Through prior learning assessment (PLA) programs, students' professional and life experiences are evaluated to determine if they equate to college program courses-removing the need for the student to complete traditional college courses to earn a postsecondary degree. The purpose of this study was to examine the perspectives of faculty at the study site on the academic preparedness of nontraditional students. Knowles' andragogy theory guided the research questions on the academic preparedness of students earning prior learning credits and what characteristics of PLA programs faculty believe contribute to the academic success of these students. Thirty-six participants completed a survey where they provided narratives that were coded to determine overarching themes. The findings of this case study suggested that faculty believed that nontraditional students who earned credits through PLA are independent, motivated, and knowledgeable, but whether or not they are academically prepared seemed to vary by academic program. The findings also suggested that, while PLA programs have limitations because of student perceptions that may conflict with reality and the limited usability of PLA across academic programs, PLA programs provide a time benefit to students by allowing a shorter time to degree. The study supports positive social change by providing a resource for future development and growth of PLA programs to expand student access and options in obtaining postsecondary credentials while also lowering postsecondary education cost.

The recognition of prior learning (RPL) is an assessment process through which experience gained outside academic contexts is recognised. The purpose of the research was to determine the influence the learner profile has on RPL assessment. To realise the purpose, the learner profile was described and consequently learning outcomes formulated for a portfolio workshop. The method which the study followed was a qualitative interpretative approach. The research comprised a literature study about adult learning theories that served as a theoretical framework for the study, as well as an overview of RPL assessment, followed by an empirical study. The empirical research component followed a multiple data collection method. The personal life stories of the research participants were analysed in order to compile a learner profile. The role the workshop played was determined from a learner perspective by means of an open questionnaire for participants. It included a collection of workshop photographs. Finally, the reflection of a group of RPL learners about their personal learning experiences was analysed. The research found that the learner profile included distinctive personal traits, such as motivation, task orientation, a sense of responsibility and an orientation towards the future. The nature of the learner profile as well as of informal learning gained within diverse learning contexts require directed preparation for assessment. The learners regarded the portfolio workshop as a sustainable learning process and as a transformational learning experience. The role the workshop played was multidimensional, as it served as preparation for compiling the portfolio. It also empowered and prepared the learner on a personal level for the context of tertiary education. Based on the research findings, the recommendations for an RPL approach should include the following: Firstly, the learner‟s voice should be afforded recognition. Secondly, preparation for assessment is essential. Thirdly, the preparation should follow an approach of assessment as a sustainable learning process. Finally, the learning outcomes for the portfolio workshop make a contribution to support the learners in bridging the learning contexts of informal learning and academic learning. The research makes a valuable contribution, as the empirical research shows that the holistic learner profile guides the approach to assessment. The mission of RPL to bring about transformation will only become a reality if a learner-centred approach recognises and empowers the learner on a personal and academic level. / Die Erkenning van Vorige Leer (EVL) is 'n assesseringsproses waardeur ervaring wat buite akademiese kontekste verwerf is, erken word. Die doel met die navorsing was om die invloed van die leerderprofiel op EVL-assessering te bepaal. Om die doel te bereik, is die leerderprofiel beskryf en voortvloeiend daaruit leeruitkomste vir 'n portefeuljewerkswinkel saamgestel. Die metode wat die studie gevolg het, was 'n kwalitatiewe interpretiewe benadering. Die navorsing bestaan uit 'n literatuurstudie oor volwasse leerteorieë wat as teoretiese raamwerk vir die studie gedien het, asook 'n oorsig oor EVL-assessering, gevolg deur 'n empiriese studie. Die empiriese navorsingskomponent het 'n meervoudige dataversamelingsmetode gevolg. Die navorsingsdeelnemers se persoonlike lewensverhale is geanaliseer om sodoende 'n leerderprofiel saam te stel. Die rol van die werkswinkel is vanuit 'n leerdersperspektief bepaal deur middel