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Andrew Chesterman's Reflections on Translation Theory publication consists of a collection of author's articles written over years of academic activity. The title summarizes the content of the works: a reflection on translation theories. In addition to debates on theories, concepts, and methodologies, Chesterman also provides significant contributions to discipline questions and concerns. The result of the fruitful discussions is a series of research work proposals. Thus, the book is an important and constructive debate for the discipline and the researchers.

This paper presents an analysis of the review/replacement process of IFRS 6, taking into account the perspective of various interest groups, expressed in 141 comment letters submitted to public hearing of the Discussion Paper Extractive Activities promoted by the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB). These letters were analyzed following the methodology of content analysis, and the results are supported in institutional theory. The results show that IASB possibly have difficulty implementing its legislative proposal, given its majority rejection by the various interest groups participating in the public hearing, which rely on institutionalized practices based on the methods of successful efforts, total capitalization or area of interest, that conflict with the proposal made by the international body, and it is therefore a scenario where it is believed in maintaining the current status quo.

The paper is a commentary on Christoph Horn’s paper The Concept of Justice. It criticizes Horn’s claim that justice is overrated in contemporary philosophical debate by discussing Horn’s arguments. In doing so, it questions (1) the idea that we can easily distinguish between morally central and peripheral questions, as Horn claims; it points out (2) that this distinction is based on the values held by those who are drawing it; and finally (3) it stresses the centrality of the feeling of outrage provoked by the action whose acceptability is being challenged. Finally, it claims that morality arises from the experience of injustice and, therefore, that questions of justice are not only morally central; they are, rather, essential to morality.

The universities must develop models to reduce, reutilize and recycle the material used in their activity, in order to minimize the impact to environment. The paper is a residue is this type of organization and can be used at the recycling process, but is necessary the existence of the reverse logistics channels to collect this material. This paper aims the proposition of a model to collect the paper generated inside the campus of a federal university of Brazil based on the Graph Theory. An exploratory research was done to get an estimation of the quantity of material generated. After this, a model was proposed to define a route to material collection based in collect points, minimizing the time waste in this process. The model is efficient and reduced thirty percent the time of the collect process. This model can be used to other universities.

The inherent complexity of environmental performance measurement makes it difficult to be gauged, sending it forth to methodologies supported on assessments of the various factors that could influence the overall performance. In association with the environmental performance lies the need to create methods that allows the assessment over the time in order to facilitate comparisons amongst different organizations or operations of a same company. Measurement of environmental performance comes from several sources thus a dominant approach widely recognized and accepted by the academic community and organizations can not be singled out. The purpose of this review is to test a method for assessing environmental performance in a manufacturer organization, performing a case study in the paper industry. The results can be compared with other operations and can be used, cumulatively, in supply chains. The specific objectives are (i) to model the environmental performance of the transaction, (ii) to use the model to measure performance, and (iii) to interpret the results and come to a conclusion. It begins with a review of the environmental performance measurement and then proceeds to the description of the research methodology and the results of its application. The method consists of five constructs, assessed by managers and processes experts according to their potential of environmental performance's improvement: solid waste, wastewater, gas emissions, deployment of natural resources, and legal compliance. The constructs are perceived by qualitative indicators categorically evaluated. The final result is an index of 76.69%, which represents the environmental performance of the operation.

A systematic review of original articles published between 1993 and 2007 and indexed in SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) was carried out to identify the anthropometric indicators used to assess abdominal obesity in different target subgroups, and to provide an overview of available evidence regarding the relationship between these anthropometric indicators and obesity-associated comorbidities. The articles were analyzed and the following data were collected:year of publication, sample size and age, anthropometric measure used to detect abdominal obesity, and main results of the study. The review comprised 47 articles which met all inclusion criteria, most of them published over the last 5 years. Waist-hip ratio and waist circumference were used as indicators of abdominal obesity in 34 and 11 of the articles reviewed, respectively. With respect to age range, the samples were heterogeneous in most of the studies (n=27) and ten included adolescents. Four studies were conducted on elderly subjects and three included children, but none exclusively involved adolescents as the target population. The sample size was larger than 500 in 26 studies. Despite disagreement in terms of the degree of correlation, the studies generally showed that the anthropometric indicators of abdominal obesity were correlated with hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemias, and coronary heart risk. The results of this review suggest that abdominal obesity is associated with metabolic diseases. However, there is a lack of studies involving the adolescent population, suggesting the need for further research in this area.

