La Didattica Professionale. Riflessioni e possibilità per lo sviluppo delle competenze professionali.

This contribution presents the approach to Didactique Professionnelle, born in France in the 1990s. The intention is to investigate its potential to use it in training contexts and in the training of educational professionals (teachers at school and educators in extracurricular contexts). Some aspects of this approach seem relevant: the factors of learning and training processes, professional situations, the work context, the activities carried out by experienced professionals, the relationship between theoretical and practical approaches in professional training; interactions between professionals. Particular attention is devoted to the conceptualization at the heart of professional competence. This concept contributes to overcoming the dichotomy between theory and practice that threatens to undermine vocational education by emphasizing how the knowledge possessed by a subject is reworked while acting in practice. The vocational didactics approach claims action as the seat of knowledge and identifies specially constructed didactic situations as the fundamental means for the development and formation of expert competence. The aim of the contribution is to provide useful indications and food for thought to design courses and identify strategic models of training that can support the development of competent educational professionalism capable of acting effectively in complex and variable professional situations.