The adult educator in Europe - professionalisation challenges and the alternative of validation of learning outcomes

The paper frames professionalisation of adult educator in Europe as one of the biggest challenges experts in adult education field deal with but it also stresses competence validation system as a reliable alternative in this sense. Europe is experiencing major transformation in which knowledge and innovation are the most valued assets. In this new society, there is an empathic need for offering everyone the opportunities to acquire the relevant skills, knowledge and competences as the route to full involvement in professional and social life. So much the more this need is stressed in adult and continuing education from the perspective of the stringent upskilling demand of Europe's labour force. The driving forces in this domain are the adult education staff and their professionalisation is high on the EU agenda due to the diversity and variety of this professional group. Although a well recognised need, there has been little attention paid to defining the contents and processes of initial training and the further professionalisation of staff working in adult learning. Well qualified staff is needed to support adults in their learning and yet there are few education/training systems for adult education professionals across Europe (Switzerland, Austria, UK) which, in fact, do not allow cross-national qualifications comparability and recognition. In the context of absence of a specific professional development pathway in the majority of European countries, trainers overtake this responsibility and manage their own professional and personal developments which are generally objectified in non-formal and informal learning settings. A lot of adult educators interact with adults in a didactical way without an explicit qualification for their activity. Most of them have acquired their specific professional competencies for dealing with adults on the job, by working experiences, in trainings, voluntary activities etc, in a puzzled way. In these circumstances, validation of adult educators' prior learning becomes an alternative to the formal educational pathway which contributes to the comparability and transparency of adult educator qualifications in order to facilitate the access and progress in the career. Today, an increasing number of countries have introduced legal and institutional frameworks for validating non-formal and informal learning, and these have become an established element of the existing education and training systems. This general tendency to strengthen validation policies and practices does not hide the fact that several incoherencies and paradoxes remain. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved