Contesting Competences: Exploring Conceptual and Contextual Dilemmas in Competence-based Education in Europe and Beyond

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In a recent report, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Steering Committee on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) stated that “the development of a sustainable society should be seen as a continuous process of learning and change” that “requires a corresponding enhancement in the competences of educators, leaders, and decision makers at all levels of education” (UNECE, 2011, 7). Towards this end, the Commission put forth a set of ESD competences as a “goal to which all educators should aspire” (UNECE, 2011, 7).

Over the past 20 years, the rise of competence-based approaches to teaching and learning has marked a major shift across Europe, and beyond, with international organizations and national education ministries adopting the language of competences in strategy documents ranging from curricular reforms to teacher education and training programs. As demonstrated above, competences are seen as a key component of educational strategies to engender positive societal outcomes such as sustainable development and 21st century learning. Ranging from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Council of Europe’s Competences for Democratic Culture (2016), the Council of the European Union’s Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2018), and UNESCO-International Bureau of Education’s project on Future Competences (Marope, Griffin, and Gallegher, 2017), competence-based educational strategies, programs, and policy prescriptions abound in Europe and beyond.

However, what is meant by competences (or competencies) in these diverse contexts is not always clear. Often, competences are closely linked with skills, though some definitions are more expansive (OECD, 2005), and they are often proposed as objectives for formal education in contrast to disciplinary knowledge (Laval et al. 2010; Sundberg & Wahlström, 2012). In 2001, working with the OECD DeSeCo Project, Rychen (2001, 3) defined the term in this way:

Competence is used to refer to a. the concept (e.g. the competence-performance model) and its theorization, and b. a level of ability of a specific skill or competency (e.g. a person’s competence in reading or mathematics). Competency is used when referring to a particular demand that a person may or may not be able to meet (e.g. the competency to join and function in groups).

The increasing adoption of competence-based educational strategies and reforms across diverse contexts and organizations demands further examination. This panel thus aims to explore and analyze the multivocal and contested meanings of competences as a goal of educational reform. According to Nordin and Sundberg (2016, 3), “Travelling polices and reforms have multiple and contested meanings.” Multiple meanings of “competences” and how to promote them have made it easier for actors with competing agendas to embrace the notion (e.g., Laval et al. 2010), facilitating a “conceptual turn” towards competence-based educational models throughout much of Europe and beyond. For Nordin and Sundberg (2016, 322):

At the transnational level there is thus a widespread consensus about the need for a conceptual turn from a content-based to a competence based understanding when it comes to what should be thought and learned in schools and communicated and legitimised in a very normative way as if there were no other alternatives. Leaving the old idea of knowledge as content is described as a necessity if the EU idea to become the most powerful knowledge-based economy in the world is to be fulfilled. Put in another way, according to the EU as well as the OECD there is no other option for the member-states than to adapt to this conceptual turn.

Building on this theoretical perspective, the papers presented in this panel further challenge the adoption of competences as the singular set of standards for educational achievement and learning in the European context and beyond.

The panelists draw on a range of theoretical approaches, including discursive institutionalism and policy lending and borrowing, to explore the interplay of key actors and policy discourses on competence-based education. Discursive institutionalism “brings the philosophical ideas and culturally embedded norms, values, and interpretive horizons that frame curriculum programs and texts into play in understanding and explaining processes of curriculum divergences and convergences” (Nording and Sundberg, 2016, 326). The panel also draws on previous research on the role of educational policy as culturally contested practice (Anderson-Levitt and Alimasi, 2001; Sutton and Levinson, 2001) as well as emerging theory in the fields of global education policy and critical internationalization. Empirical evidence from a range of countries including France, Sweden, Russia, Albania, and the United States will also be presented.

Collectively, the papers on this panel seek to raise questions about the contested nature of competence-based educational reforms and to provide theoretical and empirically-grounded critiques of the certainty with which those reforms have been introduced into national spaces and sub-national contexts. Spanning from the discursive level to the level of implementation of reforms, the panelists provide new insights on educational policy and practice, as well as on the wider social transformations that accompany reforms in these areas.

It is intended that this panel serve as a preliminary gathering of ideas leading to a collective publication on these issues.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Globalization and Education

Chair

• Meg P. Gardinier, Indiana Institute of Technology

Individual Presentations

• Hybrid competences in Swedish curriculum policy making - Daniel Sundberg, Linnaeus University; Andreas Nordin, Linnaeus University

• The introduction of the competency-based approach into the school curriculum in France (2005-2015) - Pierre Clément, CIRNEF, Université de Rouen

• Competences as Contested Signs: Political Theater of Educational Reforms in the Russian Federation - Elena Aydarova, Auburn University

• Making competence global: Education policy-making within and beyond the state - Meg P. Gardinier, Indiana Institute of Technology

• Silent borrowing by latecomers to competences: US proponents of 21st century skills - Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)