Neither the gender aspects of racial discrimination nor the racial aspects of gender discrimination are fully comprehended within human rights discourses. Building on the growing recognition that race and gender discrimination are not mutually exclusive phenomena, this background paper forwards a provisional framework to identify various forms of subordination that can be said to reflect the interactive effects of race and gender discrimination. It suggests a provisional protocol to be followed to better identify the occasions in which such interactive discrimination may have occurred, and posits further that the responsibility to address the causes and consequences of such discrimination be shared widely among all human rights institutions.

Strict sense mastership courses in Brazil can be academic or professional, being the latter ones representative of a type focused on the training of professionals. Previous recent articles sought to evaluate the importance of this modality in comparison with academic courses; however, they have not advanced in the discussion on the term papers of professional mastership courses. For this, a guideline was developed, supported by experiential learning theory, applied to students entering the professional master's degree, between 2014 and 2015, from School of Economics, Business and Accounting of the University of São Paulo FEA-USP. The current research, motivated by the perceived need to have a different logic for the preparation of the term paper at professional masters, sought to investigate whether students in their projects are using this guideline. The research took place in two distinct phases: the first aimed to develop the guidelines to be tested and in the second was carried out a documentary research with 37 students’ projects, being these documents analyzed using content analysis. We concluded that the guideline was partially used by students, lacking evolution when concerning the inclusion of creativity, the observation of experiences and the relationship between theory and practice.

Este ensaio pretende ser uma defesa da importância acadêmica do ensaio. Na vida acadêmica atual, vigora sobretudo o pragmatismo da produtividade funcional e da eficiência, expresso, através de um inglês comercial, sobretudo pelo paper. Esse esvaziamento das palavras convida-nos a enfatizar a importância do ensaio. De Montaigne a Steiner, passando por Adorno, o ensaio, gênero da modernidade, torna-se, assim, sobretudo num tempo de crise das grandes narrativas, o modo de captar o eterno naquilo que vivemos e percebemos como destinado a perecer. Constitui-se como escritura do sujeito moderno, e manifestação de suas extraordinárias inquietudes e de suas solidões. O ensaio como artesanato da suspeita, ao invés de ser visto como vitória do amadorismo na vida acadêmica, é o caminho com que se revelarão os limites de toda pretensão universalista e do produtivismo acadêmico hoje imperante.

O artigo faz uma análise dos escritos publicados por Maria Mulher – Organização de Mulheres Negras, tendo em vista atender a sua missão institucional.Inicialmente, é feita uma apresentação da forma como a organização presta informações para as mulheres, em especial, as negras, visando ao combate às discriminações sexista, de raça/etnia e de classe social dentro dos programas que desenvolve. O texto faz também referência à falta de organizações que incentivem a produção intelectual de entidades feministas negras. Finalmente, para aumentar o número de publicações das organizações de mulheres negras, o trabalho aponta para a produção de obras em conjunto, as quais abordarão temas de acordo com a vocação de cada instituição.The paper presents an analysis of the articles published for Maria Mulher Organização de Mulheres Negras, in order of taking care of its institucional mission. Initially it is made a presentation of the form that the organization gives information for the women, in special, for the blacks, in order to combat the discriminations by sex, of race/ethnic and of social class, in the programs that develops. The text also makes reference to the lack of organizations that stimulates the intellectual production of entities black feminists. Finally, the work points to the production of workmanships in order to increase the number of publications from the black women organizations, in accordance with the vocation of each institution.

O objetivo deste artigo é fornecer subsídios para repensar o desafio da educação superior, especialmente o da pós-graduação na área da Administração, a partir da avaliação dos papéis dos atores sociais envolvidos no processo de ensino-aprendizagem e de suas expectativas em relação aos demais: o aluno-cliente, o professor-gerente-educador e a instituição de ensino-mercantil. Durante um ano realizou-se uma pesquisa qualitativa com alunos e professores de uma pós-graduação lato sensu em uma Instituição de Ensino Superior privada. Os dados foram tratados através de análise de conteúdo. Constatou-se que, por parte dos corpos docente e discente, há distorções e falta de clareza quanto aos papéis desempenhados por cada elemento, gerando conflitos de interesses e que os papéis socialmente estabelecidos estão profundamente influenciados pela relação comercial do negócio educação, por vezes chocando-se com objetivos pedagógicos da educação.