van 'n ope-vraelys aan deelnemers, wat 'n versameling werkswinkel-foto's ingesluit het. Laastens is die reflektering van 'n groepie EVL-leerders oor hulle persoonlike leerervaringe ge-analiseer. Die navorsing het bevind dat die leerderprofiel onderskeidende persoonlike kenmerke, soos motivering, taakgerigtheid, 'n verantwoodelikheidsin en 'n toekomsgerigtheid insluit. Die aard van die leerderprofiel, asook die aard van informele leer verwerf binne diverse leerkontekste vereis gerigte voorbereiding tot assessering. Die leerders het die portefeuljewerkswinkel as 'n volhoubare leerproses en as transformasionele leerervaring beskou. Die rol van die werkswinkel is meervoudig, aangesien dit dien as voorbereiding tot die saamstel van die portefeulje, asook die leerder op persoonlike vlak bemagtig en voorberei vir die konteks van tersiêre onderrig. Die aanbevelings tot 'n EVL-benadering behoort, op grond van die navorsingsbevindinge, die volgende in te sluit. Eerstens moet erkenning aan die stem van die leerder gegee word, tweedens is voorbereiding tot assessering noodsaaklik en derdens behoort die voorbereiding 'n benadering van assessering as 'n volhoubare leerposes te volg. Laastens lewer die leeruitkomste vir die portefeuljewerkswinkel 'n praktykgerigte bydrae om die leerder te ondersteun om die leerkontekste van informele leer en akademiese leer te oorbrug. Die navorsing lewer 'n waardevolle bydrae aangesien die empiriese navorsing toon dat die holistiese leerderprofiel die benadering tot assessering rig. Die missie van EVL om transformasie te weeg te bring, sal slegs 'n realiteit word indien 'n leerdergesentreerde benadering die leerder op persoonlike en op akademiese vlak erken en bemagtig. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

Recognition of prior learning, better known as RPL, was introduced to training institutions in South Africa after the fall of Apartheid. The objective of RPL was to redress inequalities brought about by Apartheid when disadvantaged groups had less access to training opportunities. RPL was introduced with a combination of associated training and education initiatives such as the National Qualification Framework and the South African Qualifications Authority, all directed for a similar purpose. The South African Nursing Council agreed with the principles of RPL and published a policy document aimed to guide nurse educators to enhance RPL implementation in South African nursing education institutions. Despite the support from accessible legislative and regulatory documentation, RPL is implemented insufficiently in nursing education institutions. The lack of RPL implementation was also identified by the researcher in the Limpopo College of Nursing. This College of Nursing can be described as a symbol of post-Apartheid re-integration whereby nursing colleges centralised into one administrative management office with campuses, satellite campuses and over 120 nurse educators. The research question asked was what are nurse educators’ perceptions of the implementation of RPL in nursing colleges in Limpopo Province? The aim was to support nurse educators to enhance the implementation of RPL in nursing colleges in Limpopo Province. A qualitative, phenomenological, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was followed. Seven (n=7) individual, in-depth, unstructured interviews were conducted with nurse educators employed at the X Campus and Y Satellite Campus of the Limpopo College of Nursing. Transcribed interviews were analysed and resulted in three main themes and nine sub-themes. Firstly, the participants voiced their agreement that RPL should be implemented and identified specific benefits and challenges thereof. Secondly, there should be a RPL assessment package that should be open and transparent, be able to assess academic performance against college standards and should minimise inequalities. The third main theme was the need for enhanced awareness of RPL implementation in nursing colleges. Nurse educators lack knowledge about RPL and should therefore be more awareness thereof. In addition RPL should be promoted as a beneficial mechanism to the learning process. These results were discussed with a literature integration and in the majority of results literature confirmed these findings. Conclusion statements were formulated from the research results and served as the basis for the formulation of recommendations to support nurse educators with the implementation of RPL in nursing colleges in Limpopo Province. The recommendations were directed to firstly the policy makers in nursing education; secondly to the nursing education institutions and thirdly to the nurse educators. Areas for further research were listed. Strategies to enhance trustworthiness and the adherence of ethical considerations were supported throughout this study. / MCur, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Den här studien syftar till att få ökad kunskap om på vilka sätt utbildningsanordnare inom yrkeshögskolan arbetar med validering av reell kompetens. Metoden