Flipchart Number 2 June 2016 | Page 26

Is the trainer recommendation obliged for a work as a trainer? POZNAN: As I mentioned earlier — there are no legal requirements for people who want to work as trainers. This means that anyone who has an idea of providing training, can open the business as a trainer. You don’t need to confirm competence by certificates, to have the right to practice the profession. A large group of trainers confirms its competences not through certificates and recommendations, but by informing about the training program, which they finished. In Poland, there are several training of trainers programmes which prestige and recognition in the environment translates into recognition of their participants as having appropriate competences. At the same time trainers recommendations operate in the market as the most reliable and objective confirmations of preparation and experience of the trainers. The recommendation is recognised at the national level yes. Unfortunately we have no information on the recognition recommendation PTP or STOP abroad. Some trainers program schools refer the certification process to the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) which defines acquired knowledge, skills and competences. Would you change anything in the system for granting a recommendation, is something is missing? POZNAN & Plano A: For us it is obvious that in every country there are different recommendations or parallel certification processes. The same is the case with trainers. The biggest difficulty is the absence of a law on the profession of a trainer and executive acts, which regulate the requirements, particularly ethical to trainers. Competence certifications is common term. What is exactly a competence or what kinds of competences do you identify? Which methods can be used to certificate a Competence? Plano A: A competence is a capability that someone has in a certain area. There are different kind of competences. The ‘know how to know’, the ‘know how to do’ and the ‘know how to be’. In Portugal there’s a very detailed frame of reference regarding competence certification called RCC for those that don’t have their competences academically certificated. Those RCC try to identifying the technical and practical competences, provide the theoretical background behind the already acquired competences in order to obtain, through certification, Plano A: As said before [editor’s postscript]: a equivalent to a determined academical level. Giving an example, a person that In Portugal there are 300.000 registered trainers in the National Trainers Association, starts working in a bakery and after some though many of them use the activity as a years is a wonderful baker without ever second job, something else other than that being in a cooking school. person’s main job and many don’t actually work as trainers. 26