In today’s complex and ever-changing world it has become obvious that even highly developed knowledge and skills are no longer sufficient to meet new challenges, situations and problems facing individuals, organisations and nations. This raises an enormous and potentially confusing issue for educators and trainers: how is it possible to generate and assess abilities to deal with challenges and problems unknown – or not even in existence – at the time when the learning takes place? The book builds on the experiences and insights of its expert contributors, all of whom have worked with, studied and analysed competences and how they are developed. Their collected work presents Comprehensive explanation and analysis of the concept and nature of competence. Specific contexts of competence development, e.g. in the public sector or small business. Competence development as a national strategy for building an up-to-date education and training system. With chapters from around the world, including the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, this book illustrates in an engaging and convincing manner the importance and innovative nature of the concept of competences, resulting in a varied, differentiated and empathetic guide to the topic. It will appeal to educators, both in academic and management circles, as well as students and administrators of education.

What are today's main concepts and theories - and the main stakes - associated with the issue of competences in organizations? In this study, various topics are discussed, including: changes in work and competences * professionalization and the development of competences in education and training * the role of professional didactics in skills development for training and education professionals * competence evaluation processes in adult education * competence management and adult education * changes in vocational training and new models of competences for individuals. (Series: Study Guides in Adult Education)

The ability to express, understand, and regulate emotions is a crucial element in individual functioning and interpersonal interaction. This important volume presents a fresh look at early child development by exploring the very beginnings of emotional competence in young children. What do toddlers and preschoolers understand about their own and other people's feelings? What are the connections between emotions, socialization, and healthy relationships? How do changes in other areas of development, like cognition, fuel emotional competencies? What problems ensue when emotional development is delayed, and how can they be ameliorated? Including numerous case studies, original findings, and an extensive review of the literature, the book sheds light on the emotional experience of the very young and points toward exciting directions for future research.

The transferability of vocational education and training qualifications across international borders is a live issue in this heterogeneous field. Key to this goal is defining a common methodology for measuring vocational competences. This publication sets out a proposal for just that, based on the results of a pilot project known as ‘COMET’ on competence diagnostics in the field of electrical engineering. The study deploys longitudinal analysis to explore issues of competence development, the development of vocational identity, and occupational commitment. It focuses on two discrete occupational profiles in electrical engineering in an ambitious test of a model currently applied to other professions as well. The model’s success in its first phase is detailed in the second part of the volume, where the authors show that the transfer of the competence framework into an empirical model was successful. They also demonstrate that the methodology can be applied to designing and evaluating vocational education and training processes, making the material relevant to VET teachers and trainers as well as academics. With its first section comprising a full description of the theoretical framework, this book is a significant step forward in an urgent task facing administrations, labor forces and employers around the world. The achievement is in proportion to the notorious complexities of a field whose diversity makes tough demands on large-scale methods of assessment.

Drawing on data from a range of contexts, including classrooms, pharmacy consultations, tutoring sessions, and video-game playing, and a range of languages including English, German, French, Danish and Icelandic, the studies in this volume address challenges suggested by these questions: What kinds of interactional resources do L2 users draw on to participate competently and creatively in their L2 encounters? And how useful is conversation analysis in capturing the specific development of individuals’ interactional competencies in specific practices across time? Rather than treating participants in L2 interactions as deficient speakers, the book begins with the assumption that those who interact using a second language possess interactional competencies. The studies set out to identify what these competencies are and how they change across time. By doing so, they address some of the difficult and yet unresolved issues that arise when it comes to comparing actions or practices across different moments in time.

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.

An unprecedented glimpse into the multidimensional learning processes that take place when novice professionals develop the necessary communication skills for effective task accomplishment. This analysis of authentic patient consultations by pharmacy interns is a significant contribution to research on health communication training.