · Energy-sector narrative evidence

  • Moezzi, M., Janda, K.B. & Rotmann, S. (2017) — Stories, narratives, and storytelling in energy & climate research, Energy Research & Social Science 31

    Methodological flagship for energy-sector narrative evidence

  • Towers, S., Kajitani, Y., Chabay, I. & Okada, N. (2022) — Narratives, energy policy and disasters (Hokkaido + Texas grid failures)

    Direct energy-disruption case methodology

  • Koch, L., Gorris, P. & Pahl-Wostl, C. (2021) — Narratives, narrations and social structure in environmental governance, Global Environmental Change 69

    Bridges narrative evidence to policy translation

  • Helgeson, J., Glynn, P. & Chabay, I. (2022) — Narratives of sustainability in digital media (DONS observatory), Futures 142

    A narrative observatory built on digital media

  • Lynall, G. (2022) — Imagining Solar Energy; solar-narrative case studies (Cambridge Companion to Literature & Climate)

    Direct energy-sector precedent for narrative-evidence on green transitions

  • Sleigh, C. (2022) — Carbon-economy decline narratives

    Precedent on energy-decline and just-transition cases

  • Narratives of Low-Carbon Transitions (edited volume)

    Socio-technical transition narratives — context for the anchor regions

Background reading · AI mediation, LLMs & the digital workplace

  • Besley, T., Brzezinski, A. & Fazzio, J. (2026) — Economic Policy Narratives: A Taxonomy and Application, LSE PPR 4(1):4

    LLM stance classification of 360k speeches: a precedent for the human-verified, machine-assisted coding Greenpulse declares (ESCOX tagging; the DG-CoM assistant)

  • Suchman, L. (2007) — Human-Machine Reconfigurations, Cambridge UP

    Situated-action framework for worker-machine interaction

  • Brynjolfsson, E., Li, D. & Raymond, L. (2023) — Generative AI at Work, NBER WP 31161

    Empirical LLM-in-workplace productivity effects

  • Crawford, K. (2021) — Atlas of AI, Yale UP

    Energy + labour + extractive geography of AI — the green-digital tensions

  • Bender, E.M., Gebru, T. et al. (2021) — On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots, FAccT

    Whose-narratives-get-encoded critique

  • Strubell, E., Ganesh, A. & McCallum, A. (2019) — Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP, ACL

    AI's own energy footprint

Background reading · Qualitative, narrative & power-reflexive methodology

  • Okoko, J.M., Tunison, S. & Walker, K.D. (eds.) (2023) — Varieties of Qualitative Research Methods, Springer

    75-method single volume, including the Indigenous-methods cluster

  • Donald, D.T. (2012) — Indigenous Métissage: a decolonizing research sensibility, Int. J. Qualitative Studies in Education 25(5)

    Fort · pentimento · braiding — surfacing power asymmetry between dominant and respondent representations

  • Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999) — Decolonizing Methodologies, Zed Books

    Foundational reflexive-methodology source on research power relations

  • Ermine, W. (2007) — The ethical space of engagement, Indigenous Law Journal 6(1)

    The ethical space of engagement between research and community

  • Donald, D. (2009) — Forms of life and forms of identity: Indigenous Métissage

    The braided-account markers: conjoint identities, artifacts, places, metaphorical thinking

  • Glissant, É. (1989) — Caribbean Discourse / Poétique de la Relation

    Creolisation & relation — the créole lineage behind Indigenous Métissage's hybridity

  • Zuss, M. (1997) — Strategies of representation: autobiographical métissage

    The 'braided' nature of autobiographical accounts in the métissage protocol

  • Mead, M. (1928) — Coming of Age in Samoa

    A classic reference point for the observer effect that the moderation-withdrawal design measures

  • Wengraf, T. (2001) — Qualitative Research Interviewing (BNIM), Sage

    Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method — agency × societal structure in life-moment narratives

  • Cooperrider, D.L. & Srivastva, S. (1987) — Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life

    The four markers (what is / might be / should be / can be), re-tuned from collective to dialogical

  • Clandinin, D.J. & Connelly, F.M. (2000) — Narrative Inquiry, Jossey-Bass

    Experience told and retold over time

Background reading · EU place-based doctrine & the instrumentation gap

  • Bianchi, G. (ed.) (2024) — Innovation for place-based transformations: ACTIONbook, practices and tools. Publications Office of the EU, EUR 31813 EN, JRC135826, doi:10.2760/234679

    Four volumes (+ FR translation) from the Partnerships for Regional Innovation pilot — the Commission's own doctrine on territorial transformation. Method stated in two sentences; no sampling frame, no consent procedure, no limitations section; ‘place-based’ 225 times, ‘meso’ not once

  • Bianchi, G. (ed.) (2024) — Collection of practices, EUR 31814 EN, doi:10.2760/17335

    32 practices contributed by the territories themselves (‘we are extremely thankful to the territories, the people, who provided their stories’), ranked on a three-level intensity scale the report never defines; one effect figure in the whole volume, self-reported and unsourced

  • Pontikakis, D. et al.; Bianchi, G. (ed.) (2024) — Tools for ACTION, EUR 31816 EN, doi:10.2760/404250

    74 tools: 28 produce their result by deliberation among participants already convened; four collect new primary data — on noise and odour, digital competence in schools, industrial installations, and products in regulatory sandboxes. None observes a work practice or records a worker’s account of their occupation

  • Bianchi, G., Testa, F., Boiral, O. & Iraldo, F. (2022) — Organizational Learning for Environmental Sustainability, Organization & Environment 35(1): 103–129, doi:10.1177/1086026621998744

    The academic counterpart to the doctrine, by the same lead author: the ‘interpreting’ phase as the moment of collective sense-making — what a Sharing Circle institutes — and a stated call for narrative research on organisational stories

  • Bianchi, G. & Testa, F. (2022) — How can SMEs effectively embed environmental sustainability?, Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility 31(3): 634–648, doi:10.1111/beer.12432

    Longitudinal four-wave design across a European project cycle; cognitive frames shown to change rather than to be traits. Assumes a shared organisational frame while interviewing one informant per firm — the dispersion a Circle can measure

  • Cappellano, F., Matti, C. & Vidmar, M. (2026) — Building anticipatory capacity for transformative resilience, Technology in Society 88: 103453, doi:10.1016/j.techsoc.2026.103453

    Helsinki-Uusimaa, Scotland and the Basque Country compared on six interviews; three analytical pillars derived through ‘community-of-practice-based validation’ at practitioner workshops rather than systematic review

  • Georgakaki, A. & Piela, K.; Black, C. (ed.) (2026) — Building Resilient and Robust Clean Energy Supply Chains, EUR 40805, JRC147825, doi:10.2760/5640390

    EC-JRC × IEA-EGRD workshop proceedings on Europe’s energy-security agenda: the measurement programme is customs codes, certificates, satellite imagery and ownership structures — the workforce that will run the relocated capacity has no gauge

  • Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U. & Cabrera Giraldez, M. (2022) — GreenComp, JRC128040

    Cross-listed here: one author links the competence framework, the territorial doctrine and a published body of organisational fieldwork. The gap is a property of how policy frameworks are produced, not of the people who write them