HOW DO WE DESCRIBE WHAI WE ARE DOING?
SUPERVISION AND COACHING IN THE CONTEXT OF
EUROPEAN COMPETENCE ORIENTATION
HEIDEMARIE MÜLLER-RIEDLHUBER
This article will provide a brief overview of European policy instruments that
aim to facilitate greater transparency with regard to the mobility of learners
and workers within Europe. The role competences and learning outcomes play in
describing occupations and qualifications, and how they contribute to increased
comparability of professional profiles in employment and qualification
descriptions in education and training, will be explained. Furthermore,
the relevance of competence frameworks at European level and for the
professionalization of counselling, supervision and coaching will be established.
Three competence frameworks in the field of counselling, supervision and
coaching will be shortly described and compared. The advantages of competence
frameworks in the field of supervision and coaching will be emphasized and
challenges of describing professional profiles for supervision and coaching will
be discussed.
In the past several years European political priorities in the field of education
and training, as well as labour market development and employment, have
focused on keeping the European labour force competitive by supporting the
mobility of both learners and workers and promoting lifelong learning. Several
European initiatives have been launched in the past decade in order to achieve
this objective, and the comparability and transferability of qualifications and
professional profiles has been attributed particular significance. Frameworks
and reference systems such as the European Qualification Framework (EOF),
! European Commission, EOF description at the website, http://ec.europa.eu/ploteus/en/
content/descriptors-page, accessed 14 October 2015.