Excellence §1.2.1 · Research design
Prescribed, taught, lived: one gap, measured
What Europe says workers need, what training provides, what workers and communities actually do — and the time depth of each. The distance between them is the project's single analytical device.
Greenpulse is a proposal to Horizon Europe topic HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-TRANSFO-07, submitted successfully and under evaluation. Everything on this page describes planned work, not a funded project.
The stages below are carried by a work plan built on two pipelines, not on one cycle run twice. The evidence chain runs WP2 → WP3 → WP4 → WP7 → WP8, with WP6 computing the distance between what the frameworks prescribe and what the field lives. On that one chain, WP5 identifies and reduces the gap the field data carry, through original vocational formats measured pre/post on GreenComp; WP9 identifies and reduces the gap between those who decide and those concerned, opening it at the Science-Meets-Politics conference at month 24, where the response of the polity is recorded as data and observed again in Round 2. Both run on the same field protocol. WP1 and WP10 hold coordination and communication around them.
The analytical device
What is prescribed and what is done never coincide
- The prescribed/lived gap. From French work analysis — tâche prescrite / activité réelle, and the clinique de l’activité developed at CNAM. The gap between what is prescribed and what is actually done is where competence is formed.
- Three layers, one device. A macro layer (what Europe says workers need), a meso layer (what workers and communities mobilise) and a longitudinal layer (time depth), integrated by one measure: the distance between prescribed and lived competence, site by site.
- Measured, then explained. The gap is a composite object: a distance the frameworks predict should not exist, whose explanation needs series not usually read together — policy texts, survey, narratives, the taught layer and the archives.
- Energy made, embodied, retired. Expansion asks workers to acquire, conversion to relearn, closure to unlearn and transfer; the frameworks are written as though the transition only expands. The 18 sites in six countries cover all three moments, across skill-formation regimes that act as the analytical control.
- 01
Prescribed · What Europe says workers need
The frameworks, made computable
- Instrument ·
- ESCO-mapped EU and national policy corpus; O*NET green-task baseline transposed through the EC×USDOL ESCO–O*NET crosswalk
- Produced in ·
- WP6 Task 6.2, with WP2
- Deliverables ·
- D6.1
- Used next by ·
- Gap computation (Task 8.4); Observatory (Task 8.1)
- Answers ·
- RQ1, RQ2
The EU's competence frameworks are built by expert consensus: GreenComp drew on about 75 experts. They have never been tested against evidence from the places where competence is formed. Greenpulse treats them as what they are, strictly: hypotheses about competence.
The prescribed layer turns them into an expected profile for each fieldwork territory. An ESCO-mapped corpus of EU and national green-transition policy is anchored on ESCO's green concept scheme (dataset v1.2.1, 629 released concepts, against 571 in 2022), queried against a version-pinned local instance. An occupation-level green-task baseline is computed on the archived ONET designations and transposed to EU-LFS occupational structures through the official ESCO–ONET crosswalk.
Machine tagging uses the open-source ESCOX extractor from the CL2 project SKILLAB, reused rather than rebuilt. It is accepted only above a pre-set F1 ≥ 0.70, with precision and recall reported in D6.1; no machine-tagged material enters the Observatory before that gate (MS4, month 19).
- 02
Taught · What provision transmits
Site dyads and the curriculum response interval
- Instrument ·
- Site dyads; curriculum response interval; access gradient; curricular record
- Produced in ·
- WP2 Tasks 2.1, 2.4, 2.5; WP4 Task 4.3; WP8 Task 8.2
- Deliverables ·
- D2.3, D2.4, D4.5, D8.5
- Used next by ·
- Gap decomposition (Task 8.4); Equity Monitor (Task 8.7); Roadmap (Task 9.3)
- Answers ·
- RQ5
The layer the architecture inserts. Between what is prescribed and what is lived sits what is taught. Adding it turns the prescribed/lived distance into a decomposition: translation failure at framework level, transmission failure at provider level. That is what makes the resulting guidance usable by a training institution.
