Discourse of Competencies in the Slovenian Higher Education Area

Primož Turk

Summary:  The article addresses the discourse of competencies in the Slovenian higher education area. In order to make it easier to understand and contextualize the concept of competencies, we first address the purpose of education. Our thesis is that the concept of competencies will be easier to understand if we place it in the broader context of the purposes of education. In researching these purposes, we focus primarily on the Slovenian higher education area and on national higher education programs. In what follows, we focus first on the discourse of competencies, as it was formed in theory, and then on the discourses of competencies in national higher education programs in Slovenia. In the concluding part, we re-illuminate and explain the competencies in the light of the purposes of education.