Learning and competences. A new view.

Abstract

ABSTRACT
The most important challenges faced by today’s society is lifelong learning and competence-based training. Learning is no longer seen as a passive process carried out in formal environments, but should be reconceptualised as a lifelong and life-wide development. Continuous, permanent training is more important than ever before and these changes demand an educational model based on learning and on comprehensive, competence-based training. In order to explain such a phenomenon, a number of research studies, theories and models have been carried out, which position the learner as “main social actor” of this process. With regard to competences (term coined nowadays which seems to be both complex and multifunctional), comprehensive training based on competences is fostered, which enables people to confront, not only current events but also future challenges. This paper presents a new vision of these two aspects bearing in mind the importance of learning and competences in the Bologna Process. In order to do so, we integrated the different dimensions of the Professional Action Competence (C.A.P. for short) and qualitative and quantitative conceptions of learning and conceptions of teaching.