In Europe the social economy employs almost 15 million workers. During the crisis years, unlike other sectors, it has often generated an increase in jobs. The aim of this comparative study is to investigate how to allow the supply and demand for young people to meet in the different types of social economy bodies. In particular, it concentrates on the problem of how to bring into line initial university training and the skills required by these organizations. The focus is placed on the varied family of training workers present in at least 75% of the organizations, whose professionalism is nevertheless rarely acknowledged. The papers proposed in this book try to identify the most suitable solutions at the level of curriculum, career development and accompanying measures, while drawing solutions from objective findings and not from training system needs or convictions.

Consent in the definition of adult education is only apparent and circumscribed. Substantial differences survive, fueled by various national ideologies, cultures and policies. The plurality of angles determines a multiplicity of research approaches. Transformative research is the typical model of adult education research and is analysed in its core components. Its peculiarity is the property of ensuring immediate production not only of knowledge, but of change processes. This property has favoured proliferation especially outside the academic community of education sciences. The process was guided by the users of the research, i.e. by those who have roles and resources that enable them to orientate the research in response to personal and organisational needs. This phenomenon necessarily produces a process of social construction of the meaning and the methodological content of the research. This expansion urges the development of a transformative research that also attributes to the education proletariat the role of inspiration and guidance in adult education. The object of research in adult education Research in adult education has its own specificity that varies according to research goals. We may have researches that primarily aim at exercising forms of control over ongoing educational processes, or interested in understanding and interpreting educational phenomena, or ultimately in modifying the educational conditions of the population. These three options involve not only a different conception of how to do research. They are also based on different definitions of the subject of study: adult education. Their identification can be made taking into account both the major traditions of second logic research and the representations of the object identifiable in the research. On this basis, we can distinguish between three different approaches: • the institutional and organisational definition, both public and private • the phenomenal definition, which is concerned with the study of educational behaviours in adulthood • the transformative definition, designed to highlight the meaning, the reason for being, the social function of adult education. The institutional definition orients the researcher's observation towards the historical forms in which the adult education system of a country or organisation

No abstract

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

L'articolo si propone di dare ordine alla rappresentazione del mercato del lavoro delle professioni educative e formative. Per questo esso cerca di adattare il sistema di classificazione ISTAT al riordino di tutte le professioni che operano per conseguire learning outcomes in un quadro che le accomuni in ragione dell'analogia dei processi che presiedono e che richiedono capacità/comportamenti organizzativi omogenei. Lo studio approfondisce anche l'analisi della tipologia dei providers che occupano tali professioni anche al fine di pesarne il ruolo all'interno del mercato della formazione. Il lavoro si conclude con l'applicazione del modello di classificazione alla categoria di professionisti impegnati nel campo della formazione continua nelle organizzazioni.