EPALE - Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe

The proposed definitions may be supplemented with examples and may be discussed in comments on this article. 

Academic failure, underachievement (échec scolaire): an individual’s inability to move to a higher educational level or to obtain a diploma, which is the result of an evaluation.

Access to education and vocational training (accès à l’éducation ou à la formation): opportunity of benefiting from initial education or continuous training.

Accompaniment (accompagnement): Counselling and support given to a person facilitating his orientation, training and mobility. Coaching is an activity that is more discrete and general than guidance.

Accreditation of prior learning and experience (validation ou reconnaissance des acquis): evaluation, validation and recognition of knowledge, expertise or interpersonal skills acquired through experience, for a homologous qualification or job classification. The accreditation of prior learning and experience is one of the essential conditions of lifelong learning.

Adult education (Education des adultes): All the education systems and measures aimed at adults alter their initial education. The term adult education is used more for general education.

Alternance training or vocational training in the alternance system (alternance): training carried out in the context of a contract for a specific job, alternating general, professional and technological training provided during working hours by public and private training bodies.

Apprenticeship (apprentissage): initial training route towards a professional qualification validated by a diploma. The French term is also used to refer to all formal or informal cumulative acquisition of knowledge or expertise.

Assessment of competences (évaluation des compétences): the body of processes enabling competences to be evaluated (knowledge, expertise and interpersonal skills) which enables stock to be taken of competences and which can lead to certification.

Assessing prior learning (reconnaissance ou validation des acquis): identification of the individual’s knowledge and skills (academic knowledge and personal, professional or social experience) and the recognition of these by a diploma or an organisation.

Basic competences or basic skills (compétences de base): essential competences or skills required to pursue studies, exercise a profession or an activity, or to move in society. They can be determined at every stage of training.

Citizenship (citoyenneté) is the set of rights and duties of members of a political community. It provides the right to vote and to participate in the exercise of the public power. Beyond a restrictive view as in Athens during the Antiquity (only "free" men as opposed to women, slaves, alien ...) citizens are in a modern design, free and informed individuals, able to build one’s own opinion and to participate in the public life. Since the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, there is now a European citizenship, which complements national citizenship. This grant citizenship includes the right to vote in local elections for all EU citizens in another member country. In a broader sense, the concept is now also used to characterize certain organizations seeking to reconcile ethics and responsibility in the practice of their activities.

Reference :Olivier Nay (dir.), Lexique de sciences politique – vie et institutions politiques, Dalloz, 2008

Civil society (société civile): a group of institutions, groups and associations that act as intermediaries between the public authorities and the citizens.

Cluster (Pôle de compétitivité) : Networked organisation of research, training, corporate and even administrative centres for the research, development, implementation and dissemination of an innovation which enables an increase in the competitiveness of a company or Region.

Competences (compétences): dynamic body of essential knowledge (general and technical), know-how (applied knowledge) and interpersonal skills (relation and behavioural elements: responsibility, autonomy, communication, etc.) the application of which makes it possible to deal with changing situations in multiple contexts.

Continuing education (Education permanente, éducation continue): all the activities undertaken over and above compulsory education for a person’s cultural or professional development.

Continuous training (formation continue): body of training subsequent to initial training, intended for young people and adults who are already involved or are becoming involved in active life.

Creation of networks (intra-regional, inter-regional) (Mise en Réseaux (intra régionaux, inter régionaux)): Development of cooperation between actors in a region or even between those of several regions.

Credit (unité de valeur): breakdown of a diploma or training into a number of units which can be acquired over a number of years or in different places, including recognising the value of experience.

Democratisation of education (démocratisation de l’éducation): (in the wider sense): making access to study or training generally available; (in the narrow sense): creation of equal opportunities for access to study or training.

Dropout (décrocheur): interruption of studies before having achieved the level originally intended, either voluntarily or as a result of failing an exam. The term dropout is used to refer to young people who abandon their studies without having obtained a diploma (other terms include abandoning studies or premature departure from the educational system).

Early school drop-out (déscolarisation): abandonment of the school process before the end of compulsory education.

Early school leaver (décrocheur): a young person having left school or his studies before the normal end, and without obtaining a diploma

Education (éducation): body of activities and influences brought to bear on human beings in order to improve their knowledge, aptitudes and skills.

Educational system (système éducatif): way in which the whole body of education and training institutions are organised and operate; the school system only takes account of school institutions.

Employability (employabilité): capacity to adapt to a job; depends simultaneously on the qualification, skills and motivations of a person and the jobs which are offer to him.

