Zwischen gemeinsamen Standards und flexiblen Bildungswegen. Die Weiterbildungsakademie Österreich als Modell eines offenen Berufsabschlusses

How can professional competences be proved in the professional field of adult education, a field characterized to a great extent by inhomogeneity and lateral entries as well as the absence of any legal statutes on education? And how should such a vocational degree be organized in the face of society’s growing need for modular and flexible educational opportunities? The following article introduces the competence recognition procedure of the Austrian Academy of Continuing Education (Weiterbildungsakademie - wba in German), which has combined the different educational paths of adult educators into one degree with set standards and has acknowledged practical experience since 2007. It describes the sum of competence validation and how the Cedefop guidelines for validating non-formal and informal learning are implemented. Finally, it surveys the fixed and flexible elements of wba competence recognition and the success factors of this open model of a vocational degree.