Grundzüge einer subjektwissenschaftlichen Kompetenzforschung

It becomes apparent in the current critique on methods of competence diagnostics that the problem does not lie in empirical or methodical, but mainly in theoretical deficits. Psycho-dynamic explanations are missing. Moreover, competences are mainly constructed as individual traits while social dimensions are ignored. Both deficits are considerable blank spaces. This paper argues that competence cannot be the cause of performance, but only the conscious notion of how masterly ways of acting look like. As a subjective capability to generate masterly ways of acting, competences represent forms of (self-)consciousness. It develops neither according to a predetermined plan nor to a linear increase of competence but within a subjectively meaningful work on the given socio-cultural possibilities for action and development. The entire societal mediatedness of individual existence is therefore paramount. Due to the psychodynamic process in which (self-)consciousness emerges, competence development can include in every moment forms on incompetence. The outcome is a nexus of competence-incompetence which can be analysed through a subject-scientific framework that distinguishes different levels of (self-)consciousness.