EUROPASS: European scheme created in 2004, which is directly at the disposal of citizens and it aims to bring clarity and transparency to individuals’ competences and qualifications. It consists of 5 documents: the European CV for a harmonised presentation of experience, the Europass mobility for clarity of the competences acquired during a traineeship abroad, the languages portfolio for the selfassessment of linguistic competences, the certificate supplement for a harmonised description of competences acquired through obtaining professional qualifications and diplomas, and the diploma supplement which describes the competences acquired in order to obtain a higher education degree.

Fonctional (Fonctionnel): Refers to the completion of a task or function, credentials generally describe functional skills.

Formal/informal learning (formation formelle /informelle): distinction between learning activities within a formal training structure, and learning as a result of daily life.

Frame of reference, profile (référentiel): body of objectives which have to be pursued in order to reach the objectives of the training one wants to pursue. The concept of the frame of reference has replaced that of the programme in education and training. It is also used in vocational training to refer to the inventory of activities and skills necessary for exercising an activity.

Guidance, counselling (orientation): range of activities aimed at helping individuals to make decisions regarding their lives (both in the educational area, and also in the professional and personal areas) and implementing them.

Illiteracy (Illettrisme): situation in which a person who has been taught to read and write nonetheless is unable to read (and even more so to write) or does not manage to understand the meaning of the words he deciphers.

Individualisation (individualisation): adapting training to the characteristics of the learner through the diversification of objectives, methods and resources.

Initial education (formation initiale): all the education organised by the school and university system, general or technological education, aimed at children or young people who are not yet involved in active life.

Innovation (innovation): new methods for production, organisation or marketing for a product or a company. It is presently pursued for the production of material products as well as for the services.

Insider (insider) : salaried employee who has got a durable employment contract, who gets the social benefits given by the company and who is in a better situation to comply with jobs’ offer by the company.

Integration (insertion): entry into professional activity or acquisition of the capacity for a normal social life. In order to combat unemployment and the consequences of underachievement, this is facilitated by specific training activities, in particular vocational.

International mobility of apprentices and young in vocational training (mobilité internationale des apprentis): the carrying out of part of the learning process in a different country than where the learner is studying.

Knowledge (savoir): concept referring to several forms of knowing things, particularly in terms of the way in which this was acquired: theoretical, practical, explicit, implicit or tacit, and subjective.

Know-how, expertise (savoir-faire): ability to carry out an activity.

Knowledge society, knowledge-based society (société de la connaissance): society in which the production, transmission and use of knowledge plays an increasing role.

Lack of educational appetite (Inappétence scolaire ): loss of motivation for the acquisition of scholar subjects. This general despondency is often related to disciplines as mathematics that some pupils consider incomprehensible, or to a system of assessment that they seem unfair or to scholar guidance that does not suit the pupils’ aspiration.

Learning motivation (motivation cognitive): the psychological sate or disposition which motivates a person to learn.

LifeLong learning –LLL (apprendre tout au long de la vie): the conception of initial and continuous training as a continuum which integrates formal and informal learning.

Local Labour Market Area (bassin d’emploi): the territory in which the local population finds the major part of their jobs and training.

Mediation (Médiation): The introduction of an institution or person which facilitates the elimination of tensions or even transitions.

Mobility (mobilité): a person’s capacity to adapt to a new activity or to progress professionally and socially, or geographically.

Mobilisation (Mobiliser): Attempting to make the greatest number of people take part in an initiative.

Motivation (Motiver): Inciting a person or a social group to participate in an initiative.

Multi-regional networking (Mise en Réseaux intra régionaux, inter régionaux) : development of cooperation between actors of a region or between actors of several regions.

Occupational qualification (Qualification professionnelle) : capacity of a person to fit a job. It tends nowadays to be defined as all the abilities of a person to hold a job or a function.

Pedagogical innovation (innovations pédagogiques) : introduction of new pedagogical methods including new organisations of teaching and learning.

Personal development (développement personnel): changes in behaviours, affective or cognitive abilities and individual competences.

Pooling (Mutualisation): Making several actors participate in the development of a project or initiative.

Popular education (éducation populaire): activity for the educative and cultural development organised by non for profit organisations.

Post-compulsory education (Education non obligatoire): Training followed by a person after the compulsory education.

Prior learning (acquis): the body of knowledge, skills and expertise acquired either through education or through experience.

Post-teenage – pre-adult stage (adolescence): a term which is beginning to be used to describe the period after adolescence among young adults.

Project approach, management (démarche projet): this approach requires to set from the beginning of an action or a project the quantitative and qualitative objectives that should be reached. It facilitates the evaluation.

Qualifying work organisation (Organisation qualifiante du travail): mode of internalisation of continuous training inside the firm. It is the work organisation that plays a central role for the qualifying training.

