A atividade dos formadores no reconhecimento e validação de adquiridos: a evolução de um instrumento a partir da atividade

This research aimed at increasing the knowledge on the trainers’ activity in a specific training typology, the Recognition and Validation of Prior Learning. The framework of key competences emerged as the main instrument for the development of these trainers’ activity; it mediates their action towards the object, which is the recognition and the validation of knowledge previously acquired by the trainees. The work analysis and the group interviews to trainers were used to get to know the nature of the instruments that support the activity as well as their updating process while in use. The data analyses revealed that the instruments evolve alongside the activity, which means that they are continuously redesigned through the instrumental genesis. It was also understood that the broad leeway given to these trainers to contribute to the instruments’ evolution causes them satisfaction, as the trainer is offered room for inventiveness but, simultaneously, it causes them discomfort, due to the lack of validation of such evolution by the work group.