Introduction
The HEGESCO project (short for Higher Education as a Generator of Strategic Competences), co-founded by Education and Culture Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union, enabled the development of Europe-wide dialogue on employability and competence development: we have received more the 130 contributions. It provided a platform for international conference entitled "Development of Competencies in the World of Work and Education" (DECOWE), held between 24-26 September 2009 at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, the empirical findings of several European Projects were used as a basis for dialogue between researchers, HE management staff and policy makers. The main emphasis was on the key note presentations of the Hegesco, European Commission, OECD, REFLEX, Car Easy VET and VQTS II projects, however, other participants – researchers, management staff of educational institutions, employers, policy makers and trade union representatives – presented projects, ongoing activities, surveys and studies from across the world.
On behalf of the Decowe organisers, I would like to thank all 300 participants that attended the conference, particularly Barbara Nolan and Julie Fionda from the European Commission, Ulrich Teichler (Kassel University), Georg Spoettl (Bremen University), Patrick Werquin (OECD), and Rolf van der Velden (Maastricht University) for delivering excellent plenary speeches.
In the coming months the conference proceedings will be published. The website will be regularly updated with the presentations and papers that were submitted. In the organisational team at the University of Ljubljana we believe this is an important contribution for state of the art survey of the role of qualification systems in developing professional expertise and competencies in general.
Sincerely,
Dr. Samo Pavlin
Coordinator of DECOWE and
HEGESCO Actions
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