som används är semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer med sju personer som arbetar hos olika anordnare av yrkeshögskoleutbildningar. Med utgångspunkt i tidigare forskning om validering och olika perspektiv på kunskap, kompetens och lärande visar de viktigaste resultaten att informanterna ser reell kompetens som en möjlighet men hur informanterna synliggör den skiljer dem åt. Ett ständigt närvarande orosmoln för informanterna är att subjektiviteten påverkar tillförlitligheten vilket i sin tur påverkar rättssäkerheten i deras arbete. Studien belyser utmaningen att arbeta med validering av reell kompetens. Komplexiteten är stor vilket visar sig både i tolkning av centrala begrepp, subjektivitetens ständiga närvaro samt att informanterna efterfrågar tydliga riktlinjer och generaliserbara metoder. / The aim of this study is to increase the knowledge on how organizers of higher occupational educators work with recognition of prior learning (RPL). The method used is semi-structured interviews with seven professionals from seven different educational organizers of higher occupational education. With a starting point in earlier research and on different views on knowledge, competence and learning are the most interesting findings that the informants look upon recognition of prior learning as a possibility, but the way the informants visionalize RPL differs. An ongoing air of consciousness is how subjectivity influences the reliability, which in the next step can have a great impact of the legal rights of the individuals. The study stresses the challenge working with RPL. There is a great complexity shown in differences in interpreting central concepts and that the subjectivity is always present. The informants ask for guidelines and methods possible to generalize.

<p>Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is the process of recognizing and crediting a person for his/her knowledge and experience however attained and promoting that person along a development pathway. In South Africa RPL has been promoted for social justice purposes related to access and redress. However these intentions have been lost within current educational discourses despite being rooted in several policies. Recently the role of vocational education has received increased prominence as a means to provide skills development. However there is often a disjuncture between policy formulation and implementation and this has given rise to this study of how RPL policy has been implemented within public Further Education and Training (FET) colleges. This paper investigates the RPL policies and practices in two public FET colleges and analyses how these employ social justice intentions of access and redress. The study reveals that there are similar conceptions of RPL amongst lecturers but varying RPL practices in these colleges.</p>

<p>Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is the process of recognizing and crediting a person for his/her knowledge and experience however attained and promoting that person along a development pathway. In South Africa RPL has been promoted for social justice purposes related to access and redress. However these intentions have been lost within current educational discourses despite being rooted in several policies. Recently the role of vocational education has received increased prominence as a means to provide skills development. However there is often a disjuncture between policy formulation and implementation and this has given rise to this study of how RPL policy has been implemented within public Further Education and Training (FET) colleges. This paper investigates the RPL policies and practices in two public FET colleges and analyses how these employ social justice intentions of access and redress. The study reveals that there are similar conceptions of RPL amongst lecturers but varying RPL practices in these colleges.</p>

Recognition of prior learning, better known as RPL, was introduced to training institutions in South Africa after the fall of Apartheid. The objective of RPL was to redress inequalities brought about by Apartheid when disadvantaged groups had less access to training opportunities. RPL was introduced with a combination of associated training and education initiatives such as the National Qualification Framework and the South African Qualifications Authority, all directed for a similar purpose. The South African Nursing Council agreed with the principles of RPL and published a policy document aimed to guide nurse educators to enhance RPL implementation in South African nursing education institutions. Despite the support from accessible legislative and regulatory documentation, RPL is implemented insufficiently in nursing education institutions. The lack of RPL implementation was also identified by the researcher in the Limpopo College of Nursing. This College of Nursing can be described as a symbol of post-Apartheid re-integration whereby nursing colleges centralised into one administrative management office with campuses, satellite