Learning From Experience: A Case Study to Manage the Changeover from Senior to Junior Workers in an Italian’s Small and Medium Enterprise

This paper deals with the practice of learning from experience and how experience can be transformed into a professional context in order to help people to learn and to transfer know-how from senior to junior workers, creating spaces of reflection and self-directed learning assisted by educators and trainers who encourage this process. TIC was used to implement this process, filming people during work, discussing and explaining the process with the aim of reinforcing some steps of the work-practice, and focusing upon the main work phases so that people can become aware of their tacit knowledge. The aim is to reflect on how educators can use and meaningfully transform experiences to encourage adults to learn in their working contexts. The description of the project “Au-delà de la salle” is a case sample, which can be transferred to other realities, where the knowledge of artisans comes from past experience and tradition. The experience was carried out in a European project coordinated by the footwear sector of the Veneto Region.