The paper analyzes the occurrences of taboo words in Fatih Akin’s German comedy Soul Kitchen (2009). The film is particularly rich in taboo and swear words which are mainly used by certain characters and seem to play a specific role. According to a classification of taboo words in central semantic groups and along with the definition of aggressive speech act by Havrlyiv (2017, 2018, 2022) and of insults by Alfonzetti (2017), the paper initially identifies the most recurrent speech acts in the context of their occurrence, investigating the pragmatic functions of taboo words in the original German dialogues of the comedy also in relation to the humorous aims pursued. Next, according to Díaz Cintas and Remael’s (2007) subtitling classification the paper analyzes the Italian subtitles, investigating the translation strategies selected and the solutions adopted. Special attention is paid to the strategies chosen for the translation of cultural-bound elements. The translation of scatological taboo words holds a particular relevance.

This paper examines the potential of cloud technologies in audiovisual translator education with a particular emphasis on cloud subtitling. The fast-growing global demand for multimedia content has recently led to the significant growth of audiovisual translation (AVT) as both a professional avenue and an academic discipline (Díaz-Cintas, 2019). Developments in cloud computing have profoundly altered work in the language and translation industries in general and media localisation workflows in particular (Díaz-Cintas & Massidda, 2019). The market’s leading stakeholders are currently exploiting cloud technologies in an attempt to maximise resources, extend freelance networks and enhance efficiency. Access to most of these technologies, however, remains restricted to the largest media-streaming and translation service providers, meaning that they cannot be utilised by the public, not least would-be translators and trainers. The umbilical connection between translator education and new technologies, such as cloud computing, calls for a more detailed examination of how cloud subtitling is being integrated into the AVT classroom. Indeed, to be fully employable in an ever-changing market, AVT trainees need to be fully conversant in the latest technologies (Cerezo-Merchán, 2018) and adapt to new ecosystems quickly. The ubiquitous cloud-based revoicing and subtitling editors used in the industry are becoming timidly, albeit steadily, more manifest in higher education. This paper thus examines the uses of cloud subtitling systems in audiovisual translator education following instances of action research (AR) experimentation. It presents the results from a pilot AR study conducted at a translator training institution and ultimately proposes ways to further explore cloud technologies in higher education while fostering academia-industry partnerships.

This paper examines frictions between bio-scientific and traditional knowledge in three dimensions: (1) traditional healing and caring practices and public health; (2) food heritage and food safety; (3) traditional agricultural systems and conservation policy. Drawing on conflicts observed in processes of recognition of cultural assets as intangible heritage in Brazil, the paper discusses whether epistemic rights can be guaranteed as cultural rights in contexts in which the nature/culture divide is blurred.

Chalmers’s two-dimensional argument against materialism (aka the zombie argument) is arguably the most ingenious attempt to ground a view about fundamental reality on epistemic considerations. From the conceivability of a being that is physically identical to a conscious being but that is deprived of phenomenal consciousness (a zombie), the argument draws on the interplay of the primary and the second intensions of the zombie hypothesis to infer the metaphysical possibility of a zombie world, and thus the falsity of physicalism about phenomenality. By means of a detailed reconstruction of the two-dimensional argument, the paper tries to isolate its most central assumption: that the role played by an epistemic scenario (an intentional object) in the verification of the zombie hypothesis is played by a nonintentionally individuated metaphysical world (the zombie world) considered as actual. The paper argues that no non-viciously circular case for this assumption has been made. Thus, the two-dimensional argument is at best inconclusive.

This paper aims to demonstrate that Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) may provide useful tools for interpreting epidermalized relations of power in the international system and for challenging the racial dynamics that cut across the teaching, research and extension dimensions in the field of International Relations. This study shows that CWS have potential to support the implementation of Law 11.645/2008, which requires the inclusion, in a cross-curricular manner, of education regarding ethnic-racial relations in higher education curricula in Brazil. In this paper, I provide an introduction to the field of CWS, drawing primarily from the Brazilian afro-feminist contribution in pretuguês of Cida Bento, with her concept of narcissistic pacts of whiteness. Methodologically, this article makes use of a decolonial approach, based on bibliographic and documental research techniques. This paper stresses the importance of naming and historicizing the power of whiteness, to understand how it hegemonizes itself in space and time, and through which means it does so. It is a novel and original study, which innovates by introducing Black epistemologies and stating their applicability as regards teaching, research and extension, opening paths to destabilize the colonial support beams of the IR field.

