The research framework lies within the new lifelong learning scenario and focuses on the field of adult employed students who enter university study programmes with extensive knowledge and expertise gained in previous educational, professional and extra-professional contexts.
The theoretical and political framework refers to the theories of experiential learning, to the development and application of the competence paradigm, to the approaches and tools for recognition and validation of prior experiential learning acquired in informal and non formal contexts and finally to the European and national directives in this field.
The general aim of the research is to identify theories, models, methodologies and tools that respond to adult students’ need not only for the recognition and certification of qualifications, but also of competences. The specific objective is to design (following the relevant elements highlighted in the theories and models identified and analysed), apply and assess prototypal tools and procedures for recognising and certifying previously acquired competences within formal programmes that lead to academic qualifications.
The main referential theories and practices for developing a model are the French Validation des acquis de l’experience - VAE and the English Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning - APEL models, with specific focus on the educational value of the autobiographic reflective process and on the adviser’s methodological support.
The empirical research context draws on a project - conducted by the Faculty of the Science of Education and Training of Padua University and located within a wider project of the Venetian Region - in the field of the certification of competences requiring adult employed students enrolled in Padua University to prepare a learning outcomes portfolio. This portfolio, which is the result of the description and documentation of experiences, the analysis of learning and the identification of competences to be recognized in terms of academic credits, is assessed by a specific Examination Board (composed of three lecturers) comparing the learning outcomes identified and demonstrated by the students with the learning outcomes expected at the end of the programme.
The research strategy lies within the interpretativist paradigm and integrates quantitative and qualitative tools administered to all stakeholders involved, with a complementary purpose. The aim is to investigate, on the one hand, the practical elements, the strengths and weakness of the process in order to improve it, and, on the other hand, the model’s educational and professional implications, focussing on the development of adults’ wider comprehension and awareness of their own competences which is a necessary pre-requisite for obtaining external recognition.
In the context of today’s uncertainty and the flexibilization of the socio-economic reality, the systematic exercise of identifying the main connecting thread and the coherence of individuals’ preceding personal pathway and the connections between formal, non formal and informal contexts may be an important strategy for developing autonomy and responsibility and for responding to educational, professional and personal transitions.
The aim of the research, according to the European and national directives (particularly referring to the Italian Law 92/2012 and related to the legislative Decrees), is to propose a model which may be applied in analogous contexts and to suggest indications for building a University lifelong learning centre with services and processes for recognising prior experiential learning. In this way, Universities are called to fulfil a third mission, accepting the social challenge to propose educational, organisational and technological innovations that respond to the learning needs of adult and thereby interface with local networks of educational, training and professional systems
