1. Definition

The European Training Thesaurus (ETT) constitutes the controlled vocabulary of reference for vocational education and training (VET) in Europe. It is used to describe and access the knowledge of its institution, Cedefop.

2. Objectives

Controlled vocabulary of reference for vocational education and training (VET) in
Common understanding of the terms in this field
Classification of the terms with their semantic relationships

3. Owner

Cedefop have developed and published the European Training Thesaurus.

4. Intended audience

ETT was designed for people working in education, training and employment fields across Europe, in order to ensure that a common meaning is understood when a term is used.

5. Long description

ETT covers important topics of the Education and Training 2020 (ET 2020) framework such as: lifelong learning, quality of training, training systems, teachers and trainers, qualifications, certification of competences, vocational guidance, and others.

It contains over 2,500 terms (1550 are descriptors and 950 non descriptors). Non-descriptors contain a reference to the preferred term (descriptor). All terms are accessible through an alphabetical index in English (EN) and French (FR).

The European Training Thesaurus has been designed with an eighteen-field structure grouped together in four overall sections:

I. Basic VET vocabulary

1 Training (124 descriptors)

2. Education (79 descriptors)

3. Learning (98 descriptors)

4. Sciences and technology (56 descriptors)

II. Work and labour environment

5. Information and communication (52 descriptors)

6. Labour (113 descriptors)

7. Enterprise (118 descriptors)

8. Occupations (106 descriptors)

III. Socio-economic environment

9. Economic activities (73 descriptors)

10. Economy (66 descriptors)

11. Administration (105 descriptors)

12. Society (81 descriptors)

13. Population (24 descriptors)

IV. Supplement lists

14. Countries and regions (396 descriptors)

15. European Union (86 descriptors)

16. International organisations (15 descriptors)

17. Document type (42 descriptors)

18. Auxiliary terms (30 descriptors)

ETT was elaborated according to the ISO 2788:1986 “Documentation: guidelines for the establishment and development of monolingual thesauri” and ISO 5964:1985 “Documentation: guidelines for the establishment and development of monolingual thesauri” standards. It comprises the following semantic relationships:

belonging to a field (FD)
hierarchical (BT, NT)
synonymous (UF, USE)
associative (RT)
language equivalence (FR French)
scope note (SN)

6. History / Key milestones

ETT is the result of a collaborative project between Cedefop's Library and Documentation and the European Network of Reference and Expertise (ReferNet).

Since its first appearance, nearly twenty years ago, Cedefop's European Training Thesaurus has been revised and updated as follows:

1986: 1st edition of "Cedefop Thesaurus of Vocational Training" (Languages: English, French, German and Italian)

1992: 2nd edition of “Multilingual Thesaurus of Vocational Training” (Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek)

2045 terms (of which 1514 are descriptors and 531 are non descriptors)

2006: 3rd edition of “European Training Thesaurus” (Languages: English and French (online and paper editions), also translated into: German, Italian, Danish, Estonian, Finnish and Dutch)

2500 terms (of which 1550 are descriptors and 950 non descriptors)