Grace Darling Wetherbee Coolidge’s 1917 book Teepee Neighbors is a little-known collection of twenty-nine sketches of Indian life on the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, where she worked as a missionary from 1902 to 1910. Only recently have Coolidge’s personal papers been made publicly available by the Pioneers Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, allowing scholars to investigate the true contours of her life for the first time. These primary source materials shed new light on a woman who—though born to great privilege in New York City—rejected a life of leisure and wealth in favor of a subsistence existence on a remote Indian reservation, devoted to charitable acts. This paper offers the first accurate essay-length biographical treatment of Grace Coolidge. It as well analyzes selections of her Teepee Neighbors as an attempt to generate sympathy among white readers for a colonized people, the Arapaho, and to offer a critique of Euro-American society from the standpoint of the communal Indian values she encountered at Wind River. Coolidge’s project, however, is ultimately hampered by her own ethnocentrism and admitted inability to understand Indian cultures.

This paper examines the nature and historical trajectories of student politics in India. In doing so, it seeks to centrally carry forward the argument that students represent a powerful and informed political agency, motivated along the axes of either ushering large scale changes or in addressing minor campus issues. It also seeks to lay out the background and dissects the factors that have led to the beginnings, decline and resurgence of student movements in postcolonial societies, particularly in India wherein the contribution of youth or students towards nation-building via activism or participation in mainstream politics can hardly be discounted. While the 1960s did give rise to student movements globally, this paper centrally argues that it has been an intrinsic feature in the Indian context for almost a century now, both before and after Independence from colonial rule and thereby concludes with the idea that universities have been integral to such developments within such a milieu.

This paper explores the “new social movement” features of the Argentinean, Chilean, and Uruguayan student movements of the late 1800s and early 1900s. In doing so, it wrestles with two questions. First, why do such features, widely associated with post-industrial societies, appear at this relatively early stage of capitalist development? Second, what does their presence at that time suggest about the explanatory power of new social movement theory? The paper agrees with new social movement theorists’ contention that capitalism shapes the character of social movements but argues that the focus of the analysis should not be on development stages but rather on the impact of rapid global market integration processes, which have occurred at different times since the rise of capitalism. Such an approach illuminates why capitalist development may yield similar collective action patterns across different historical periods.

The subject of this essay is the classical problem of induction, which is sometimes attributed to David Hume and called “the Humean Problem of Induction.” Here, I examine a certain sort of Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem, which appeals to the concept of natural kinds in its response to the inductive skeptic. This position is most notably represented by Howard Sankey and Marc Lange. The purpose of this paper is partly destructive and partly constructive. I raise two questions. The first is: Are the natural kind solutions to the problem successful? The first thesis of this paper is that they are not, and I will show how and why they fail. And the second question I raise here is: Is there nonetheless some alternative Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem which is successful and can overcome the shortcomings endemic to the Sankey-Lange account? The second thesis is that there is, and I’ll attempt to sketch one. My stance here may be summarized by saying that, while I agree with Sankey and Lange that the problem of induction can be adequately resolved, and while I am on the whole sympathetic with the Aristotelian spirit of their account(s), I am, for all that, dissatisfied with the letter of them. Nothing short of a more thoroughgoing Aristotelianism about the epistemology of induction will do.

This paper presents an off-line experiment we conducted to investigate the influence of referentiality on relative clause (RC) interpretation in Brazilian Portuguese. RCs associated with complex NPs seem to be preferentially attached to a referential noun. This referentiality effect can be treated in discourse terms (Gilboy, Sopena, Clifton & Frazier, 1995) or in syntacticsemantic terms (Bezerra, 2017; this paper). Our questionnaire tested these approaches using two types of complex NPs (occupational and kinship NPs) and the results showed that the syntactic-semantic structure of these complex NPs can account for the referentiality effect reported in the literature by Gilboy et al. (1995). Based on our results, we argue in favor of the syntactic-semantic approach and show that the discourse-oriented approach lacks explanatory power.

