This paper explores the twinning of Bildung and competence in the action competence concept, highlighting its assumptions regarding what constitute appropriate forms of learning, action and change in justifications of curricular content and teaching and learning approaches. Action competence (AC) has been described as an overall perspective on the purpose of schooling - a ‘democratic curriculum perspective’ referring to Bildung. Bildung,translated as formation, is focusing on what it means to be educated, with the idea of human autonomy as a central perspective (Westbury et al. 2000). The description of AC as dealing with questions regarding the purpose, content and means of education in response to key societal challenges (Carlsson and Hoffmann 2011) points to the inspiration from Klafki’s (2001) formulation of societal ’schlüsselproblemen’ (key issues typical of the epoch) that should guide the development of curricular content. Within this understanding, AC can furthermore be described as embedded in the epistemological tradition of critical-transformative theory, focusing on the potential of education to transform and change subjectivities and/or cultural or structural formations. Applied in different curricular contexts, AC has been (re)conceptualized a number of times, largely focusing on adding and/or subtracting competence components, and largely justified with reference to either educational purposes or accountability purposes. The inherent pliability of the concept of AC, i.e. the possibility of including or omitting different competence components, can support its integration in different curricular contexts. Since the start of the 2000s, AC has played a central role in national curricula in a number of countries, as well as in international guidelines within the related fields of health and sustainability education (see e.g. Espinet and Zachariou 2014; Vilaça et al. 2019). These fields of education are especially shaped by transformative expectations in global policy, as exemplified in the UNESCO (2015) document Rethinking Education: Towards a global common good? and the follow-up UNESCO (2020) initiative Visioning and Framing the Futures of Education, which can be interpreted as an intensification of calls for education to realize transformative expectations. The twinning of Bildung perspectives with a concept of competence, as well as the pliability of the latter, where some components can be added and others removed, would seem to partly explain why AC has proved to be a useful concept in a range of cultural contexts and educational fields. At first glance, this twinning seems contradictory, as Bildung and competence have been described as incommensurable, aligned with two different understandings of the purposes of education. Willbergh (2015) accentuates the potential of the Bildung concept when it comes to viewing educational content as subject to interpretation and open debate of autonomous individuals on all levels from the transnational to the classroom. She argues that Bildung refers to theoretical perspectives on educational purposes that are generally difficult to combine with assessments of learning outcomes. Competences are often described as learning outcomes, and with their precise formulations specifying what students need to know and be able to do, articulated as knowledge and skills, concepts of competence are, broadly speaking, well aligned with demands for accountability. Probing the notions of competence and learning outcomes Prøitz (2015) points out that these can also refer to wider educational purposes, and be viewed as a tool for educational and instructional planning, rather than an accountability tool. As such, the twinning of Bildung and competence in AC can tentatively be described as a vehicular idea (McLennan 2004) that can be taken up in different ways in pursuit of various ends, its hermeneutic and contextual flexibility allowing it to balance different interests within educational research, policy and practice.

The paper draws on conceptualizations of AC in key theoretical texts, as well as on the concept’s use in guidelines for practice (published on https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/resources; https://www.ensi.org). Why focus on guidelines for practice? Schools in school systems characterized by a centralized curriculum of core subjects, face a common difficulty in finding a foothold for integrating a cross-curricular HE approach. The use of guidelines for practice can support schools and teachers in translating the fragmented descriptions of health and wellbeing perspectives found in curricula into teaching strategies that works in practice. Studies on the nexus between policy and curriculum (see e.g. Priestley and Biesta 2014; Short 2008) highlight a shift in focus from teachers as curriculum makers to global and regional policy makers as curriculum makers, arguing that there is a need to pay attention to the policy dimension when considering matters of curriculum. Guidelines for practice can be described as policy tools in soft governance approaches, presenting concepts and models on best practice (Moos et al. 2019). The spread of HE guidelines developed by policy actors and research networks can be seen as indicating a general tendency to place primary responsibility for an educational response to health and wellbeing challenges in schools outside national curriculum frameworks. While national curricula and ministerial guidelines explicitly state their purpose as providing a legislative framework for teaching, the functional purpose of guidelines for practice is more complex as it cross-references policy, research and cases from teaching practice. Although such guidelines do not have legislative authority, they can draw attention to certain knowledge, practices or identities and thus create what Coffey (2014) terms powerful documentary realities. The analysis draws on inspiration from the translation concept (Røvik 2016), exploring how the educational idea of AC is taken up and translated in guidelines for practice, distinguishing between three different approaches. Adoptive approaches which copies the descriptions of ‘best practice’ described in theory; adaptive approaches where elements have been added or taken out; and radically changed approaches where the educational idea of AC is extensively changed.

The conceptualization in the theoretical sources of AC as an educational ideal, is well aligned with notions of active democratic citizenship in educational policies and curriculum frameworks, and is referring to both a non-affirmative and a transformative approach to education. On the one hand, underlining that education is not about shaping children and young people in line with a pre-existing or given society; on the other hand, emphasizing the potential of education to transform and change subjectivities. The use of the concept in the guidelines illustrates different understandings of AC, validating the introductory description of the concept as a vehicular educational idea. Its use in the guidelines can furthermore be described as framed by an adaptive approach, referring to forms of learning, action and change that do not challenge existing frameworks or rationales in schools. This is most apparent in the reasoning behind the curricular content in the guidelines, drawing on a model of AC that emphasizes the need for a specific set of methods and skills. This actualizes Willberg’s (2015) discussion of competence concepts, underlining that the point of these, at least to a certain degree, is to standardize understandings of learning outcomes. As previous studies have shown (see e.g. Carlsson and Simovska 2012; Taylor et al. 2015), conceptualizations of AC in guidelines for practice focus more on processes of democratic formation than political formation. Teaching that encourages children and young people taking social action can be viewed as risky and school-based teaching and learning approaches seem to stick to safe versions of democratic citizenship and student participation rather than addressing expectations of transformative change.

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