campuses and over 120 nurse educators. The research question asked was what are nurse educators’ perceptions of the implementation of RPL in nursing colleges in Limpopo Province? The aim was to support nurse educators to enhance the implementation of RPL in nursing colleges in Limpopo Province. A qualitative, phenomenological, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was followed. Seven (n=7) individual, in-depth, unstructured interviews were conducted with nurse educators employed at the X Campus and Y Satellite Campus of the Limpopo College of Nursing. Transcribed interviews were analysed and resulted in three main themes and nine sub-themes. Firstly, the participants voiced their agreement that RPL should be implemented and identified specific benefits and challenges thereof. Secondly, there should be a RPL assessment package that should be open and transparent, be able to assess academic performance against college standards and should minimise inequalities. The third main theme was the need for enhanced awareness of RPL implementation in nursing colleges. Nurse educators lack knowledge about RPL and should therefore be more awareness thereof. In addition RPL should be promoted as a beneficial mechanism to the learning process. These results were discussed with a literature integration and in the majority of results literature confirmed these findings. Conclusion statements were formulated from the research results and served as the basis for the formulation of recommendations to support nurse educators with the implementation of RPL in nursing colleges in Limpopo Province. The recommendations were directed to firstly the policy makers in nursing education; secondly to the nursing education institutions and thirdly to the nurse educators. Areas for further research were listed. Strategies to enhance trustworthiness and the adherence of ethical considerations were supported throughout this study. / MCur, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

A l'interface du travail, de la formation des adultes, de l'orientation et de l'accompagnement des parcours socio-professionnels, les pratiques d'accompagnement en Validation des Acquis de l'Expérience reposent sur une activité, dont les contours se sont progressivement formalisés, depuis la mise en place du dispositif en 2002, grâce aux acteurs de ce champ.Alors même que des réflexions sont aujourd'hui engagées à l'université pour créer des parcours certifiants de nature à permettre l'accès au métier, nous pensons qu’une recherche approfondie sur l'activité en situation d'accompagnement VAE peut contribuer à la conception de dispositifs de formation en direction des conseillers chargés de l'accompagnement des candidats. A partir d'une observation ethnographique conduite dans un organisme de formation du Travail Social, un corpus audio d'entretiens d'accompagnement VAE a été constitué. La recherche s’est centrée d’une part, sur les discours d’expérience du candidat et du conseiller, pris isolément du contexte interactionnel dans lequel ils apparaissent. A partir d’une analyse textuelle, discursive et énonciative, nous nous sommes intéressée aux caractéristiques de ces discours pour comprendre l’activité qu’ils supposent du point de vue des acteurs, les expériences qu’ils convoquent et les espaces d’activité fictionnels qu’ils font émerger (l’espace du travail éducatif, l’espace de l’écriture du dossier VAE, l’espace du jury VAE). D’autre part, la recherche s’est centrée sur les interactions entre conseillers et candidats au cours des entretiens d'accompagnement, pour comprendre en quoi l’activité dialogale qu’elles sous-tendent, contribue au développement par le candidat d'un discours d’expérience sur son travail. Une analyse des trajectoires d’engagement des acteurs dans l’activité met en évidence que différentes configurations dialogiques (éducateur / éducateur ; accompagnateur / accompagné ; évaluateur / évalué) prennent place au cours du dialogue entre le conseiller et le candidat, qui se constituent comme une source d’étayage au développement de la pensée et du discours du candidat sur son travail. Ces configurations dialogiques sont rendues visibles par des voix mises en scène qui convoquent des expériences passées, anticipées ou imaginées, associées à des espaces d'activité distincts de la situation d'accompagnement. Parce qu'elles permettent au candidat de s'engager dans des dialogues fictifs reconfigurant les places endossées par chacun, ces configurations dialogiques permettent d’appréhender les mouvements interprétatifs en pensée et en discours du candidat sur son activité et rendent possible une transformation du point de vue porté sur l'activité professionnelle. / At the interface of the work, vocational training, and guidance for professional career paths, the guidance practices for Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL) are based on an activity whose properties have been gradually formalized and developed, since the introduction of the legislative framework in 2002, thanks to