2015’s AERA in Chicago is almost over for me, but it was very rewarding. See the prentations page for downloadable papers and PPTs. On Saturday April 18 I had the pleasure to chair a high-level coherent and empirical research session on Competence Development in Workplace Learning. There were presentations of Viola Klotz and Dagmar Festner from the University of Paderborn, Germany, Laura Pylväs and Petri Nokelainen from the University of Tampere, Finland, and Silja Mentele and Doreen Holtsch from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My conclusion based on the session was that we see more and more high-level research on competence presented in the SIG Workplace Learning, which I find very promising. Also, the symposium ‘Context matters!’ organised by Frank Achtenhagen and chaired by Susanne Weber on Sunday April 19 was very interesting, as it also included empirical research done by Kristina Kögler from the University Frankfurt am Main, Sandra Bley from the University of Munich, and Susan Seeber from the University of Göttingen, all with colleagues, and all from Germany. The issue raised to what extent competence is or should be understood as situated and contextualized has been addressed from different perspectives. If there is one conclusion that should be drawn in my opinion, it is that more research is needed to figure that out, and to show that most probably students and professionals at work are constantly zooming in on and out from actual performance contexts, in a way that they can employ their competencies in these specific performance situations, from which they also gather new and refined competencies. This ‘oscillation’ process is something to take a closer look at. It may bridge the specific and the generic, the familiar and the unfamiliar, and the known and the unknown, phrases that were brought in by the excellent discussion of Len Cairns from Monash University, Australia. Next year’s AERA should definitely have a symposium of this nature again, in which next steps in theorizing and research can be shared. Find my contribution to the symposium on the Presentations page.
.