In this paper we analyze students’ mathematics errors in the early years of Brazilian school. To achieve this goal, we developed a questionnaire with eight math problems that included basic operations. This instrument was distributed to 76 third-grade students in three different classes from three different schools. To comprehend what caused the errors, we analyzed each question. To perform these analyzes we used the following categories: Errors due to language difficulties; Errors due to difficulties in obtaining spatial information; Errors due to incorrect associations or rigidity of thinking; Errors due to the application of irrelevant rules or strategies; Errors due to deficient mastery of prerequisite skills, facts, and concepts; Incorrect reproduction of the task; Error of counting; Errors in the assemblage of the arithmetic operations; Errors in the summing up with values bigger than ten; and Specific errors of subtraction. We believe that using errors as motivation could improve students' understanding of mathematics. We seek to help teachers (and researchers) identify most of the mistakes made by students in order to recognize them in their classrooms. The results indicated that some of the students' most common errors are in line with what the literature points out, that is, difficulty in translating the problem into mathematical language; difficulties in using the operations algorithms and difficulties in understanding what the problem is asking.

O desenvolvimento da biotecnologia no século XX e XXI promove como fonte de valor a informação da natureza, ao passo que a materialidade dos entes naturais ou dos portadores da informação genética tem perdido importância. Neste sentido, a manipulação genética da natureza através da conversão desta em recursos genéticos deu azo a novas ontologias e formas de relacionamento com o mundo natural. A ideia de biodiversidade envolve o conceito de biodiversidade genética, abrindo novos horizontes para a apropriação capitalista da natureza. Neste sentido, reações ao projeto informacional da natureza se reúnem de modo ambivalente no mecanismo compensatório de Acesso e repartição de benefícios (ABS), consagrado na Convenção da Diversidade Biológica (CBD) e no Protocolo de Nagoya (2010). Os conflitos entre a natureza informacional e a natureza material tocam sobremaneira os saberes e conhecimentos indígenas, uma vez que a maior parte da biodiversidade global é desconhecida da ciência moderna e está sob a guarda das culturas indígenas. Esse paper tem como intenção debater a origem do mecanismo de ABS, sua relação com a biodiversidade genética, bem como analisar como ele tem legitimado a concepção de uma visão informacional da natureza que afeta negativamente povos e comunidades tradicionais. É também uma proposta por uma história das ciências e ambiental da biodiversidade.

There are some sentences that include expressions that refer to entities that do not exist. One example is this: Mary is in terror of werewolves. Some argue that this sentence cannot be translated into predicate logic. This may be seen as flaw in predicate logic. Against this, I argue in this paper that the problem is not predicate logic, but rather our commitments with the existence and nature of certain things. By revising some of these commitments, we can see that predicate logic is perfectly capable to deal with the problematic sentences.

In this paper, I present a formal reconstruction of the classical argument for fatalism set forth by Aristotle in On Interpretation 9. From there, I expose two different formal solutions for avoiding the unwanted conclusion based on the traditional interpretation of Aristotle’s rejection of the Principle of Bivalence: On the one hand, Łukasiewicz's three-valued logic and, on the other hand, supervaluation semantics. I also address some criticisms made against these two proposals. To finish, I remark on some alternative interpretations of Aristotle’s intentions maintaining that the Stagirite philosopher rejected fatalism without abandoning the Principle of Bivalence.

In this paper I attempt a formalization of Descartes’ causal argument for the existence of God presented in the Third Meditation. By taking into account the philosophical setting of Descartes’ Meditations, I argue that the best logical theory to carry out the formalization is quantified modal logic where free logic is used for the first-order axioms. This fact is related to Descartes’ distinction between formal and objective reality which — to my mind — suggests both the adoption of modality (e.g. true in formal vs true in objective reality) and the possibility of using empty names (i.e. names which lack reference in “formal reality”). After presenting the formal system and the reconstruction of Descartes’ proof, I will discuss some issues related to the philosophical import of the formalization, such as the understanding of rigid designation and lack of reference. I will argue that the formalization of Descartes’ argument has an intrinsic philosophical value for it sheds light on the structure of argument, its implicit difficulties, and the use of logic itself to understand the philosophical tradition.

Belief Revision studies how rational agents change their beliefs in response to new information. The main objective of the works in this area is modelling these dynamics by defining some formal operators of change. This paper is an overview on the AGM model for revision, introducing some of the major questions that are addressed in this area of study.

