Grégoire Evéquoz
Hall of Fame Class of 2015
Grégoire Evéquoz has been an occupational psychologist in the field of adult training and continuing education for more than 25 years. He is considered a leader in development and evaluation of competences and prior learning and is responsible for creating Switzerland’s first skill evaluation center in 1993. Through his work, he has enriched adult training by combining aspects of andragogy and cognitive psychology.
Evéquoz created the first, and to date only, "Cité des métiers et de la formation" in Switzerland with an area dedicated to continuing education frequented by thousands of adults each year. This model establishes links between all the services of the administration that are dedicated to adults. Adults obtain information and guidance about learning opportunities, career planning, financial support, unemployment insurance, Social Security, childcare, and other areas. This model is unique because adults get answers to all questions regarding lifelong learning in one single place. The Cité has considerably enhanced participation and inclusion of poorly qualified people in adult education. In only three years, the number of participants who benefit from the publicly funded voucher program in adult learning tripled from 700 to 2,000. It is due to Evéquoz ‘s engagement that Switzerland is now a pioneer country in the field of validation in Europe.
Perhaps Evéquoz's most original contribution to the field of adult and continuing education is the development of a certification of key skills or transversal skills for qualified and unqualified adults. This contribution integrates with the research on the European Framework of Key Competences, which led to the publication of a book on the same topic in 2004. These concepts have been used in various European projects for young people and adults alike, as well as in the framework of research conducted in France, Portugal, and Belgium on the evaluation of key skills. This approach enabled, for the first time, the implementation of an official form of certification of key skills.
Within his professional career, Evéquoz has integrated an academic dimension, with numerous teaching assignments in different universities in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and a practical and political dimension since he has responsibility for a cantonal office in charge of proposing educational and learning policies. In this context, Evéquoz received national recognition praising the innovative politics pursued by the Canton and in Switzerland in the areas of adult training and continuing education. Additionally, he is recognized for his approach in skill evaluation, his studies on the exhaustion syndrome among unemployed persons, and his determination of the contribution of adult training in all public actions implemented in the Canton over the past 15 years.