Competencies, Skills and Assessment

Abstract

<p style="text-align: left">This paper is an analysis of the challenge of assessing student learning and how that is affected by using descriptions of competencies as a core element when describing the aims of the learning process. Assessment is modelled as a three step process; characterising, identifying and judging, to allow for the following argument: Working with competency descriptions is rightly said to make judging more difficult. This potentially lowers the reliability of the assessment. But competency descriptions also carry a great potential of raising the validity of the assessment by focusing the characterisation part of an assessment process. From a teaching and teachers' perspective, the latter is far more important than the former.