Competences in education a confusion of tongues

WIM WESTERA

There is a growing interest in the concept of lsquocompetence learning rsquo in various areas ofeducation training and professional development Competences are commonlyassumed to represent more than the levels of knowledge and skills and to accountfor the e aring ective application of available knowledge and skills in a speci c context Butwith this trend the term lsquocompetencersquo is being used in many diaring erent ways How arecompetencies thought to relate to knowledge skills and attitudes and what meaningand validity do various claims about competences have The competence concept isquite troublesome and it is argued that the term has no signi cance beyond thatwhich is associated with the term lsquoskills rsquo

In recent years the acquisition of lsquocompetences rsquo has become a central issuein post-secondary education The traditional emphasis on factual knowl-edge no longer seems to meet the requirements of a changing society Eventraining towards well-de ned skills in applying factual knowledge inappropriate and productive ways seems to be inadequate as a basis forprofessional work (Kirschner et al 1997) Employers demand graduateswho are able to operate in complex environments ie environmentscharacterized by ill-de ned problems contradictory information informalcollaboration and abstract dynamic and highly integrated processes Theconcept of competence is strongly associated with the ability to master suchcomplex situationsmdashand it is assumed that lsquocompetence rsquo transcends thelevels of knowledge and skills to explain how knowledge and skills areapplied in an e aring ective way As a result the term has become attractive forboth educators and employers because it is easily identi ed with valuedcapabilities quali cations and expertise What educator would not strivefor lsquocompetent rsquo graduates and what employer would fail to recognize suchlsquocompetent rsquo newcomers

Competences seen in this way are now being embraced by educatorsand personnel o aelig cers as a new standard for curriculum design trainingand professional development Thus we have lsquocompetence learning rsquo andlsquocompetence-based curricula rsquo But unfortunately the concept of compe-tence is used in many di aring erent ways and it seems that its current meaning isbased on common sense and ordinary language use rather than agreedde nitionmdashand this all too easily creates confusion of thought In thispaper I will explore the concept of competence and discuss its meaning

j curriculum studies 2001 vol 33 no 1 75ndash88

Wim Westera is a specialist in the design and use of media in science education He works asa physicist educational technologist and media expert at the Educational TechnologyExpertise Centre of the Open University of the Netherlands PO Box 2960 NL-6401 DLHeerlen The Netherlands e-mail wimwesteraounl

Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022ndash0272 printISSN 1366ndash5839 online 2001 Taylor amp Francis Ltdhttpwwwtandfcoukjournals

and implications in education First I will review the topics of knowledgeunderstanding and cognitive skills and then I will discuss some currentinterpretations of the competence concept Finally I will discuss theimportant characteristics of competences and consider the supposeddi aring erences between competences and cognitive skills

Knowledge and understanding

In common usage in education and training lsquoknowledgersquo is associated withthe representation of facts procedures principles and theories in aparticular domain In addition information gained from observationsexperiences beliefs and prejudices in everyday life is referred to as knowl-edge eg one may have the knowledge that yesterday was a rainy day orthat dogs are dangerous In the research literature knowledge is referred tousing a variety of terms (Kirschner et al 1997) lsquoconceptual knowledge rsquo(Posner and Keele 1973) lsquosubstantive knowledge rsquo (Gardner 1975)lsquodeclarative knowledge rsquo (Anderson 1980) lsquoknowing that rsquo (Olson 1976Salomon 1981) and lsquopropositional knowledge rsquo (Greeno 1980) In allcases lsquoknowledge rsquo is regarded as a stable entity that is the subject oflearning remembering and reproducing

It is an important characteristic of knowledge that it is easy to testwhether or not a person possesses a speci c body of knowledge If someonefails to reproduce the knowledge at hand in a test situation it is concludedthat the person lacks the knowledge Note that here the assessment of thelearner is expressed in behavioural terms however failure to recall may bethe simple result of an extremely large retrieval time forgotten memoriesare supposed to be still available but cannot be retrieved quickly (Nelson1978) However from an operational perspective the idea of behaviouraltesting seems to be reasonable because irretrievable knowledge is notavailable to a personrsquo s cognitive system

