LIFECOMP The European Framework for Personal, Social and Learning to Learn Key Competences

lifecomp

In May 2018, the Council of the European Union adopted the revised Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, setting out a core set of skills necessary to work and live in the 21st Century. The aim is that everybody should have the essential set of competences needed for personal development, social inclusion, active citizenship, and employment. These competences include Literacy, Multilingual, Mathematical competence and competence in science, technology and engineering, as well as Digital, Personal, Social and Learning to Learn, Citizenship, Entrepreneurship, and Cultural awareness and expression.

LifeComp offers a conceptual framework for the “Personal, Social, and Learning to Learn” key competence for education systems, students, and learners on the whole. LifeComp intends to systematise the need to improve personal and social competences through education and lifelong learning, as well as promoting learning how to learn.

LifeComp is made up of three intertwined competence areas: ‘Personal’, ‘Social’, and ‘Learning to Learn’. Each area includes three competences: Self-regulation, Flexibility, Wellbeing (Personal Area), Empathy, Communication, Collaboration (Social Area), Growth mindset, Critical thinking, and Managing learning (Learning to learn Area). Each competence has, in turn, three descriptors which generally correspond to the ‘awareness, understanding, action’ model. These are not to be understood as a hierarchy of different levels of relevance, whereby some are prerequisites for others. Rather, all of them are to be considered complementary and necessary.

LifeComp regards “Personal, Social, and Learning to Learn” competences as ones which apply to all spheres of life, and which can be acquired through formal, informal, and non-formal education. Our leitmotif was to identify competences that are teachable. The journey to becoming self-regulated, empathetic, and flexible citizens is one which is always characterised by a social dimension; this is a key element in the European perspective, and distinguishes our framework from others. Becoming critical thinkers, and having a sense of wellbeing, both on an individual and collective level, are competences which can be taught in schools.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our lifestyles, forcing important changes in education, employment, and skills requirements at all levels. In the current situation, it is especially relevant that citizens be able to reflect on and develop their personal, social, and learning to learn competences in order to unleash their dynamic potential, self-regulate their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours, build a meaningful life, and cope with complexity as thriving individuals, responsible social agents, and reflective lifelong learners.

the lifecomp framework