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Abstract
The movement of education and training based on competences, after three decades of worldwide
expansion, has practically become a strategic instrument of educative and labor policy for
economic competitiveness of organizations, productive sectors, countries and regions. In the
same trend, while emphasis is made on the importance of practical knowledge and skills
—inherent to personal know how (competencies) related to tasks, roles or functions of
particular or general interest—, values usually pass unnoticed or remain hidden. The main
purpose of this article is to enhance the meaning of values concerning individual and collective
competencies. For such a purpose, on the basis of an ample conceptual framework, from which
different analysis perspectives were obtained and integrated, a theoretical research was
accomplished. Evidences, arguments and conclusions sustain the thesis that the culture of
competence-based education and training has largely neglected or omitted the component of
values, impoverishing the sense and role of competencies themselves, from an ample scope.