Competence-oriented restructuring of curricular content for the study of geographic information system (GIS) in higher education has become ap rimary educational enterprise in Europe due to the Bologna Reform. Although there are different international curricular documents for outcome-based design of learning activities within the geographic information science and technology domain, it has not yet been clarified which competences should be considered essential components of a university-level course of study in GIS. Our content analysis of those curricular documents demonstrates that there are three dimensions of core competences foundational to the study of GIS in higher education, which are GIS knowledge and skills, spatial thinking, and problem-solving.
IntroductionRelated to the needs of our information-based society and increased workforce mobility in globally competitive labour markets, "competence" has emergeda sakey concept describing the change in focus in educational processes from an input orientation to learning outcomes. Therefore, not only an appreciation of generic skillsand abilities in learning and workinge nvironments can be observed, but also ah armonization of key competences is taking place on an international scale. These so-called twenty-first century skills, commonly referred to as ICT literacy, presuppose alifelong learning process and include digitaland technical mastery; problem-solving; reflection and criticalthinking; communication; and collaboration (Pedro, Matos, Pedro, &Abrantes, 2011). While the redefinitionofgeneric skills has occurred mainly due to societal concerns, the identification of professional competences dependsonthe demands of subject-specific knowledge and skills in specific domains.Inparticular, the application of GIS requiresabroad range of domain expertise as well as additional skills (Gewin, 2004;Kerski, 2008).Driven by systematic curricular development in the field of geographic information science and technology (GIS&T), US experts have for the past two decades developed an advanced body of knowledge concerning competences workingw ithin the GIS&T domain. Although an integrated perspective on outcome-based GIS education and training has also been progressing in recent yearsi nE urope,t od ate, basic curricular questions have not been answered, nor can one find common approaches to competence-based curricular development. The situationi se specially criticali nh igher education (HE).