Effects of Personnel Qualification Framework on Life-Long Learning

Knowledge created by mankind on earth is increasing at a remarkable speed. Due to this fact, it is impossible for people to limit their learning to some periods of life. Acquisition of knowledge and skills for people has to last lifetime in this era. Individuals? professions that are built on knowledge, skilss and experiences have been the main source of their incomes. But, both types of professions and the professions themselves change and progress continuously. Acquiring a profession does not happen by completion of a education program any more. In yesterday?s World of limited knowledge and professions built on that, people could keep up with their profession. On the contrary in today?s World every professional needs to update and improve herself or himself. In this context, one of the people?s ways of updating and improving themselves is ?personnel licensing processes?. Licensing and recognition of a personnel?s professional knowledge, skills and experiences have been an improtant issue especially for developed countries since 1990s. For example, in 2008, European Qualification Framework has been approved as an advisory jurisdiction and the coordination task was given to European Commission. Efforts for creation of a national qualification framework in accordance with European Qualification Framework still continues. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the perspective of contribution of a qualification framework to life-long learning process. Within this scope, more than three hundred national professional qualifications are studied and test administration and license renewal, which are different for each qualification, are chosen to be high spots.