Implementing competence orientation and learning outcomes in higher education - Eva Cendon, Katharina Prager, Eva Schacherbauer, Edith Winkler, HE_LEO

The European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF), formally adopted by the European Commission in February 2008, acts as the European Meta-framework for translation, comparison and understanding of qualifications acquired in general, vocational and academic education. As a common reference system it relates the different național qualifications systems and frameworks across Europe. The EQF consists of eight reference levels, spanning the full scale of qualifications, described in terms of learning outcomes. The goal is demanding: by 2010 all countries shall reiate their național qualifications systems and frame­works to the EQF, until 2012 individual qualification certificates shall be referenced to the EQF. Lots of efforts are currently put in the development and implementation of National Qualifications Frameworks (NQF) acting as reference systems to the EQF.

Earlier started but not less demanding are the changes taking place in the higher education sector. The Bologna process started already in 1999 and aims at the development of a European Higher Education Area until 2010. In Bergen (2005) the European Ministers of Education decided to develop a Qualifications Frame­work for the European Higher Education Area (QF-EHEA) allowing transparency and comparison (through the three cycle Bologna structure), recognition of qualifi­cations (through transparency) and mobility of learners (through recognition of prior learning). As a Meta-framework the QF-EHEA connects - by means of the (currently developing) național frameworks for higher education acting as sector frameworks - the higher education degrees of the Bologna member States.

Although the EQF and the QF-EHEA are different with regard to scope and meth- odology, they are neither inconsistent nor incompatible, as the Bologna Working Group for Qualifications Frameworks attests. The full comparability between the two frameworks is emphasized in the EQF. The descriptors of the levels 5 to 8 of the EQF refer directly to the descriptors of the QF-EHEA.

Both Frameworks are based on learning outcomes. The EQF draws exclusively on learning outcomes, whereas the QF-EHEA defmes learning outcomes in the three Bologna cycles through the Dublin descriptors that have been adopted in 2005.