Community feeling revisited: Community orientation and key competences

Abstract

Alfred Adler saw the feeling of community as being a decisive counterbalance to the drive for power. His concept remained imprecise and vaguely defined so that over time it increasingly faded into the background while the theory of individual psychology was supposed to be made ‘fit for science’. In recent years, however, new perspectives have emerged, allowing for a large-scale ‘renaissance’ of the approach based on the word ‘feeling of com-munity’, which is so central for individual psychology. The key competences that are being so strongly promoted by the EU in connection with the Bologna process have been cited in connection with the development of pedagogical models and also incorporated in text passages. Yet on closer scrutiny they usually remain vacuous words, especially in the realm of university education. Actual implementation in the form of study courses in education, especially in teacher training programs, is still lacking. The article underscores the fact that community competences are still being given short shrift, even in various national and international lists of competences. It also presents some thoughts about how the promotion of key competences can be translated into reality in a university curriculum, while also making the systematically reconstructed notion of ‘community feeling’ come to bear as a decisive factor in structuring pedagogic innovations.