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This chapter reports on a comparative evaluation of the business education curricula of Australia and Hong Kong in the wake of the changes which have occurred in Hong Kong following the return to Chinese government in 1997. The author observes that business education has broadened from its previous technical base, but she suggests that curricula should be even broader and be based on a conception of competence based on an interpretative-relational perspective. She envisages that such an approach will lead to the development of higher levels of competencies, facilitating careers at professional and managerial levels, and ultimately promoting national productivity.

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.

The authors of this chapter assert that the workplace is a legitimate learning environment, their study demonstrating the inter-relationship between learning and work. An analysis of competency standards reveals a number of incorrect assumptions about the process of training. It is noted that although workplace trainers play an important role in the transfer of skills and knowledge, workplace trainer competency standards do not encompass all the competencies required, the emphasis on training rather than learning implying lack of relevance to particular workplace contexts. The authors' study demonstrates the wide use of informal workplace training, and points to a need for further studies about how training and learning in the workplace (particularly of the informal kind) occur so that a suitable policy direction can be developed.

Sandberg takes a phenomenological approach to competency, asserting that the person and the world are inseparable. In support of Heidegger's existentialism, the author argues for a circular rather than a linear approach to the development of competence. This is a contrary notion to the competency-based training approach which is step-wise. Sandberg highlights the importance of dialogue to encourage understanding through the experience of difference via confrontation and challenge.

This chapter presents the results of an examination of company learning environments in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Sweden. This forms part of an ongoing project financed by the European Commission, Learning and Training in Organisations (Latio). The authors observe that the learning environment may be perceived as having three sides: conditions external to the persons involved; activities and creations of managers and teachers; activities and creations of learners.