Sites are opened in dyads. Every energy workplace is paired with the provision serving the same travel-to-work area: the vocational centre, works school, adult-training provider or sectoral fund that would have to teach whatever the workplace has started doing. The pair, not the plant, is the unit of observation.
The curriculum response interval is the time between an observed change of process at the workplace and a corresponding change in that provision, reconstructed in five dated sequences (inheritance, problematisation, public instrumentation, pedagogical translation, real work). It is measured at the 12 Round 1 dyads (D4.5, month 24) and re-measured in Round 2 (D7.1). The instrument is built in the statist regimes (FR · BE · SE), where public authority still holds the levers that move a curriculum, and tested in PL, LV and ME. The liberal pole enters only through the macro layer – the O*NET baseline, carried to Canada's OaSIS by POLYGON (task 6.4) – a limit the design declares rather than hides. Published as a protocol any region can re-run (KER7).
- 03
Lived · What workers and communities mobilise
NECx — Sharing Circles and biographic interviews
- Instrument ·
- NECx: 54 Sharing Circles and 130–145 biographic interviews; three researcher-presence conditions
- Produced in ·
- WP3 Tasks 3.1–3.3; WP4 Task 4.1; framework and field manual from WP2 Tasks 2.2–2.3
- Deliverables ·
- D2.1, D2.2; D3.1; D4.1, D4.2, D4.6
- Used next by ·
- ESCOX tagging (Task 6.2); discordant-case register (Task 8.3); Expo-Action (Task 5.4)
- Answers ·
- RQ1, RQ7
The Narrative Evidence Collection (NECx) records the competences workers and communities actually use, in their own voices and across five registers: ontological, cognitive, technical, affective and behavioural (OCTAB). It is based on the IRES NCMx method developed and tested at Green Forum Sweden, and formalised for this project in D2.2. Its transposition to European industrial settings is not established; it is tested here.
Each of the 18 sites hosts one four-day site-week of three Circles on successive days, 5–8 participants each, followed by individual biographic interviews in the participant's language: 54 Circles, about 350 participants, ~130–145 interviews. Round 1 runs M8–M14 at 12 sites in six countries (36 Circles); Round 2 adds one site per country (M29–M36). Each guide separates individual accounts (Strand I) from the collective account of the site, trade or community (Strand C).
Across the three Circles of a site-week the researcher progressively withdraws, from researcher moderation to insider moderation with no researcher present, so the design measures what the researcher's presence does to what people say.
Coherence is not the acceptance criterion. An account can always be made coherent by discarding what resists it. Every narrative finding must pass a stated demarcation criterion, and cases that do not fit are logged and reported in a discordant-case register. A project reporting no discordant cases fails the criterion (KER8).
- 04
Lived, quantified · The same competences, counted
Two surveys — MCS and TCS
- Instrument ·
- MCS: ~1,800 respondents after Round 1; TCS: ~700 in the last round, policy-fed; ETLS/EWCS/O*NET-interoperable
- Produced in ·
- WP6 Tasks 6.1, 6.3; WP8 Task 8.5
- Deliverables ·
- D6.3, D6.4, D8.4, D8.9
- Used next by ·
- Gap computation (Task 8.4); Matrix (Task 8.6); GRBC (Task 5.3)
- Answers ·
- RQ2, RQ3
Two instruments, not two waves. The Meso Competence Survey (MCS) follows Round 1; the Transition Choices Survey (TCS) follows the policy return. The second asks a different question and is reported as its own object. The MCS is answered by ~1,800 respondents (~300 per country across six countries); the TCS is 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.
Cedefop's European Training and Learning Survey battery is adopted verbatim, so results can be benchmarked against published European values. Alongside the framework-derived items sits a field layer: the competences Round 1 found that the European classification does not name. Each respondent receives a Competence Visibility Report showing which of their competences the classification can and cannot name.
MCS v1 is deposited at month 27 and in final form at month 46; the TCS at month 40 — FAIR, via CESSDA and EOSC (KER3).
