General Issues about Assessment of Competence

Abstract

In simple terms, competency‐based assessment is the assessment of a person's competence against prescribed standards of performance. Thus, if an occupation has established a set of, say, entry‐level competency standards, then these prescribe the standards of performance required of all new entrants to that occupation. Competency‐based assessment is the process determining whether a candidate meets the prescribed standards of performance, i.e. whether they demonstrate competence. It is probably a truism that there is no such thing as a process of assessment that is without its critics. Whatever efforts are made to improve an instance of assessment, someone is bound to be unhappy with the process. Competency‐based assessment is therefore at a particular disadvantage since it is both new and unfamiliar to many people. This has meant that competency‐based assessment has aroused numerous and varied worries and objections from many quarters. In the process of researching assessment methods of professions in Australia, as the prelude to writing a guide on competency‐based assessment (Gonczi et al., 1993) the authors identified a number of worries and objections. Competency‐based assessment: (a) only assesses what is trivial or superficial; (b) is inherently unreliable in that it involves inference; (c) is inherently invalid, (d) represents a departure from traditional proven methods of assessment; (e) neglects the importance of knowledge; (f) focuses on outcomes to the neglect of processes; (g) relies on professional judgement, and hence is too subjective; (h) vainly tries to assess attitudes. This paper discusses each of these worries and objections and shows that none of them is decisive. While each of them points to an important issue about competency‐based assessment, the discussion will show that in each case a well‐designed competency‐based assessment system can overcome the worry or objection.