Societal, economic, and technological changes require the development of learning competencies as a prerequisite for lifelong, self-organized learning. Against this background, the present work explores how learning competencies can be theoretically and empirically grounded as pedagogical-didactic target dimensions and practically promoted in the higher education context. Based on the problem statement developed and specified in the conceptual part, the metatheoretical section presents the pragmatist-interactionist position underlying this work and elaborates on and justifies the research design. The theoretical part thoroughly engages with relevant didactic theories and develops a pedagogical-didactic research framework as a starting point and reference for further theory development.