Professional Competencies for Real?

How students develop professional competencies has been an interest for me for decades. There are several aspects to this issue that I have addressed, e.g. what are professional competencies, how can their development of them be supported in educational settings, what motivates a student to put in an effort towards developing a competency, how can they be assessed, how can progression of professional competencies be handled in education curricula, and how can development of professional competencies be specified in a course description. These are among the more prominent issues that have been on my mind. In this work I have noticed a huge "gap" between how professional competencies are expressed as important learning outcomes of degree programs and the almost zero link to how this development should be done at the course instance level. This "gap" is frustrating for me and a source for thoughts regarding how to bridge that "gap". Work in our research group UpCERG (Uppsala Computing Education Research Group, www.it.uu.se/research/group/upcerg) has lately included studying issues related to identity, initially mostly the identity of different student cohorts, but now also that of teachers and education leaders. This research provides valuable insights towards causes for the "gap". That is, the slow closing of the "gap" can be understood by placing this in the context of the identity of the teachers (especially) and the students. It is how professional competencies are valued in relation to "pure" subject knowledge among these identities that provides severe obstacles to inclusion of development of professional competencies in a meaningful way at the course instance level. This is despite much of the previous work regarding issues related to developing professional competencies in educational settings, as those mentioned above.