This article undertakes the theme of the formation of competences; how they entered into the agenda of educational politics in Colombia, how they have been justified through State speeches, and how they have come to be installed as part of a vocational training, becoming a strategic key in the success of the Global commercial economy. The article is presented as support for an alternate vision oriented toward an �integral vocational training,� as an indicator of the development of the concept to human scale, whose horizon is not economic growth but the self-fulfillment of man and his welfare in �the world of life�. It treats the Reflexive Didactic Strategy not in order �to know how to do in context�, but in order �to know how to transform the context.