Adults have an active role in their own learning and training. Non formal and informal education is the cornerstone for a lifelong learning and career development. But related knowledge and skills, derived from several years of professional experience, personal development, or continuous vocational training, are hardly recognized in the formal education arena. Candidates for a diploma or qualification have to confront more or less referenced educational syllabus. For a better classification and promotion of individual knowledge and skills, and a more effective definition of associated competency proficiency levels, this paper investigates two approaches, supported with tools, so as to guide candidates in self-assessment and as such facilitate knowledge and skills validation by examination boards. As preliminary results, applied in two higher engineering qualification contexts at Master degree level, they show that: (i) when candidates directly rely on a formal syllabus in a top-down approach, they tend to limit the scope of their potentialities; (ii) thanks to reflexivity using a bottom-up approach, when candidates define from scratch their own syllabus, impacts on self-confidence and self-efficacy are much more significant. In the latter case, individuals better underpin their lifelong learning and training, and thus enhance quality of personal employment management and actions plans. © 2012 IEEE.
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