hadii

Session 2
Modelling Lifelong Competence Building
Members: Ayhan Fişekçi, Aslı Kıyak İngin, Ertuğrul Belen, Yeşim Demir Proehl
Harun Ekinoğlu (HE): Staying Curious, Persevering,
and Devoted
Society often expects us to perform in certain ways. However,
curiosity, perseverance, and devotion help us keep our
own course. In the 6th grade of my formal education, I became
interested in dance and stage performance groups.
Rare opportunities in a small town like Elazığ, where I
come from. I registered during my extra time from school.
Soon however, my poor time-management skills made me
fail in Maths. Yet, I felt the uplift to be part of important
performance projects. I could cover quite a range, thanks
to my post-graduate studies in Milano.
Currently, while being a full-time government employee, I
am doing a PhD on urban analysis software. As I am not
trained as a software developer, my academic advisor
initially dissented. Alas, during a stay at Columbia University
as visiting scholar I had the opportunity to collaborate
with some good engineers, producing what I had set my
mind on.
Curiosity, perseverance, and devotion for the ideas we
really want empower us to excel even in areas we are not
competent in.
Yeşim Demir Proehl (YDP): We tried to make a time-based model for lifelong competence gathering or building starting from
the very earlier stages of learning in family or own habitat to expansions of that during the childhood, from the first formal/
standardised education to the later period of higher-education or to the self-learning stage of profession that could lead
into professional life in either corporate world, or to academia or self-employment. In our model, the professional life after
the initial stage of the formal education also adds up to the assets of competences, during which we might acquire random
sequences of many different competences. They are, for example, ’follow the world’, ‘learn the ethics of work’, ‘define and
communicate yourself not only with the things you do, but also with the things you don’t’, ‘practical problem-solving’, ‘job
management’, ‘team working’, ‘networking’, and so on.
Q&A
Cİ: I would like to start with a question. Your proposal looks
more detailed in the parts after the formal education. Is it correct
to say that you model mainly focuses on the competences that
we should develop during the professional life after the formal
education?
YDP: No, that was not the intention. The difference between
the two, the formal education and the parts after, is because of
the order/linearity of the competences that one should develop
during his or her formal education years. However, those
competences we defined after the formal education can happen
randomly at any time in life experience.
Cİ: Let me ask a second question. Is it possible to offer any
tracks or structured experiences of competences by your group
proposal?
YDP: No, one should select randomly what competences he or
she needs during the course of life.
AS: I think Cihangir’s question is relevant. Because, in practical
terms, we would like to transform your model into a proposal
for concrete lifelong learning offerings based on competences.
Yeşim says that everything happens after the formal education.
But, it might be helpful in fact to indicate that, for example, after
60 these competences might be more relevant for designers.
David Grossman (DG): But that’s for the Actions, no?
AS: No, I still think that an age-bracket would also apply for
the Competences. Because, there are certain competences you
can only reach after you have a certain experience. Let’s say
after 60, you have seen so much, you went through so many
professional experiences, you might have developed much
deeper competences which you cannot develop in your 40s - a
different competence! So, I think, this was maybe the initial
question...
Cİ: Yes! Also, any pre-requisites prior or in order to build certain
competences might be useful.
AS: It is not a critique, but just a question. We could reframe
that, like an offer or question for the next session. Could we package
our model of competences into something more useful?
I suggest or question myself, if that might be more helpful in
terms of communication and application.
SS: After university it is totally a different way of competence
gathering. Until university is finished, it is much more linear.
And, we know what will happen next and what kind of competences
we need to gather. However, after that once we are
in life experience, it will push us to build new competences and
that is not something we can foresee.
YDP: That’s true.
AS: As an example, in India, typically somebody who completed
his career at the age of 60 or 70, he would go into a
temple and start studying Sanskrit. That could be an example
of a competence you can acquire only after you reached to a
certain level in your personality.
YDP: I think, the competences designers acquire have
no limits. I personally never believe or feel that I am a
mature designer. I cannot stop thinking about that, and
I know that many designers feel the same way. In every
project, I start with the feeling of butterflies in the stomach.
That is why, how we thought about our proposal.
Aslı Kıyak İngin (AKİ): Our proposal is not related to
the ages. I think I understood Andreas’ point that there
should be some construction. But, maybe, we don’t
know the way now. Because, we think that age has no
relation with experience.
YDP: But, there is no construction, just practice and
experience.
DG: Maybe, every individual has his own tracks. There
is some people who have more experiences and some
people with less experience. I don’t think it’s a time. I
don’t think it’s necessary.