Education Standards and Competence-oriented Curricula - The Austrian Technical Colleges Take a New Approach to Excellence

Authors

  • Wolfgang Pachatz Ministry of Education, the Arts and Culture
  • Axel Zafoschnig Ministry of Education, the Arts and Culture

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v1i3.1818

Abstract


In Austria, Technical Colleges are those educational institutions that train and educate the skilled technical staff required by the Austrian labour market and the universities. These colleges have contributed a lot to Austria’s economic success and every year about 8,000 young engineers leave the technical schools to form a powerful work and study force.

Therefore, it is particularly important that the education they receive meets the requirements of prospective employers and that innovative developments are anticipated.  As a consequence, the Austrian Technical Colleges have developed curricula that rely on learning outcomes and competence-based results. This new orientation towards skills, knowledge and competences shall be achieved through learning objectives that precisely describe the education chosen. How these standards have been designed, matched with the curricula, and implemented at the Colleges will be described in this paper.

Author Biographies

Wolfgang Pachatz, Ministry of Education, the Arts and Culture

W. Pachatz is Deputy Head of the Department for Technical Schools and Colleges in the Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture in Vienna and has been involved in the development of educational standards and standard-based curricula at the Austrian HTL since 2004. His main fields of interest are quality management, curriculum design, comparison of education systems and international classification of educational programmes. He has worked at HTL in Vienna and Lower Austria and in teacher training institutions. His current focus lies on the implementation of new curricula and the ISCED and EQF processes.

Axel Zafoschnig, Ministry of Education, the Arts and Culture

A. Zafoschnig is a Chief Inspector for VET Colleges in Carinthia, Landesschulrat für Kärnten and has specialised in learning management, teacher training and curriculum design at the Austrian HTL. His main fields of interest are engineering education, comparison of education systems, school development and the internationalisation of  the Technical Colleges. He has worked at HTL in Carinthia and at teacher training institutions in both Austria and the UK. His current focus lies on implementing the educational reform concept in Carinthia, on networking on behalf of IGIP, and on representing the Austrian Inspection System on behalf of the Ministry of Education on an international level.

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Published

2011-10-10

How to Cite

Pachatz, W., & Zafoschnig, A. (2011). Education Standards and Competence-oriented Curricula - The Austrian Technical Colleges Take a New Approach to Excellence. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 1(3), pp. 20–26. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v1i3.1818

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 3 (2011)

Section

Papers