Abstract:

For centuries, education has been teacher-centered. All around the world, the teachers who are into traditional way of teaching have emphasized transfering knowledge and skills from teachers to learners.

With increasing knowledge and technological progress of society the Information Technologies (IT) in educational development has been world-wide recognized as a priority in order to support academic and scientific development to attain universal scope and to extend knowledge, as well as to facilitate education throughout life.

We have moved on from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning by providing intuitive and engaging modern pedagogical means for students to learn by themselves.

There is, however, an essential component of knowing-how that is often acquired only in the labor market, or when teaching involves real-world practice activities, which is not common in first-cycle courses (The European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning (EQF), level 6).

In Portugal, under EQF level 4, equivalent to high school education, there are specialized professional courses aimed at knowing-how to train people for active professional life much earlier, without the curricular and scientific requirement which is normal in higher education.

In 2006, under the Bologna process, the Professional Higher Technical Courses corresponding to level 5 of the EFQ were implemented. These courses have the property of requiring a compulsory 6-month internship by the higher education institution that takes place in companies and organisations that carry out professional activities in the field for which the course prepares and which have the trainee's qualifications.

At each one of these levels of education the objectives and learning methodologies are different and therefore the results are also different.

Nowadays, we are trying to understand how the training in real-world settings is important to improve the learning. The goal of our project is to evaluate the impact of change, through emphasising the interrelationship of organisation, curriculum, infrastructure, pedagogy and practices in the construction of the teaching and learning environment (TLE).

This study will be based on the analysis of the curricula, methodologies, durability and competences acquired at each of the different levels in order to evaluate the pertinence of the combination of existing strategies in the different paths, and may go through the need to reformulate the current reality either by introducing changes or increasing pedagogical methods or knowledge, with a view to a more complete and close training of the labor market without neglecting all the training essential to the individual and his professional performance.

Keywords:

Learning, Curricula, strategies, methodologies, Workbased.