Avaliação da formação profissional: um estudo desenvolvido na região Norte

Abstract

Evaluation is the central issue of any training procedure. The core problem of this investigation is the identification of the most commonly used evaluation procedures in the north of Portugal, whether in the context of public training centers, private training centers or big enterprises training departments. After ackowledging the actual importance of training and whithin it the recognition of evaluation as one of its most important components, a theoretical approach tries to answer fundamental questions: the who, what for, when, what and how of evaluation. A sample of 230 trainers answered an inquiry which was based on an assumption that correct evaluation procedures have four different levels: participants reactions, participants learnings, transference of learnings to work context and organisational impact (refered to as Kirkpatrick model). It was concluded that the two last levels of evaluation are never or seldom taken into account in public and private training centers. Big enterprises training departments have therefore the most complete approaches to evaluation procedures since their trainers say that transference and organisational impact of training are often evaluated. Significant differences have also been found between trainers with different levels of education. It was possible to prove that the higher the level of education the more trainers think that transference and organisational impact of training are not taken into account. No differences were found about this same issue between trainers with and without pedagogical qualifications (i.e. pedagogical training of trainers).