The second contribution introduces a new competence assessment tool that was developed by the Institute Technology and Education (ITB) in the course of implementing a large-scale national pilot project in collaboration with the German Volkswagen (VW) AG. Competencies that are required of skilled workers in relation to work processes can set important standards for vocational education and training. The method of ‘expert-workers workshops’ provides a tool to identify core work tasks and the respective skills demands. With the help of a list of 10 to 20 core professional tasks that are typical for a particular specialisation it should be possible to describe the demands of modern industrial labour. It is the ‘experts’ of skilled labour themselves, who are best positioned to identify work processes and tasks that are critical for a workers’ professional development and thus formative in terms of vocational education and training.

The strength of this method lies in the possibility to translate the identified work tasks into a didactical format that can be further developed into evaluation tasks by which the vocational competence development can be assessed. In this format those evaluation tasks can easily become integrated into vocational training programmes thus fostering a training concept that is highly consistent with work practice and processes. In a European perspective, the advantage of this approach is that it is fairly independent of a particular national education and training system.