From restricting competencies to diversifying competencies: Sustainable development and its implications for competency-based approaches to education

This text proposes a new paradigm for thinking about competency-based education derived from an extended reflection of sustainable development as a wicked problem. It suggests that current approaches to thinking about competences are ill-adapted to dealing with the challenge presented by sustainable development, and based on this conclusion it argues that we need to move from what it calls restricted thinking on competences to diversifying thinking on competences.