Qualitative evaluation (Evaluation qualitative) : it gives to professionals guides for action on the basis of the experimentation (taking into account the initiatives which are underway), pooling (the common sharing and shared understanding of the experience outcomes), and formalisation (the formatting of the outcomes in order to transmit or transfer them).

Quality of education (qualité de la formation): the quality of education can be evaluated on its results (for example, the acquisition of diplomas or certificates, the acquisition of certain knowledge or skills, professional integration), on the body of resources enabling a result to be achieved (teacher training, resources made available to them), or on its capacity for permanent adjustment to the problems of the learners. These three ways of tackling the quality of education in fact correspond to the three stages of qualityanalysis (quality control, quality assurance and total quality).

Qualification (qualification): recognition of the ability to exercise an activity.

Quantitative evaluation (Evaluation quantitative): evaluation on the basis of an assessment on target figures. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is one type of quantitative evaluation done by OECD for education.

Recognition of professional experience (validation des acquis ou reconnaissance des acquis de l’expérience) : Contrary to assessment of prior learning and experience, which takes into account all of a person’s experience, this only takes into account a person’s professional experience.

Reorientation, retraining (Reconversion, recyclage) : training aiming at the qualification of a person for a new type of job.

Region (Région): local body whose territorial competence is just after that of the State. It may take different names (Generalitat, Land, Caton, Province, Community).

Regional redeployment (redéploiement régional): a set of strategic programmes organising the regional economy.

Regionalisation (territorialisation): organisation of a service on a territorial basis, which allows for better accessibility.

School re-enrolment (re-scolarisation): when young people who quit early, return to school.

School re-integration (Raccrochage scolaire): A young person who, having given up prematurely on school education, returns to this; in fact, school re-integration is dependent on social integration.

Securing individual learning and life pathways (sécurisation des parcours): all the supporting measures which enable a person to tackle transitions in his life path (school-related or not) without fearing the changes he has to face.

Social re-integration (Raccrochage social): When a young person with no real social integration finds this again.

Social partners (partenaires sociaux): organisations representing the employees and companies, which participate in the social dialogue.

Social promotion (promotion sociale): accession to a better professional and/or social situation.

Teaching innovations (Innovations pédagogiques): The introduction of new teaching methods, including new training organisations.

Teaching methods and tools (méthodes et outils pédagogiques): body of approaches and resources at the disposal of a teacher, trainer or learner in order to implement learning.

Territory (Territoire) : See references in chapter two : “What today "forms a territory" and invites thought to be focused on this scale of relevance?”

To combat school dropout and social drop out (Raccrochage  scolaire, raccrochage social) : when a youth who dropped early from school reconnects to it, or when he/she reconnects to some social role.

Training (formation): action enabling the acquisition of a knowledge, behaviour or competence, in France often has a more restrictive meaning closer to pure training than education.

Training-employment relationship (relation formationemploi ou matrice emploi-formation): illustration of a relationship between possible training options and jobs, in particular by creating a matrix. The creation of such matrices has led to dead ends. Lifelong learning ought to permit a dynamic and permanent adjustment of jobs and training.

Training pathway (filière de formation): structured body of training schemes and programmes for an area of knowledge or professional activities.

Training with work practice periods (traineeships) (stage): a period during which a person in training is placed, for a limited duration of different lengths, in a work situation or discovery of an activity.

Transferable competences (compétences clés ou transversales): independent behavioural competences related to a field of knowledge or of professional activity which may be transferred from one area to another one and facilitate social and professional integration.

Transition (transition): transition phases represent the passage from one stage to another. During the course of our lives these take place in particular with regard to education, employment, retirement, family relationships, etc. These provoke more or less significant identity crises in an individual and tensions between him and his environment.

Tutor, tutoring, mentoring (tuteur, tutorat, mentorat): supervision of learners by people who guide them in their training and apprenticeship without them lessons or courses directly.

Validation or recognition of competences (validation ou reconnaissance des acquis) : identifying the competences acquired by an individual (academic knowledge, personal, professional or social experience) and recognition by an organisation or a diploma.

Vocational aptitudes / professional abilities (aptitudes professionnelles / capacités professionnelles) : knowledge and experience required to perform task and hold a job.

Vocational qualification (qualification professionnelle): an individual’s ability to occupy a job. Nowadays this tends to be defined as the body of abilities allowing an individual to take up a job or a function.

Vocational training (formation professionnelle): training activities aimed at individually or collectively dispensing the knowledge and skills needed for exercising a professional activity.

Ce glossaire est proposé par Roseline LE SQUERE, expert thématique EPALE France & Administratice de l'Institut de Recherche Dupuy de Lôme.