During the last years, competence-based learning has become a well-discussed topic within educational sciences. Lately, lecturers in the field of civil protection have addressed principles of competence-based learning in terms of vocational training, too. Besides knowledge, extensive competences are getting more and more important with regard to effective disaster response. For emergency responders, this appears to be increasingly significant especially considering complex and unforeseen disaster situations (e.g. terrorist attacks). The main problem, however, is that on the one hand vocational training in civil protection differs extremely between various educational institutions. On the other hand, there is no consistent pedagogical guideline, which defines competences of necessity for emergency responders and explains didactic mediation regarding competence-based learning. In this study, existing didactical models have been and are currently applied using data triangulation to understand the lecturers’ attitude and intention of teaching. Through conducting an online survey (quantitative), it was found that lecturers in civil protection assessed didactical principles like active learning, independent learning and participant orientation as relevant factors with regard to competence-based learning. Data of the online survey also showed a significant link between lecturers’ training and the lecturers’ attitude considering competence-based learning. At this stage, an observational study (quantitative) of vocational training classes and additional interviews (qualitative) with lecturers are being conducted. Through these methods, it is investigated if and how principles of competence-based learning are affecting the planning and holding of vocational training classes in civil protection. Based on the research data a common pedagogical framework for competence-based learning within the field of civil protection will be introduced.