Accreditation of prior experiential learning and vocational education: University and trade unions engagement with lifelong learning

The contribution focuses on the issue of accreditation of non-formal and informal learning in the field of vocational education. It presents a research carried out on the accreditation of prior experiential learning, acquired by adult learners or workers who decide to return within university. The research is focused on the informal and non formal competences of trainers employed in trade unions. From the analysis of post-experimentation, it emerged that qualitative tools have the function to support the process of prior experiential learning recognition. These approaches place the learner at the centre of the educational process, and at the same time can represent an experience of the acquisition of new learning strategies and a new way to plan personal educational and professional development or discover tacit motivations, so as to exercise an active citizenship.