Facing the economic imperative of the “promotion of intensive competitiveness”, we find that under social pressures, deep modifications- especially being closer to the working world – are needed. Within this context, priority is now given to a strategy of “thinking towards action” of training programs the aim of which is to establish the creation of activities based on the professional competence showed both by the initial idea and its practical implications. After an analysis of the processes of research leading to enlighten the development of potential, we then face the question: “how are they being created and how one can be trained to create them?” We decided to approach the problem, traditionally analyzed from the point of view of the realisation of actions, under a new angle: the passage towards action. The starting point leading this work is that in order to commit oneself to professional action- meaning being able to face risks and uncertainties to do so – the individual must feel that a “role model”, who has authority, gives permission.

In order to explore the processes underlying the commitment of the subject to action geared towards efficiency together with the legitimacy attached to organisations aiming at changing individuals, we based ourselves on a qualitative work founded on the analysis of discourse. The corpus behind this research analyzed 12 pedagogical documents, 22 interactive propositions lead by 3 acting individuals: former learners, supervisors and tutors.

The results show the difficulty to grasp the complexity of the “studied matter” they lead us however to change slightly our starting research hypothesis. The various forms of “legitimization” leading to the process of authorization refer more to a quest both towards socialisation and recognition by others rather than to a personal individual reference.