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Internships or on-the-job learning sessions are often used to facilitate the development of work-related competence in vocational education. This chapter examines the role that students’ notions of learning theories play in the development of competence. It contains a review of a number of empirical studies on work-related learning processes during practice periods in a variety of vocational educational contexts, e.g. health care education, technical education, and social work education. Drawing on social-constructivist theories of learning, the perspective of the learner provides the focus. The emphasis is on learning activities and competence development during practice periods and how these relate to student learning conceptions, epistemological beliefs, and goal orientations as elements of individual learning theories. Guidelines for designing a competence-oriented learning environment that promotes learning ability and boundary-crossing competencies are presented. An experimental study concerned with word processing competencies is used to demonstrate these guidelines.