Knowledge however should not be confused with understanding Theability to reproduce information does not necessarily presuppose under-standing of the information it is unlikely for example that a computerdisplaying a recipe has any understanding of cooking Understandingrepresents an intellectual capability to use information in a sensiblemeaningful way and understanding is assumed to emerge when existingknowledge is brought to bear on a new situation For example if smokeemerges during cooking we use our knowledge about cooking res andrisks to evaluate the situation we understand that something is goingwrong and we draw the conclusion lsquoTake actionrsquo

However although understanding seems to arise from interrelatingvarious kinds of knowledge it is not a typical human characteristic Itwould not be too di aelig cult for a computer program to provide lsquomeaningful rsquoinformation about smoke related to cooking Indeed intelligent adaptivebehaviour of computer programs can be observed more and more Ratherthan anthropomorphically ascribing the computer an lsquounderstanding rsquo of theworld the existence of such programs puts the idea of human under-standing into the perspective of automated behaviour Thus human

76 w westera

understanding should not be mistaken for an intellectual process of super-natural dimensions it arises from an extended knowledge of the world andan ability to interrelate this knowledge in new situations far better than anyautomaton

Cognitive skills

While knowledge refers to static entities that can be stored in and retrievedfrom memory cognitive skills are associated with the mental operationsthat process this knowledge Such cognitive skills are referred to in a varietyof di aring erent ways as lsquoprocedural knowledge rsquo (Anderson 1980) lsquointellectualskillsrsquo (Gagne 1977 White and Mayer 1980) lsquomental processes rsquo or lsquomentaloperations rsquo (Snow 1980) lsquoknowing how rsquo (Salomon 1981) lsquostrategic knowl-edge rsquo (Renner and Marek 1990) or lsquocognitive strategiesrsquo (Gagne 1977)Although these terms may have slightly di aring erent connotations they allrefer to mental processes that occur in the mind (or rather in the brain)while using transforming or supplementing available knowledge Further-more cognitive skills are highly associated with higher-order activities likeproblem solving reasoning thinking assessing concluding and includethe mental processes of analysis synthesis and evaluation (Bloom et al1956) to produce a re-ordering or extension of the existing cognitivestructure

Cognitive skills are by de nition restricted to internal (mental) pro-cesses It is therefore essential to disconnect cognitive skills from obser-vable interactions with the outside world Indeed some cognitive activitieshave no behavioural consequences whatsoever For instance solving amathematical (or the like) problem can be undertakenmdashand completedmdashwhile gazing motionless out of the window or while lying in bed Howevercognitive skills do play an important role in the way humans interact withreality Cognitive processes may give rise to various observational beha-viours causing a person to intervene in the environment while performingplanned operations and applying available knowledge In reverse thecontinuous ow of external stimuli produces new experiences and newknowledge that causes an ongoing adaptation and alteration of internalcognitive structures

In skills-training substantial repetition which allows learners to grad-ually improve their performance levels in terms of speed precision and uency is usually involved As a consequence skills-performance becomesmore and more automated experienced drivers for example are hardlyaware of the complex cognitive tasks they perform while their inexper-ienced counterparts must consciously think about almost any operationthey carry out Unfortunately such patterns of increasing automatism or uency tend to obscure the distinction between cognitive skills and theassociated behaviours