- 05
Time depth · How long the gap has been forming
HACx — situated historiography
- Instrument ·
- HACx: situated historiography and the CNAM / Musée curricular record
- Produced in ·
- WP2 Task 2.5; WP4 Task 4.2
- Deliverables ·
- D2.4, D8.3
- Used next by ·
- Dates the response intervals; Expo-Action scenography
- Answers ·
- RQ7
The Historical–Archival Collection (HACx) gives each site its own time. At every site, workers' accounts are dated against the site's own records: works-council minutes, training and apprenticeship files, plant and municipal archives, union collections, occupational risk registers and health-check protocols. The result is a site historiography: what the site says about itself, what its records show, and the distance between the two — itself a finding, not an error.
CNAM's holdings and those of its Musée des Arts et Métiers document how energy occupations were defined, taught and displaced from coal to oil, electrification, nuclear and renewables. They show whether today's curriculum response intervals are historically fast, slow or without precedent. HACx is delivered as a reusable protocol, not as a national archive study.
- 06
Integration · The gap, measured and explained
Observatory, Equity Monitor, Matrix, integrated assessment
- Instrument ·
- Meso–macro gap analysis; Digital–Green Competence Matrix (DG-CoM) and homogenisation test; Observatory v1 & v2; Competence Equity Monitor (CEM); integrated assessment handout (IAH)
- Produced in ·
- WP4 Task 4.4; WP8 Tasks 8.1–8.9
- Deliverables ·
- D4.3, D4.4; D8.1–D8.11
- Used next by ·
- SMP (Task 9.1); feedback dossiers (Task 9.2); Green Transition Academies (Task 5.1)
- Answers ·
- RQ3, RQ6
For each site and territory, the distance between prescribed and lived competence profiles is quantified as a meso–macro gap and then explained with the full corpus: policy texts, survey, narratives, the taught layer and the archival record, read together.
The Meso Competence Observatory (KER1) holds the result, organised by skill-formation regime so findings transfer by regime type and not only by country; v1 at month 32, once the extraction gate and the narrative demarcation review are passed, final release at month 46. The Competence Equity Monitor (KER2) disaggregates competence access and gain by WYUG+SOGIESC and life-course stage, against the catchment population of each dyad.
The Digital–Green Competence Matrix (KER5) carries a pre-registered test: does AI make competences converge across sectors, and only where the AI works in the workplace's own language? The six fieldwork countries span high-resource (French, English), mid-resource (Polish, Swedish) and low-resource (Latvian, Montenegrin) language settings. The result is reported whichever way it falls. The integrated assessment (KER9) states what the combined evidence will and will not support.
- 07
Return · The evidence, sent back
Science-Meets-Politics, feedback dossiers, xEET
- Instrument ·
- SMP conference; EU skills-infrastructure feedback; xEET formats (GRBC, Expo-Action, Academies) with pre/post GreenComp-mapped assessment
- Produced in ·
- WP5 Tasks 5.1–5.4; WP9 Tasks 9.1–9.4
- Deliverables ·
- D5.1–D5.8; D9.1–D9.3; D10.1
- Used next by ·
- Confrontation session, back into the Lived layer
- Answers ·
- RQ4, RQ8, RQ9, RQ10
The return of evidence is a deliverable, not an act of dissemination. The Science-Meets-Politics conference (held once, in Brussels at month 24) and its framework-feedback dossier (D9.1) carry the evidence to GreenComp, the Union of Skills and the Pact for Skills, including evidence that runs against their assumptions. A second dossier (D9.2) submits change requests to the ESCO classification itself. Both are submissions and proposals: adoption remains the Commission's decision.
The Embodied–Experiential Translation (xEET) formats return the evidence to the field: the SMP conference, the Gender Reversed Bootcamp (GRBC), the Expo-Action and the Green Transition Academies. Each is fed by the project's own findings and measured pre/post against GreenComp's four competence areas, so every pilot also tests which pedagogies develop GreenComp competences — deliberative, embodied, curatorial, pedagogical.
