Contents
Lifelong Perspective on Education, Learning or Training
From a lifelong learning perspective, people spend only a short time in educational institutions. Outside formal learning settings, they continue to develop themselves, gain new insights and shape their personalities. This view of learning as a continuous, transformative and diverse process is becoming increasingly important for societies in transition.
People-centred social change requires individuals to feel empowered to face challenges and to co-create a situation in an often ambiguous and open context. A transversal understanding of learning becomes crucial here, helping learners to mobilise knowledge, skills and attitudes acquired in different contexts and social roles. In this perspective, the meaning of competence "involves the ability to meet complex demands, by drawing on and mobilizing psychosocial resources (including skills and attitudes) in a particular context" (OECD).
Competence (OECD)
"(Competence) involves the ability to meet complex demands, by drawing on and mobilizing psychosocial resources (including skills and attitudes) in a particular context." (OECD)
Key Competences for Lifelong Learning
"Competences are defined as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes, where:
- knowledge is composed of the facts and figures, concepts, ideas and theories which are already established and support the understanding of a certain area or subject;
- skills are defined as the ability and capacity to carry out processes and use the existing knowledge to achieve results;
- attitudes describe the disposition and mind-sets to act or react to ideas, persons or situations."
Competence-oriented education is a systematic approach that focuses on the abilities of individuals and aims to strengthen them comprehensively. Learning becomes a partnership between educators and learners and a cooperative social process. The approach combines knowledge, practical skills and attitudes and works closely with real-life challenges. It integrates the training of important transversal skills needed in many social roles and situations.
Reasons for Competence-based Learning
- Considers all learner experiences from different situations, roles and life stages as relevant.
- Goes beyond knowledge-centred learning, working also on attitudes, values and skills, and reflects how they interplay.
- Takes individual learners seriously and tailors learning activities to their needs.
- Sees learning as a cooperative and social process – between classroom and real life, formal, non-formal and informal learning – and also societal sectors.
- Strengthens the individual’s ownership of their own learning, encourages work on personal competence and building the ability to “learn-to-learn”.
What Competence-centered Learning Should Not Be
- A new layer of bureaucracy: It's intended to give learners and teachers more freedom instead more rules or procedures. It requires flexible teachers/facilitators and more freedom for learners.
- Tailorist instead tailor-made learning: It's a humanist and holistic approach aiming to support autonomy, not usability. However, some promoters of competences misunderstand competence-learning as emphasizing on skill training only.
- Optimization without development: Competence is not a self-optimization tool nor for assessing the fittest or increasing competitiveness. They are an instrument for individual and free personal development.
- Doing without thinking: Competence-centered learning involves knowledge, attitude and skills. But some understand that it is a practice-only approach. However, successful action is not possible without the ability of a learner to assess and reflect on activities and goals.
Competence Explorer
- Our tool for an overview of different competence frameworks: Competence Explorer
- Browse the competence models and their definitions
- Learn which of these are relevant to your work
Democracy and human rights education are approaches that bridge the gap between a systemic understanding of society and the concrete empowerment of learners in a specific (local) context. The points of reference are a democratic culture and its foundations, civic participation and human rights.
Education encompassing knowledge, action and attitudes is the basis for forms of education such as democracy and human rights education, which aim at the protection of democracy, the empowerment of people as well as at democratic change. Education for democratic citizenship includes learning...
- Democracy as a form of governance, including principles, structures and rights.
- Democracy as a form of living and learning, including democratic attitudes and habits.
- Democracy as a form of society, including social and participatory processes and relations.
Goals of Human Rights Education
- Learning about human rights, knowledge about human rights, what they are, and how they are safeguarded or protected;
- Learning through human rights, recognising that the context and the way human rights learning is organised and imparted has to be consistent with human rights values (e.g. participation, freedom of thought and expression, etc.) and that in human rights education the process of learning is as important as the content of the learning;
- Learning for human rights, by developing skills, attitudes and values for the learners to apply human rights values in their lives and to take action, alone or with others, for promoting and defending human rights.
Source: Council of Europe, COMPASS
The digital transformation is one example, illustrating how our learning concepts and understanding of education might change toward a holistic perspective.
Holistic Digital Transformation Learning
- Learning for digitalisation: co-determining the digital transformation in society.
- Learning about digitalisation: social, cultural, economic impact of digitalisation in society.
- Learning through digitalisation: digital learning, digital tools and services.
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