Competence (human resources)

About: Competence (human resources) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 53557 publications have been published within this topic receiving 988884 citations. The topic is also known as: competence (human resources) & Competency.

Competencies and workplace learning: some reflections on the rhetoric and the reality

Abstract: The use of competency frameworks as a basis for workplace learning initiatives is now relatively commonplace in organisations. This is reflected in the emphasis given to competencies in the HRD literature. However, the terrain of the competency discussion is somewhat ill‐defined. This article attempts to define the context within which the value of competencies as a basis for workplace learning can be considered and discusses the philosophical and epistemological perspectives found in much of the literature. Competency definition and competency measurement issues are explored, as is a range of other issues concerning the value of competencies in a workplace learning context. The article concludes that, in the interests of clarity, consistency and reliability of measurement, consensus needs to be reached on the basic parameters and definition of competency.

The past, present, and future of curriculum-based measurement research

Abstract: Thirty years ago, the dominant approach to progress monitoring was mastery measurement. With mastery measurement, teachers specify a hierarchy of instructional objectives constituting the annual curriculum and, for each objective in the sequence, devise a criterion-referenced test to assess mastery. When a student achieves the mastery criterion for an objective, the teacher simultaneously shifts instruction and assessment to the next skill in the hierarchy. In this way, learning is conceptualized as a series of short-term accomplishments, which are believed to accumulate into broad competence. This notion of progress monitoring was represented in popular methods such as the Wisconsin Instructional Design System (see www.wids.org) and Precision Teaching (e.g., www.celeration.org). At about that same time, Stan Deno at the University of Minnesota, with a handful of doctoral students (including Doug Marston, Steve Robinson, Mark Shinn, Jerry Tindal, Caren Wesson, and me), launched a systematic program of research on the technical features, logistical challenges, and instructional effectiveness of progress monitoring. The initial focus of that research program was mastery measurement, but several technical difficulties associated with mastery measurement quickly emerged. For example, to assess mastery of a specific skill, each mastery measurement criterion-referenced test addresses a single skill. Such testing is potentially misleading, however, because many low achievers can read consonant-vowel-consonant words if they know that all words on the page conform to the pattern; similarly, they can solve addition with regrouping problems if they know that all problems on the page fit that problem type. By contrast, when a test mixes words with different phonetic patterns or mixes math problems of different types (as occurs on high-stakes tests and in the real world), these same students no longer perform the "mastered" skill competently. This questions mastery measurement's assumption that a series of short-term accomplishments accumulates into broad-based competence; it compromises the relation between number of objectives mastered during the year and end-of-year performance on more global assessments; and it can lull educators into a false sense that their students are making progress. The CBM Alternative To address this and other important problems associated with mastery measurement (for a full discussion, see Fuchs & Deno, 1991), Deno (1985) conceptualized an alternative approach for the purpose of progress monitoring: curriculum-based measurement (CBM). Each weekly CBM is an alternate form, representing the performance desired at the end of the year. In this way, CBM circumvents mastery measurement's technical difficulties by requiring students to simultaneously integrate the various skills required for competent yearend performance on every weekly test. As students learn the necessary components of the annual curriculum, their CBM score gradually increases. Also, because each weekly test is comparable in difficulty and conceptualization, slope can be used to quantify rate of learning. Slope can also be used to gauge a student's responsiveness to the instructional program and as a signal to revise the student's program when inadequate responsiveness is revealed. A key challenge in the development of CBM is to identify measurement tasks that simultaneously integrate the various skills required for competent year-end performance. Two approaches have been used. One involves identifying a task that correlates robustly (and better than potentially competing tasks) with the various component skills constituting the academic domain. For example, Deno, Mirkin, and Chiang (1982) first identified passage reading fluency (often termed "oral reading fluency") as a key CBM task by showing how its correlations with valued criterion measures exceeded correlations for other potential CBM tasks. Conceptually, it makes sense that passage reading fluency is a robust indicator of overall reading competence. …

The proactive employee: Managing workplace initiative

Abstract: Executive Overview Business and behavioral undertakings such as job enrichment, participation, empowerment, and transformational leadership are organizational attempts to expand the employee role. This article examines a number of these undertakings to illustrate how they function as role-expansion mechanisms, and how they implicitly define five role characteristics generally reflective of a proactive employee. While job and task competence, interpersonal effectiveness, and organizational orientation have always been associated with the employee role, the other two role characteristics—enterprising qualities and personal integrity—represent relatively new expectations. These new demands raise some important issues for firms and managers, centered on differences associated with the firm's, the manager's, and the employee's expectations regarding the use of judgment and initiative. The article examines some implications of these differences, discusses person-environment fit considerations, and proposes reco...

Defining competencies in psychology supervision: a consensus statement.

Abstract: Supervision is a domain of professional practice conducted by many psychologists but for which formal training and standards have been largely neglected. In this article, supervision is proposed as a core competency area in psychology for which a number of elements reflecting specific knowledge, skills, and values must be addressed to ensure adequate training and professional development of the trainee. Supra-ordinate factors of supervision viewed as permeating all aspects of professional development are proposed. These include the perspective that professional development is a lifelong, cumulative process requiring attention to diversity in all its forms, as well as legal and ethical issues, personal and professional factors, and self- and peer-assessment. A competencies framework is presented with particular elements representing knowledge (e.g., about psychotherapy, research, etc.), skills (including supervising modalities, relationship skills, etc.), values (e.g., responsibility for the clients and supervisee rests with supervisor, etc.), and meta-knowledge. Social contextual factors and issues of education and training, assessment, and future directions also are addressed, with specific elements listed. Suggestions for future work in this area are addressed, including the need to refine further and operationalize competences, develop clear expectations for accreditation and licensure regarding supervision competencies, and expand the description of developmental levels of supervisors from minimal to optimal competence. This is one of a series of articles published together in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Several other articles that resulted from the Competencies Conference: Future Directions in Education and Credentialing in Professional Psychology will appear in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice and The Counseling Psychologist.