First published Sep 2001

Abstract

This paper presents an effort to revisit the concepts of competence and competencies, and outlines a model for polytechnic education. The model, still in its preliminary shape, was developed by working backwards starting with the highest outcome desired - the desire for competence in the workforce of the future - and backtracking to the development of discipline-specific competencies which themselves are treated as a function of attitudes, skills, and knowledge. The crux of this model is in the fusion of these three components of a competency in the development, delivery, and assessment stages of a diploma course. The paper also outlines a preliminary procedure to facilitate staff recasting the existing module development and structure in this move towards fusion.

Part I: The Desired Competence

A. Competence in the 21st Century workforce

“Competence is ‘the ability to operate to the highest standards anywhere.”
R M Kanter in World Class

If this is the goal, then it can be inferred that the attributes of a competent workforce would go beyond that of being highly trained and skilled in specific job tasks. The core attributes for a world class workforce would include the following:

• Flexibility
• A spirit of innovation
• Transferability
• Collaborative abilities
• Maneuverability
• Enterprise
• Adaptability
• Quality consciousness
• Globality
• Rootedness

Each employee would then need to be competent and continue to remain competent in a changing business/commercial environment.

“To achieve this graduates must have satisfactorily acquired and honed a set of profession-specific and inter-disciplinary competencies”

B. Competence of an Employee

The indicators of competence of an employee in a dynamic workforce would be the ability to efficiently perform a variety of industry-related tasks, the ability to function professionally in a range of roles and situations, and the capacity for continuous learning, development and change. These abilities and capacities are enabled and supported by the competencies that an employee acquires through education (especially for entry-level workers), training, and experience. Competencies can therefore be seen as the foundation of competence, as illustrated in Fig. 1.

“Modules that contribute to that particular competency need to ensure that their structure, delivery and assessment contribute to the
required outcomes.”

Part 2: Competency - a definition

If competencies are the foundation of competence especially for an entry level employee, then to develop competence, a graduate must have satisfactorily acquired and honed a set of profession-specific and interdisciplinary competencies (as education takes on a multi-disciplinary focus). As seen in Figure 2, each competency is a function of three core components: attitude (behaviours), skills and knowledge. Admittedly, the teaching of a competency may have a particular bias towards any one of these components. However, this does not preclude the existence of the other components which should also be made explicit in the learning experience.

In the strictest sense of this interpretation, a student who excels in the content component of a competency but not in the other two components, cannot be seen to have satisfactorily mastered the competency. This has implications for assessment and teaching, which will be touched upon in Part 5, and 6 of this paper. This concept of competence and competencies also has implications for the shape and structure of a course take. Part 3 attempts to recast an engineering programme in this model looking at engineering competence as a series of competencies that the engineer must (should) have. It then looks at the required outcomes of these competencies and attempts to identify and make explicit the attitudes, the skills, and the knowledge components of the competency. Modules that contribute to that particular competency must then ensure that their structure, delivery and assessment also contribute to the required outcomes.

Part 3: A discipline-specific example of a curriculum

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» Competency Based Approach to Polytechnic Education

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