The Education for 21st Century involves the development of key skills for citizens to adapt to the instability, the continuous change and uncertainty characteristic of this Century. In fact, the acquisition of these key skills is assumed to be a route to economic prosperity, reduced income inequalities and social cohesion. Great efforts have been done within the European Union to move towards a competence-based approach, especially in the area of teacher education. Teachers are believed to be a cornerstone for competence-based education models to success. Some teacher competence frameworks to guide initial and developmental teacher education paths have been developed around the world, for instance in the EU, the USA and Asia. However, there is not a global teacher education competence framework. In addition, some countries are currently at the back of the competence-based education approach. This is particularly the case of China where teacher education programmes are divided in specialities and, therefore, teachers lack a cross-sectional perspective. This fact causes diverse education problems, especially at primary level. For this reason, the purpose of this project is to improve Chinese teacher training programmes through a competence-based curriculum. For this purpose, a global teacher competence framework is going to be developed as a baseline to adjust the teaching plans towards a competence-based approach. Besides, teacher trainers will be trained within the competence-based approach so that they can adapt the teaching plans to apply the approach and train other teacher trainers. The development of this project will build capacity in Chinese higher education institutions since they will become qualified within the competence-based approach. Moreover, the project will establish synergies between European and Asia higher education institutions, what will improve the transfer of knowledge and capital.

Significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) has become the utmost endeavour to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In the UK, domestic heating itself is responsible for 17% of the total GHG emissions, this is comparable to the contribution of all petrol and diesel cars (BEIS, January 2022). Therefore, the decarbonization of domestic heat is a big challenge. A sustainable route to reduce GHG is to replace natural gas (NG) with hydrogen (H2) since the combustion of H2 does not produce CO2. However, the challenge for H2 combustion is that its combustion characteristics substantially differ from NG (methane, CH4), e.g., its use affects combustion stability, heat release and NOx emission, and increases the combustion rate due to a higher H2 flame temperature. Various technological challenges are also associated with using pure H2 such as its production, safety, quick charge capability and low density, which limits its storage capabilities. At this transitional stage, a practical option is the use of higher H2 enriched fuel (i.e., more than 20% blend with NG), which would be a promising solution to lower the CO2 emission compared with other fossil fuels. However, the impacts of higher H2 enriched fuels on the widely used condensing heating boilers are not extensively studied and fully understood. The H2 enrichment leads to higher flame radicals such as OH*, CN*, CH* and C2*, higher combustion temperature and flame destabilisation, thus triggering higher NOx formation. The flame radicals are closely related to the combustion structure, temperature, heat release and pollution emissions. Moreover, domestic condensing boilers use premixed cylindrical/surface burners, and these burners produce an array of flames. It is extremely difficult to measure flame radical information in different depths of the array of flames using existing measurement systems. The development of an intelligent instrumentation system has, therefore, become indispensable to assess and monitor the flame radical emissions and NOx formation process at different depths of flames, thus facilitating an in-depth understanding of the combustion process of different H2/CH4 blends. This project will develop and implement a new instrumentation system based on multi-spectral light field imaging to assess and monitor the flame radicals and temperatures with different H2/CH4 blends in domestic boilers. Light field image formation and depth reconstruction models will be developed to generate flame radical images at different depths for different spectral bands. The developed system will provide distinctive capabilities for characterising and quantifying the radical information and temperature profiles of a flame in a single exposure, simultaneously. The proposed project will also develop an intelligent data-driven model based on machine learning to predict NOx emission, thus, facilitating the improvement of domestic boiler performance. The relationships between flame radical characteristics and NOx emission will be established by conducting a series of experiments initially on a lab-scale test rig and then on commercial domestic boilers under different H2/CH4 blends and boiler settings. The prototype system will also be tested on a gas turbine test rig to evaluate its wider applicability. Experiments will be conducted to investigate the characteristics of CO2, H2 and ammonia (NH3) blend combustion, thus providing an in-depth understanding of stability regions and NOx emission with different proportions of CO2/H2/NH3 in the blend. The outcomes of this research will provide in-depth knowledge of the combustion characteristics of H2 blends, understanding of the boiler efficiency and pollutant formation process of domestic boilers. Once the system is developed, it will be used for the design of domestic boilers, and the engineering insights produced during the project could be used to develop a portable diagnostic tool for routine monitoring of blended-fuel boilers.

The research on inclusive education emphasizes investing in training for existing teachers and school leaders as well as for new teachers and understanding that teachers need support. China is not disconnected from these issues. However, there are some barriers to develop inclusive education in society such as attitudes, teacher training and a lack of participation within the vulnerable groups of society. Currently, the Chinese government has made some effort; e.g. implementation of the national policy named Learning in Regular Classrooms and ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the policy-making level. But this educational policy must be accompanied by other measures that have an impact on educational practices and school management, especially on the training of teachers.Against this background, this project helps to contribute the demand for highly educated teachers at the primary school level can be tackled, and universities in China can be encouraged to take European standards into consideration.This project is innovative because it focuses on the topic of inclusive education for supporting teacher training for Chinese primary school teachers. It is the first time a Mater’s is being created in China in the field of inclusive education with its own characteristics and it will be designed in such a way that it can easily be transferred to interested universities. The project will adopt these new approaches developing new types of courses for teachers with a strong emphasis on inclusion and peer learning, including good practices, scenarios and case studies. A website on inclusive education will be created. It is going to enhance not only what teachers are able to do practically but also to promote learning for leaving, learning to know, learning to do, learning to live, learning to be; in short, learning values, attitudes, creative and helpful teaching strategies in order to ensure education for all students.

The CIPnet project is a Joint Action to be implemented in China. Its general objective is to promote the modernisation and harmonisation of Intellectual Property Management practices in the higher education system in China, with a view to enhance university-industry collaborations and contribute to economic and social development.The CIPnet consortium identified several deficiencies in the Universities’ TT and IP management performance in China such as low levels of entrepreneurial attitude, shortage of TT skills, inadequate IP protection, low industry-academia engagement and mismatch between the needs of the firms and the university research results. In this context CIPnet present an innovative proposal to improve the TT&IP system based on a network with a bottom-up approach. The project specific objective is to establish a National HE IP Network as a learning platform to foster the modernisation, harmonisation and strategic planning of IP Management practices and regional integration in HE of China.The CIPnet activities implemented by 7 CN HEIs & 3 EU HEIs with a long-standing tradition on IPR & TT issues (as partners) with a series of key actors on IP field (as associates), will include:- Benchmarking & needs analysis activities will identify good practices on IP services and strategies in CN and EU HEIs, providing a good insight of the situation of the China HEIs in terms of the level of IP awareness and creating a database of IP experts in China.- CB on TT&IP management, via face-to-face and on-line workshops that trainees will adapt for the implementation of the IP replication workshops. - Creation of a National HE IP Management Network with a strong networking focus.- An ambitious dissemination and exploitation strategy of the network fostering that new members join the network, contributing to the development of modern IP management policies for HEIs in CN and widening the impact and exploitation of the project results beyond the consortium.