Effective curriculum design for successful transition from being a community learning and development student to practitioner

This paper presents the stakeholders' views of qualifying programs in Community Learning and Development (CLD) in Scotland that use the competences and competencies approach to prepare students for transition to employment. It also gives insights into the competencies and competences debate. The results suggest that most participants felt that the competency approach was appropriate for professional development and as a preparation for transition to work. However, the current array of competences should be refreshed in light of developments to take into account the growing diversity of CLD practice. Also, participants emphasized that it was important to focus on soft skills (competencies) which indicate the process rather than outcome driven hard skills (competences) alone, and that more work needs to be done to make them more explicit in the curriculum.