The Learning to Learn Competence - Guarantor of Personal Development

The nowadays society is in a continuous change with major impact on education, and in the overall development of an individual. In fact, the school cannot provide all the information and related knowledge for the whole life, and, in the context of the actual lifelong learning, an individual has to be trained with those competences and capacities that allow to continue the learning process also after the ending of the studies. As defined at the European level, the key competences for lifelong learning represent those which all individuals need for personal fulfillment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment. One of those competences is "learning to learn", defined as the ability to pursue and persist in learning, to organize one's own learning, including through effective management of time and information, both individually and in groups (The Key Competences for Lifelong Learning - A European Framework, 2006). It is clear that in this context, the Romanian system of education has to define a curriculum oriented on competences that must identify, develop and valorize the students' skills and abilities. The paper illustrates the results of an investigation of 250 Romanian secondary school students, counted as indirect beneficiaries of the teacher training programme "PROFILES - Education through Sciences", organized in the frame of the Seventh Framework Programme "PROFILES - Professional Reflection Oriented Focus on Inquiry-based Learning and Education through Science". The results showed that students try to maximize their efforts concerning to know and understand their learning strategies, but also their strengths and weaknesses related to their skills and abilities, seen in correlation to Science subjects. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.