In this paper, the author reproduces one of Nicolas Malebranche’s arguments for God’s existence. The text offers (I) a logical formalization of the argument, (II) a formal proof of validity of the argument and, finally, some philosophical reflections concerning not only (III.I) the soundness of the argument, but (III.II) the intellectual benefits that a logical formalization offers to a philosophical historian of philosophy.

The Liar Paradox is a classic argument that creates a contradiction by reflection on a sentence that attributes falsity to itself: ‘this sentence is false’. In our paper we will discuss the ways in which the Liar sentence (and its paradoxical argument) can be represented in first-order logic. The key to the representation is to use first-order logic to model a self-referential language. We will also discuss several related sentences, like the Liar cycles, the empirical versions of the Liar and the Truth teller sentences.

In this paper, an argument by Fisher (2004) is formalized and evaluated by means of some tools of classical logic. The argument presented by Fisher is a version of a piece of reasoning of great historical importance known as Pascal’s Wager. According to Fisher, “this is a fascinating piece of reasoning. It is complex and important and hard to handle”. Here is shown that, although formal logical analysis has limitations to evaluate everyday deductive arguments, it is perfectly capable to formalize and evaluate Fisher’s argument. This should show that its usefulness is undeniable.

This paper aims to reconstruct Kant’s derivation of the formula of the categorical imperative from its mere concept with the help of the resources of Searle’s and Vanderveken’s illocutionary logic. The main exegetical hypothesis is that the derivation envisaged by Kant consists in deriving the formula from the success conditions of categorical imperatives. These conditions, which are analogous to the success conditions of ordinary orders, contain restrictions for the successful construction of a system of moral laws that determine what the content of the categorical imperative must be.

Eucalyptus urophylla S. T. Blake is one of the main eucalyptus species cultivated. However, there are no recommendations for testing its germination pattern. Thus, the objective of this work was to determine the best methodology to conduct seed germination tests for E. urophylla. The study was divided into two steps. In the first, two substrates (on paper and sand) and six temperatures (15, 20, 25, 30, 35ºC, and alternating 20-30ºC, between night and day, respectively) were tested. In the second step, the best substrate was selected based on the first experiment and was tested in two seeds lots and at the six temperatures previously mentioned. Germination, first count, speed index and the average germination time were evaluated. The experiment was in a completely randomized design with four replications and the treatments were arranged in a 2x6 factorial scheme for both steps. When comparing germination between lots, it was observed that lot 1 had a lower performance than lot 2 under extreme temperature conditions. Seed germination tests of E. urophylla should be made at 30 or 35ºC on the paper or sand substrate, with the initial and final counts at four and 10 days after sowing, respectively. Based on this study, more tests should be made with seeds from other lots and populations of E. urophylla to confirm the results.

This review study aimed to analyse the national production on schooling of athletes. From the search for only papers in Portuguese in the Portal Capes Periódicos followed by phases of refinement, seven papers were selected. The results point to the predominance of descriptive studies on the profile of young soccer players and two review studies on the football labor market and legal milestones for student athletes. The main barriers are the time administration between the two careers and the absence of specific regulation in the sports legislation, which are mitigated mainly by the presence of the familiar support in the flexibility of the school formation to the detriment of the dream of the soccer professionalization.

This study posits that Bohr failed to defend the completeness of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality against Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen’s (EPR) paper. Although there are many papers in the literature that focus on Bohr’s argument in his reply to the EPR paper, the purpose of the current paper is not to clarify Bohr’s argument. Instead, I contend that regardless of which interpretation of Bohr’s argument is correct, his defense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality remained incomplete. For example, a recent trend in studies of Bohr’s work is to suggest he considered the wave-function description to be epistemic. However, such an interpretation cannot be used to defend the completeness of the quantum mechanical description.

This paper aims to analyze the process of recognition and validation of prior learning, a public policy measure meant for the low schooling adults in Portugal. This analysis is the result of a qualitative research based on semi-structured interviews with professionals responsible for implementing the process and on biographical interviews with adults certified through this process. The empirical data collected allowed us to identify some elements of innovation in the process of recognition and validation of prior learning in Portugal. This paper analyzes two elements of innovation: on the one hand, the use of the biographical method and life histories; and, on the other hand, the monitoring provided by the advisor and teachers, recognition and validation. In our point of view, the identified elements of innovation contribute so that the process of recognition and validation of prior learning, oriented, from the political point of view, increases the educational qualification of adults, presents a training potential in the adults involved.