LifeComp: personal, social, learning to learn

The smallest framework, and not by accident

LifeComp, published by the Joint Research Centre in 2020, describes 9 competences across 3 areas with 27 descriptors. Three descriptors per competence: it is the most compact European framework in circulation.

That compactness is a design choice. LifeComp does not try to exhaust a technical domain: it describes the competences that sit underneath all the others. That is why three descriptors are enough, and why the framework works as a grid to lay over any training pathway.

The three areas, three competences each

Personal

• Self-regulation -- awareness and expression of emotions, thoughts and behaviour.
• Flexibility -- managing transitions and uncertainty, revising a position.
• Wellbeing -- pursuing physical and mental health and recognising its conditions.

Social

• Empathy -- understanding another person's emotions and experience and responding appropriately.
• Communication -- using communication strategies suited to the context and the interlocutor.
• Collaboration -- working in a group with shared responsibility and goals.

Learning to learn

• Growth mindset -- believing your own capabilities can be developed.
• Critical thinking -- assessing information and arguments, forming reasoned judgements.
• Managing learning -- planning, monitoring and regulating your own learning.

Three descriptive levels, not proficiency levels

Each competence is articulated across three levels that do not measure how good someone is: they describe awareness, understanding and action. Knowing you have an emotional reaction, understanding where it comes from, and being able to regulate it are three different things, and the progression runs in that order.

That structure makes LifeComp assessable without turning it into an aptitude test, which is exactly the risk with every transversal competence framework.

Why it pays to use it alongside the others

LifeComp is the substrate of the other European frameworks, and you can verify that by reading them:

• The critical thinking DigComp requires to evaluate information online is the same LifeComp competence.
• The collaboration and empathy competences GreenComp places in its collective action area are LifeComp competences.
• Managing learning is the precondition for any professional development pathway described in DigCompEdu.

Hence its most effective use: not a pathway dedicated to LifeComp, but LifeComp as a grid for checking whether a pathway on another framework is implicitly demanding competences nobody is developing.

Explore the 3 areas, 9 competences and 27 descriptors on the LifeComp portal at ExplorerHub.