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HOW DO WE DESCRIBE WHAI WE ARE DOING? SUPERVISION AND COACHING IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN COMPETENCE ORIENTATION ——o— HEIDEMARIE MÜLLER-RIEDLHUBER ABSTRACT 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. EUROPEAN POLICY CONTEXT 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.
