Free and informed consent is one of the most widespread and morally important practices of modern health care; competence to consent is its cornerstone. In this book, Becky Cox White provides a concise introduction to the key practical, philosophical, and moral issues involved in competence to consent. The goals of informed consent, respect for patient autonomy and provision of beneficent care, cannot be met without a competent patient. Thus determining a patient's competence is the critical first step to informed consent. Determining competence depends on defining it, yet surprisingly, no widely accepted definition of competence exists. White identifies nine capacities that patients must exhibit to be competent. She approaches the problem from the task-oriented nature of decision making and focuses on the problems of defining competence within clinical practice. Her proposed definition is based on understanding competence as occurring in a special rather than a general context; as occurring in degrees rather than at a precise threshold; as independent of consequential appeals; and as incorporating affective as well as cognitive capacities. Combining both an ethical overview and practical guidelines, this book will be of value to health care professionals, bioethicists, and lawyers.

The book is considered a guideline for systemic personnel development in controlling of nationally and internationally active companies on the basis of a targeted development of competencies. In particular, the challenges posed by digitalization and globalization are considered and substantiated with the help of empirical studies. Employees and managers in controlling as well as HR managers in companies gain a deeper understanding of the necessity and the components of systematic personnel development. The goals are the formation of high-performance teams in controlling as well as the identification of personal career paths on the way to top management tasks as CFO. The focus of the personnel development model is on the transfer of the competence-oriented development approach, which, in addition to the traditionally considered technical and methodological competencies, also takes into account social and personal competencies as well as additional digital and intercultural competencies. The book is rounded off by a survey of the current situation, the definition of a target situation to be aimed at, the discussion of suitable further training measures and the monitoring of the level of competency achieved, and illustrates concrete career concepts.

For many people, a high standard for student learning is desirable. This is what underlies current standard-based science education reforms around the world. As someone who was born and brought up in a less-privileged home and educated in a resource-limited school environment in a developing country, I always had to study hard to meet various standards from elementary to high school to univ- sity. My first book in English published over 10 years ago (Liu, X. [1996]. Mathematics and Science Curriculum Change in the People’s Republic of China. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press) provided me an opportunity to examine standards (i. e. , Chinese national science teaching syllabi) from a historical and political point of view. I argued that standards are developed for particular poli- cal agendas in order to maintain the privileged position of certain groups (i. e. , urban residents) in a society at expenses of others (i. e. , rural residents). Thus, underneath standards is systematic discrimination and injustice. Since then, I have had opportunities to study the issue of standards in much more breadth and depth. This book, Linking Competence to Opportunities to Learn: Models of Competence and data mining, provides me an opportunity to examine standards from a different perspective: opportunity to learn.

The questions which this volume seeks to address include: what is translation competence? How can it be built and developed? How can the product of the performance be used to measure levels of competence? These questions are addressed with specific reference to the training situation. They are arranged in three sections, the first focusing on the identification of subcompetences.

The issue of competence division is of fundamental importance as it reflects the 'power bargain' struck between the Member States and their Union, determining the limits of the authority of the EU as well as the limits of the authority of the Member States. It defines the nature of the EU as a polity, as well as the identity of the Member States. After over six years since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, it is high time to take stock of whether the reforms that were adopted to make the Union's system of division of competences between the EU Member States clearer, more coherent, and better at containing European integration, have been successful. This book asks whether 'the competence problem' has finally been solved. Given the fundamental importance of this question, this publication will be of interest to a wide audience, from constitutional and substantive EU law scholars to practitioners in the EU institutions and EU legal practice more generally.

Considering the relevance of teachers‘ diagnostic competence for understanding students’ thinking and providing effective learning opportunities, Macarena Larrain investigates the development of future primary school teachers’ diagnostic competence in error situations already during initial teacher education. Using video vignettes of classroom situations and samples of students’ work, the author focuses on fostering future teachers’ competence to identify students’ errors, elaborate hypotheses about the causes of those errors and to design appropriate strategies for supporting students in overcoming their misconceptions. She also describes aspects of teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and experience that are relevant for the competence and its development.

This is the revised edition of the first text book in English specially developed for training for IPMA-D and IPMA-C exams, now based on Version 4 of the ICB. In this 4th edition, the text has been restructured and extended to align with the structure and scope of the competence elements in the ICB version 4, divided into Practice competences, People competences and Perspective competences. Therefore, this book will be essential guidance and study book for everyone studying for the IPMA-D, IPMA-C and IPMA-B exams. Besides that, it is an extremely rich source book for those project managers that have committed themselves to a lifelong professional development. In addition, the book had to be applicable to groups of project managers originating from diverse cultures. For this reason, this is not a book that tells how a Westerner must behave in an Arab or an Asian country, but one that looks at the different subjects covered in the ICB, as seen from diverse cultural standpoints. Each chapter is based on the same structure: Key concepts, Introduction, Actions that lead to competence development, Self-assessment, Special topics, Assignments. Text boxes, additional to the main text, give additional explanation to the main text. An elaborate Index of terms allows that this book can be used as a highly up-to-date information source to all aspects of project management. Next to that all, a web-site is available with videos, discussion fora on specific topics, and the opportunity to discuss with the author.