Professional competence in environmental management

Abstract

Widespread concern about reports of professional incompetence has led to growing interest in the nature of “competence” and the development of various forms of competence‐based education. Not everyone welcomes this trend, there being considerable student and staff resistance to a demand for competence. Underlying this latter behaviour is the problem of reaching agreement on what constitutes “competence” and how one might measure it. An attempt is made, in this paper, to define some of the professional competences of importance in environmental management. Empirical data on the attainment of these competences by student resource managers are included as an illustration of the way in which educational programmes can be evaluated, as well as giving an indication of the extent to which professional competences are being enhanced by a traditional curriculum in natural resource management.