Abstract:

The European Union has, at present, many processes and practices of education and training that can lead to a formal, non formal and informal learning.
In the particular case of Portugal there is at present a government program called New Opportunities, included in the National Plan of Employment and Technology, which aims at reducing the low level professional qualification of its population through numerous training processes, among which are Recognition, Validation and Certification of Competencies (RVCC) and the Education and Training of Adults (EFA).
The National System RVCC came to address the need for qualification of adults who, having no opportunity to achieve and complete school-level cycles, but holding a wide life experience in different fields of action, could see recognized and certified their key skills through RVCC processes in appropriate settings and from work together with technical expertise. These processes of education and training are based on the secondary level Referential Competence Key that is based on a mix of the three areas of key skills, all considered necessary for the formation and/or empowerment of the citizen in today's world, and also in the sustainable development (dynamic political, social and economic issues).
The formation addresses several areas. The area Professionalism and Citizenship (CP) which takes an explicitly cross-sectional nature reflects the knowledge, behavior and attitudes and other areas of key skills.
The two areas - Society, Science and Technology (STC) and Culture, Language, Communication (CLC) - are considered to be instrumental and operative, as it was mentioned, involving areas of many expertises, scientific and technical fields, but by using equal structures and the same elements of a conceptual issue.
In the particular case of the STC competence, this is divided into seven Nuclear Generators (NG) (overarching theme, present in the lives of all citizens from which can generate and highlight a number of key skills).
In addition, each NG is divided into four domains of reference (DR) (contexts of action understood as referring to the fundamental operation of the various key skills in contemporary societies: private context, professional, macro-structural and institutional context).
These processes for implementing the concept of lifelong learning are intended to make the Portuguese people not only to complete their secondary education, but also their interrupted school and seeing their skills certified. What one finds, however, is that these education approach is more obvious in the certification than in the qualification, without registering in the later on a real improvement of knowledge.
Thus, and in order to foster learning that is to be meaningful for learners, an analysis of the curriculum, seems relevant, particularly in the STC field, which is too high in complexity for some NG.
A closer look at the Referential Key Competences for Education and Training of Adults, as well as the NG in the STC field leads us to believe that hardly a group of trainees, in adulthood, and that in most cases have long abandoned school, can demonstrate the standards required for each of the DR.
The relevance of this study follows on the many difficulties experienced by trainees in some of the Nuclear Generators in the fields of Society, Science and Technology.

Keywords:

Education, Adult Training.