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This book seeks to provide perspectives about competence in varied situations and contexts, suggesting that workers in the future will need to acquire the competence to predict and deal with new situations. Five major approaches to the interpretation, experience and teaching of competence in the workplace are put forward. These are: notions of worker competence and the persuasiveness of informal workplace training; developing competence as an individual and the inherent relationship between the worker and work, and the lifeworld; learning which develops higher level competencies based on a more holistic conception of competence; characteristics of learning environments as integral components of learning at work; learning environments construed as a theoretical and methodological problem in terms of their impact on the acquisition of competence. The chapters are presented under four themes focussing on: industry and vocational education; schools and colleges; small business and companies; health and global contexts. The chapters are: Understanding the basis for competence development / Jorgen Sandberg; Perceptions of vocational education and competence: implications for research, policy and practice: a comparative study between Australia and Japan / Christine Velde; Vocational educators: understanding practice at work / Stephen Billett; The changing context of business education: competency requirements for the new paradigm / Christine Velde; An alternative model of competency-based assessment / Geoffrey Elliott; Kicking and screaming into the 21st century: a collaborative attempt to develop beginning teacher competencies through e-communication / Dianne Mayer, Martin Mills and Kathy Roulston; Workplace trainers in action: their role in building a training/learning culture / Roger Harris and Michele Simons; Learning in small business enterprises / Rod Gerber; Learning environments: what are they? / Lennart Svensson and Ylva Kjellberg; Empowerment through reflection: competence for the new millennium or a case of the emperor's new clothes / Tony Ghaye; Nursing work and nurses at work / Joanne Fitzpatrick; Demands for intercultural communicative competence in working-life: a case study of Swedish higher education co-operation with Baltic neighbour, Estonia / Eva Ericsson.