Learning environments, strategies for competence development and approaches to competence in care work

Abstract

This article examines what learning environments and strategies for competence development look like in four specific areas of elder care, and analyses whether these factors influence the care staff’s perceptions of competence. The analysis is based on theories related to care skills (in the form of factual, relationship and change competence), learning environments and strategies for competence development. That which differentiated the activities was the way of working with competence development. In the two studied activities in Linköping – a care home and a home-help unit – competence development work was based on a traditional view of how care staff could develop their competence. In the traditional view of competence development, the emphasis is on formal learning activities, i.e. internal or external courses as and when economic resources are available. In Haninge, the care home and the home-help unit had organised competence development training for care staff with the ambition of developing an integrated learning strategy, i.e. by combining formal and informal learning activities. The results of the study show that the conditions for learning environments differ depending on the type of work carried out. In the case of homehelp services, the support and involvement of management was more central for skills development that in the care homes. At the same time, the results show that where there was a more developed learning environment and an integrated strategy for competence development, ideas about competence were much more advanced. Here the focus was on developing competence as well as changing the way of working. What was common to both activities was the ideas that care staff needs to develop relations with the users.