In an effort to meet the challenges of a context of incessant change, many Latin American and Caribbean vocational training bodies are prey to an uncertainty that sometimes undermines their potential for forecasting and reaction. Some of them have opted for staying as close as possible to their original field of action, i.e. the training of manpower for specific work posts in the labour market. Others have instead forayed into new terrain and try to meet the needs of firms and enterprises by expanding non-traditional services such as technical assistance and consulting services, aiming at increasing productivity, reducing costs, improving business management, etc.

Vocational training institutions are thus taking part in the manifold changes that occur in economic, social, cultural and political spheres; their action goes in new directions at different rates.

Within that picture, the SENAC of Brazil is no exception and has expanded and diversified the services it offers in connection with the specific delivery of training. It has carried out a critical analysis of its own past experience, endeavouring to strike a balance between the two types of services. The current situation calls for an in-depth review of the pedagogic and methodological basis upon which actual vocational training activities rest, in order to establish where reformulation is most urgent in the light of transformations in the organisation of labour.

Documents embodying the philosophical conception of SENAC reflect signs of the need to adapt educational action to the changes having taken place in the world f labour, particularly regarding occupational profiles. This requires vocational training to extrapolate the specific know-how of a given job.

In that respect, polyvalent training is the proposal that SENAC considers to be best suited to the training of human resources in a context of work organisation that changes constantly. Besides taking into account technical / operational competencies, polyvalent training favours the development of cognitive, social and communication skills.

For SENAC, permanent education is a strategy that "(...) trains in the performance of a qualified job cluster and, above all, teaches to understand the general, social, economic, scientific, technical, social and economic foundations of production as a whole; it should promote the learning of generic and specific skills and develop intellectual and aesthetic capacities. In summary, it should unify theoretical and practical training".

Polyvalent training – SENAC maintains – presupposes a wide grounding in general education and calls for a new relationship between teacher and student through a critical pedagogy favouring the building up of knowledge.

Another aspect worthy of note is the review of the concept of work that had pervaded the Institute’s educational activities. In that respect, a new approach has been proposed encouraging critical and creative attitudes, underlining the human dimension, to make possible the conscious intervention of individuals in the productive process, and enable them to exert their citizens’ rights.

At a time when the social repercussions of labour transformations are becoming more acute, and large contingents of persons are left out, the SENAC feels it must reinforce its social role, by offering individuals vocational information helping them to face the challenges of the new organisation of labour. It contends that progress in polyvalent training (...) is one more factor to resist the tendency towards the degradation of work processes.

Adoption of this notion of polyvalence necessarily entails a review of the Institute’s pedagogic practices, discarding technical slants that were based on a partial analysis of social realities and consequently transferred to education the responsibility for solving the structural problems of society. Implementation of a polyvalent vocational training implies taking up a new teaching approach, based on a more precise definition of the links between education, society and work. There is in that respect a clear understanding that education is not a determining factor for development, although it may be capable of bringing about changes in socio-economic relationships.

In order to establish new quality standards for vocational training, the critical review launched by the SENAC reinforces a reference outline of the pedagogic changes that the polyvalent model determines and which, at the same time lead back to it.

This critical review reaches all aspects of educational practices. Its incidence is greatest on two particular elements: curricular model and structure, teaching contents and procedures.

The curricular model of polyvalent training aims at overcoming the limitations of previous paradigms. It presupposes a structure open to multiple combinations, involving the many spheres of the human drive (technical side, consensus, emancipation).

Technical interest relates to work as the first of man’s fundamental drives, enabling him to bring influence to bear upon his physical and social environment.

Consensual interest refers to language and other aspects that make culture transmissible in an institutional manner; accord, understanding and interpretation of the meaning of action and of life itself.

Emancipation refers in this case to the manner in which man develops a critical awareness, in order to rid himself of ties and achieve autonomy.

In the SENAC viewpoint, human interests must be seen not as watertight compartments but as possible parts of a curriculum, to be brought together and co-ordinated into a consistent whole.

In the new curricular structure teaching contents acquire a new significance and greater scope. Besides the specific knowledge and abilities of a given job, they also include concepts, ideas, principles and scientific laws of a more general kind; generic skills; methods of understanding and applying knowledge; work and study habits; social and professional values and attitudes.

In selecting contents, it is no longer enough to string together a number of phenomena, rules and facts, however important and relevant they may be. It is necessary to pick out those that unveil the whys and wherefores of the different work processes; that reveal the mechanisms for the occurrence and transformation of phenomena; that explain and relate facts to each other and, in sum, those that can be used as theoretical - practical instruments for decision-making in the various situations of an occupational life.