the actors of the field themselves. While discussions are now committed at the university to create pathways to certification, such as to permit access to the profession, we believe that a thorough research on the work activity of guidance practices in Accreditation of Prior Learning may contribute to the design of training devices addressed to advisers in order to assist candidates in their preparation. Based on ethnographic observations conducted in a training organization in the field of Social Work, our data consists of audio recordings of guidance interviews between advisers and candidates. Firstly, the research focused on discourses of experience produced by candidates and advisers. We analyzed them separately from interactional context in which they are produced. From a textual, discursive and enunciative perspective, we are interested in the characteristics of the discourses of experience to understand the activity they involve from the point of view of the actors, the experiences they summon, and the fictional activity areas’ emergence (the space of educational work, the space of writing activity the APL file, the jury APL space). Then, the research focused on interactions between advisers and candidates in guidance interviews, in order to understand how the dialogical activity they underlie, contributes to the development of the candidate’s discourse of experience about his work. An analysis of the trajectories of the actors engaging in the activity shows that different dialogic configurations (educator / educator; adviser / candidate; appraiser / appraisee) take place during the dialogue between the adviser and the candidate, which are like a support for the development of candidate’s thought and discourse about his work. These dialogic configurations are manifested by voices staging that summon past experiences, expected or imagined, associated with fictional activity areas separated from the guidance situation. Because they allow the candidate to engage in fictitious dialogues by reconfiguring the places taken in the relationship, these dialogic configurations give access to interpretative movements in thought and speech of the candidate's activity, and they enable a transformation of the point of view focused on the professional activity.

Magister Educationis - MEd / Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is the process of recognizing and crediting a person for his/her knowledge and experience however attained and promoting that person along a development pathway. In South Africa RPL has been promoted for social justice purposes related to access and redress. However these intentions have been lost within current educational discourses despite being rooted in several policies. Recently the role of vocational education has received increased prominence as a means to provide skills development. However there is often a disjuncture between policy formulation and implementation and this has given rise to this study of how RPL policy has been implemented within public Further Education and Training (FET) colleges. This paper investigates the RPL policies and practices in two public FET colleges and analyses how these employ social justice intentions of access and redress. The study reveals that there are similar conceptions of RPL amongst lecturers but varying RPL practices in these colleges. / South Africa

Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Education in the Department of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Zululand, 2006. / This thesis explores the responses of higher education to the national imperative to implement Recognition of Prior Learning. It makes use of a mixed methods mode of research to explore this phenomenon at three sites of higher education delivery in KwaZulu-Natal. The research investigates how these three institutions have responded to the imperative at an institutional level, in terms of policy development, organisational structures and philosophical approach. It also looks at academic staff perceptions of RPL policy and implementation and its successfulness in terms of the integration of RPL into the curriculum, the capacity of the curriculum to facilitate the assessment of RPL and the extent to which it has been implemented within the higher education system. It identifies the articulation of national policy on RPL as one of the factors that impacts on successful implementation. In so doing, barriers to the successful implementation of RPL are also identified and explored. These barriers include epistemological, material and systemic barriers. However, it also seeks to elicit the benefits that higher education sees in implementing RPL, both in terms of fulfilling the goals of higher education and in terms of the benefits for the national economic imperatives and the skills development initiative. Ultimately, the research attempts to establish the extent to which RPL has been institutionalised within the institutions in terms of a set of indicators as identified by the researcher. / University of Zululand