Natura e sviluppo della competenza professionale

The bill that is intended to regulate the profession of the educator, currently before Parliament, has re-ignited the debate on educators’ professional competences. Indeed, the very definition of “professional competence” is complex and problematic since for its assessment and delineation a composite multidisciplinary framework of guidance theories and practices, of pedagogical studies and researches in training processes and procedures, of social and work psychology, of sociology of organizations is required. This essay aims at historically reconstructing the development of the concept of professional competence, following two schools of thought: the American school, founded by McClelland, Boyatzis and Spencer & Spencer, who associate competence with individual and subjective characteristics, and the French school, led by Le Boterf, who approaches the notion of competence mainly from a dynamic-constructivist perspective and considers the process of competence development as related to the creation of mobilization of cognitive resources in situated action.