Purpose: Sustainable development requires multiple stakeholders to work and learn across practices, in other words, it requires boundary crossing competence. To prepare students for their future sustainability professions, higher education should facilitate the development of boundary crossing competence in its curricula. This study aims to…

Purpose: Enhancing the relevance of rural extension services requires aligning extension education to the roles, tasks, activities and competencies of smallholder farmers. The objective of this study is to follow up on previous competence studies and to construct a validated competence framework. Design/Methodology/Approach: Competence frameworks…

For a sustainable future, equipping sustainability change agents with relevant sustainability competencies is crucial. Among these competencies is system thinking competence -- the understanding of complex interrelationships among the dimensions of sustainable development and the impacts of the interrelationships. Learning approaches relevant to…

Developing and assessing individuals' competence to identify business opportunities is of increasing importance in the current widespread introduction of entrepreneurship programmes in higher education worldwide. However, performance tests to assess opportunity identification competence (OIC) are scarce in the entrepreneurship education…

Argumentation is fundamental for many learning assignments, ranging from primary school to university and beyond. Computer-supported argument scaffolds can facilitate argumentative discourse along with concomitant interactive discussions among learners in a group (i.e., first-order argument scaffolding). However, there is no evidence, and hence no…

In today's knowledge society, there is a demand for professionals who are able to create knowledge across boundaries of disciplines, professions and perspectives. Traditional universities, universities of applied sciences and institutions for vocational education are all challenged to educate these knowledge workers. Accordingly, these…

Purpose: To present a description of recent developments in the Dutch green educational system (agriculture, living environment, food). The article builds on a previous 2006 contribution to "JAEE" where different scenarios for changes in green education were suggested. Design/methodology/approach: An analysis of policy documents from…

This article follows the author's previous piece on practical guidelines for the development of comprehensive competence-based education and training (Mulder, 2012). It is about the questions that have been and are still frequently asked in presentations, workshops and classes about the introduction of competence-based education. Here, the author…

This contribution aims at informing readers about a current education and training design approach which is based on theory building and practical experience. It is about the development of comprehensive competence-based education, which is different from earlier attempts to develop competence-based education. In many education development…

A study was conducted to determine general professional development activities perceived to be important in enhancing university teaching staff's job performance, and the extent to which teaching staff participate in these activities in Uganda. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with faculty deans and department heads (n = 20),…

Present-day students are expected to be lifelong learners throughout their working life. Higher education must therefore prepare students to self-direct their learning beyond formal education, in real-life working settings. This can be achieved in so-called hybrid learning configurations in which working and learning are integrated. In such a…

The intentions with which hands-on simulations are used in vocational education are not always clear. Also, pedagogical-didactic approaches in hands-on simulations are not well conceptualised from a learning theory perspective. This makes it difficult to pinpoint the added value that hands-on simulations can have in an innovative vocational…

Inquiry-based science education is an important innovation. Researchers and teachers consider it to be stimulating for pupils' application of research skills, construction of meaning and acquiring scientific knowledge. However, there is ambiguity as to what competencies are required to teach inquiry-based science. Our purpose is to develop a…

An important assumption of entrepreneurial competence is that (at least part of) it can be learned and developed. However, human resources development (HRD) practices aimed at further strengthening and developing small-business owner-managers' entrepreneurial competence are complex and underdeveloped. A multisource assessment of owner-managers'…

Learning to argue is prerequisite to solving complex problems in groups, especially when they are multidisciplinary and collaborate online. Environments for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) can be designed to facilitate argumentative knowledge construction. This study investigates how argumentative knowledge construction in…