- 08
Second observation · What the return changed
ReCx — the Responsive Collection
- Instrument ·
- Recorded restitution sessions; confrontation panels; third site per country
- Produced in ·
- WP7 Tasks 7.1–7.4, on the protocol of WP4 Task 4.5
- Deliverables ·
- D4.7; D7.1
- Answers ·
- RQ5
After the Science-Meets-Politics conference (month 24, MS5), the Responsive Collection (ReCx) returns to the same skill ecosystems and site dyads and opens a third site per country (M29–M36): six site-weeks, 18 Circles. Round 2 therefore observes a terrain the project has already acted on.
Each Round 2 site-week opens with a recorded restitution session: the team presents the Round 1 findings and what happened when they were submitted to policymakers, and participants' responses become data under the same coding frame. Each site-week closes with a confrontation session before a mixed panel from the same catchment.
Where the design holds two observations of the same unit, the change is measured: curriculum response intervals re-measured at the Round 1 dyads, a second survey of the same catchments, and two narrative corpora coded under one frame. An absence of change is itself a finding, recorded in the discordant-case register. The Round 2 country order is fixed in advance, so pre- and post-feedback observations are distributed by design.
What the design would deliver
Ten key exploitable results
Two field protocols (KER7, KER8), the survey datasets (KER3), four integration products (KER1, KER2, KER5, KER9) and three return products (KER4, KER6, KER10) — each owned by the partner whose science produced it.
See all outputs →
How to read the labels
The position of the “x” shows which way the evidence flows. SMP and GRBC are published format names and keep their form.
x after the name
gathers evidence from the field
NECx · HACx · ReCx
x before the name
returns evidence to the field or to policy
xEET · xRoadmap · xGuidance · xProPol
no x
stays inside the project
MCS · TCS · CEM · DG-CoM
Names and acronyms
- NECx
- Narrative Evidence Collection — Sharing Circles and biographic interviews at the 18 sites (WP3 in Round 1, WP7 in Round 2): 54 Circles, about 350 participants. Based on the IRES NCMx method developed and tested at Green Forum Sweden.
- HACx
- Historical–Archival Collection — situated historiography at every site, and the CNAM / Musée des Arts et Métiers curricular record (WP2, carried into WP4).
- ReCx
- Responsive Collection — the second observation, after the Science-Meets-Politics conference (WP7, task 7.1, M29–M36).
- xEET
- Embodied–Experiential Translation formats — the SMP conference, GRBC, the Expo-Action and the Green Transition Academies.
- xRoadmap · xGuidance
- The policy Roadmap for policymakers and the programme guidance for education-and-training institutions — two separate products (KER4).
- xProPol
- Operational protocols for policymaker–industry training collaborations.
- MCS
- Meso Competence Survey — ~1,800 respondents in six countries after Round 1, benchmarked against Cedefop's ETLS (KER3).
- TCS
- Transition Choices Survey — a second instrument after the policy return, sampled at ~700 in the last round. Not a second wave of the MCS.
- CEM
- Competence Equity Monitor — competence access and gain by WYUG+SOGIESC and life-course stage; hosts the xEET results (KER2).
- DG-CoM
- Digital–Green Competence Matrix — GreenComp and the ESCO green layer crossed with DigComp 3.0, with the ontological-literacy cluster and the homogenisation test (KER5).
- OCTAB
- The five registers of competence: ontological, cognitive, technical (functional), affective and behavioural.
- Ontological literacy
- Understanding what an AI system is and how to act alongside it — the competence cluster SO3 specifies and the DG-CoM measures.
- SMP
- Science-Meets-Politics conference — the project's policy interface (WP9, task 9.1), held once, in Brussels at month 24.
- GRBC
- Gender Reversed Bootcamp — a published, field-tested method that turns sex-disaggregated findings into experiential constraints.
- WYUG+SOGIESC
- Women, Youth and Under-represented Groups (including Indigenous communities and persons with disabilities), with sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics.
- T4U
- Traceable, teachable, translatable, transferable and updatable — the five properties the project gives competences, each carried by a deliverable.
- HTI2S
- Humanités · Techniques · Innovations · Sciences et Société — CNAM laboratory (formerly HT2S), home of HACx.
- KER
- Key Exploitable Result — an output with a named owner and an exploitation route. Greenpulse plans ten.