Author(s)

Käthe Schneider

Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany.

In recent decades, there has been growing interest in competence in Educational and Psychological Research and Human Resource Development Studies. One of the reasons for the popularity of competence research is the functional perspective of competence and the endeavor to further it. However, despite numerous studies on competence, the ambivalence of the concept of competence makes it hard to evaluate research findings. The aim of the present study is to make a contribution to the conceptual clarification of competence. We have made a systematic literature review and as part of it applied constructive analysis in the field of the concept of competence to postulate a new relation and broaden the conceptual theory of competence. We made our systematic literature review using the EBSCO host Library database and Google Scholar. Based on specific search criteria and on the sub-processes of the constructive analysis, we carried out the systematic review of the 10 identified definitions. Although we did not find a definition that we can employ according to our known use of other terms, we identified the meanings of construct, ability, and quality as plausible. Embedded within the etymological reconstruction, the logical conceptual systems of educational science and psychology and representative philosophical analyses, we state the new conceptual relation of competence.

Competence, Ability, Domain-Specificity, Systematic Literature Review, Conceptual Analysis, Constructive Analysis

Schneider, K. (2019) What Does Competence Mean?. Psychology, 10, 1938-1958. doi: 10.4236/psych.2019.1014125.