An analysis of teaching procedures is another essential part of the review of pedagogic activities being carried out by SENAC to implement polyvalent vocational training. Teaching contents – even when well selected – require an adequate methodological treatment to ensure effective perception of reality. This fresh approach proposes a break with the compartmentalised model and cognitive learning process. What really matters is to bring about conditions to instil into trainees a capacity for abstraction and reflection concerning the activities they carry out. It is not enough for the student to perform accurately in theory or practice. He will only make progress when he is consciously capable of justifying and explaining what he has done. According to true cognition, knowledge does not come from practice but from a reflective abstraction of what it rests upon. In the last resort, the process tries to develop "meta – cognition" abilities, i.e. getting the student to think about his own learning mechanisms.

The National Rural Training Service (SENAR) is an innovative institution, among other things, in the management structure it has adopted. In effect, rather than deploying a physical network of training centres, it has opted for a virtual network of services, which are mostly outsourced. On the other hand, apart from being a vocational training body for the rural sector, it also acts as leading educational agent there. The following are the programmes that SENAR offers:

Social Promotion is an educational process aimed at developing the personal and social aptitudes of rural workers and their families. An important aspect is that it is oriented towards prevention rather than assistance. In 1998, SENAR invested greatly in Social Promotion activities, specially literacy campaigns for young people and adults involved in health and community service activities.

Social Promotion activities by SENAR very often include vocational and further education. Living conditions leave much to be desired in Brazilian rural areas, and there is a lot to be done for improving the health and education of rural workers and their families.

The rural population of Brazil is of approximately 27 million people over 7 years of age (figures of the IBGE – Brazilian statistical agency – 1996), which account for nearly 20% of the number of inhabitants of school age in the whole country. Some 15% of the total rural population are young people or adults who never had any schooling, and are therefore considered illiterate. In certain regions the situation is even worse. In the North East, 51% of young people and adults are illiterate.

In Rural Vocational Training courses, when one of the admission requirements is literacy, nearly 24 million people are precluded from training and consequently barred from an increasingly demanding labour market. For that reason SENAR has concentrated on teaching rural workers to read and write, in order to facilitate their access into an ever more selective and competitive labour market.

17,247 rural workers have benefited from the Institute’s Literacy Programme in nearly 235 rural communities of 15 Brazilian States.

Distance training has been a very valuable resource that enabled vocational institutions to take training to greater numbers and overcome the huge geographical barriers and distances of the region. Traditionally, it was implemented by surface mail. Textbooks and teaching aids (usually of excellent quality and easy to use) were sent by post to participants, who sent back their answers and received heir tutors’ evaluations also by post.

Nowadays, the new communications technologies are both a challenge and an opportunity for training bodies. A challenge insofar as the possibilities of using media such as satellite television or the Internet are ever greater, and multiply the number of beneficiaries. An opportunity because the new information and communication technologies afford an enormous latitude and flexibility in the delivery of training.

Users need to access training at different times of day, from different places and with different time availability. The new distance technologies iron out such difficulties for institutions. There is not a great deal of experience in that respect, but some significant cases may be quoted.

Until quite recently, there were only traditional offers of distance training. Now there is a SENAR course for the training of instructors delivered through the Internet.

The course has been designed for instructors in the rural management area, SENAR supervisors, technicians and managers (www.senar.org.br). Its objective is to upgrade instructors’ technical knowledge and make their work more effective.

The course is presented as a forum where participants can exchange experiences, they thus provide a starting point for discussions and learning, which further encourages participation. In fact, the main element in the training process via the Internet is the students’ motivation; they themselves decide their individual rate of progress, what supplementary inquiries they will make, and how far they will go into the various subjects. The monitor (tutor) acts as guide and facilitator; he co-ordinates the whole process and goes beyond the role of mere conveyor of knowledge.

The contents are organised into nine modules covering areas such as: general rural management, economic analysis of the rural undertaking, agricultural policies and rural co-operatives. Maximum course duration is seven months with the proviso that no documentary exchange will take place outside the Internet.

The Distance Education Programme (PEAD) of the National Training Service SENAT attached to the National Transport Federation of Brazil is aimed at the further training and productive improvement of road transport workers.

It consists of some 50 courses monitored by facilitators specially trained in the transport companies themselves. To date, more than a million workers have taken one or another of these courses.

They are broadcast daily by television on the so-called "Transportation Network". There are TV sets receiving the transmission at more than 1,500 companies, unions, federations and associations, as well as at the Professional Assistance Centres (CAPIT) and Transport Workers’ Service Posts (PATE) located by the side of highways in the different Brazilian States.

TV sets are equipped with a decoder to unscramble the signal of the SENAT Distance Education Programme. However, the courses can also be obtained on videotape to be played in classrooms, and the teaching aids on computer diskettes.

Courses cover a variety of subjects, such as: "economic driving techniques, bar code, development of managing skills, financing, renewal and management in road transport, bus conductor, etc." These training activities are being certified as a guarantee that workers have undergone an adequate learning process, and profited from the courses’ discussions, exercises and tests. The TV network is also used to impart elementary education contents of grades 1 and 2. This is done through a well-known programme, "Telecourse 2000", that has been validated by the Education Authorities of the different States.