In contrast with knowledge cognitive skills are di aelig cult to test directlyDirect observation of the brain during cognitive processes is hindered bytechnical and ethical obstacles But even if these obstacles would be by-passed it is unlikely that the monitoring of billions of nerve cells would

competences in education 77

give a satisfactory explanation for sophisticated cognitive processes Theonly way to test the mastery of a cognitive skill is to provoke observationalbehaviours that can directly be linked to the skill For this reason learningobjectives for cognitive skills are usually described in operational (be-havioural) terms Clearly this linkage creates confusion Observationalbehaviours like crossing a street are easily mistaken for cognitive skills Insuch a context the relationship between cognitive skills and observationalbehaviour has a causal or more precisely a sequential character First thereis a mental process the observation of the green light is connected with theexisting knowledge that a lsquogreen light rsquo means lsquosafe crossingrsquo Consequentlya decision is taken that it is safe to start crossing Next this cognitiveprocess gives rise to the actual behaviour of crossing the street Note thatthis idea of lsquothinking before doing rsquo is prototypical for modern rationalismIn practice however we should acknowledge that behaviour is often likelyto precede the cognitive processes ( rst doing than thinking) whichmdashofcoursemdashmay have tragic e aring ects when crossing a street Reversal can also beobserved in various learning models that start from the premise thatmaterial operations precede the acquisition of cognitive skills (Galrsquo perinand Leontjev 1972) eg abstract counting is learned best by using theabacus

Furthermore in many cases the relationship between cognitive skillsand behaviour appears to be simultaneous rather than sequential This mayhold for speech which is supposed to represent the ability to constructmeaningful sentences that are instantaneously operationalized here thebehaviour is close to being a carrier for the mental operations The processof lsquothinking aloud rsquo also illustrates the idea of simultaneity Naturally suchstrong interdependence of cognitive skills and behaviour causes confusionabout the essential and di aring erent meanings of the two concepts Chomsky(1965) recognized this problem and distinguished between the actual act ofspeaking (lsquolinguistic performance rsquo ) and the associated cognitive skills(lsquolinguistic competences rsquo )

Ideas about competence

Many de nitions of competence are available An exhaustive inventorymdashifpossiblemdashwouldn rsquo t make much sense Instead I try to identify the mostsigni cant characteristics of lsquocompetences rsquo to be found in the literature

Many authors follow Chomskyrsquo s (1965) approach by distinguishingbetween competences and performances (Cohen 1983 Evans et al 1993Langford and Hunting 1994) According to Chomsky the concept oflsquolinguistic competence rsquo represents the cognitive structure and rules thatare necessary to produce speech in contrast lsquolinguistic performance rsquorepresents the way speech actually functions in practice when it is con-taminated by external factors For instance a limited capacity of theworking memory may cause a long sentence to end ungrammaticallybecause the speaker has forgotten the sentence rsquo s initial set-up Herelinguistic competence may be perfect while linguistic performance ismuch less than perfect

78 w westera

Chomsky adopting a functionalist perspective assumes linguistic com-petence to be general and invariant whilemdashin contrastmdashlinguistic perform-ance is strictly individual and variable Evans et al (1993) extendedChomskyrsquo s approach to the domain of human reasoning they de necompetence as the ability of subjects to reason logically under ideal con-ditions ie the reasoning competence is not disguised by performancefactors they go on to describe the di aelig culties of eliminating such per-formance factors in order to uncover competences

Anderson (1992) distinguishes between abilities and competencesAbilities represent the (operational) outcomes of tests while competencesrepresent the underlying cognitive functioning Gronlund (1981) elabor-ating on competence-based tests uses the word competences as a synonymfor operational skills ie writing skills computational skills reading skillsetc Here competences are not assumed to be xed structures but in-dividual abilities that can be improved by training Probably the associ-ated competence-based tests Gronlund (1981) advocates are equivalent toperformance tests Langford and Hunting (1994) used Chomskyrsquo s de ni-tions of competence and performance in deductive and inductive reasoningEliminating interference by performance factors Langford and Hunting(1994) found evidence suggesting that the competence of deductive reason-ing is constructed rather than activated Di aring ering with Chomsky theyconclude that competences ie the basic cognitive structures can beacquired by learning processes

Others starting from ordinary language use the word lsquocompetence rsquo in amuch broader sense Competence is a highly-valued quali cation thataccounts for the e aring ective use of knowledge and skills in speci c usuallycomplex contexts The mastery of relevant knowledge and skills alone is noguarantee of successful performances in complex environments individualsshould be able to select from their available knowledge and skills in such away that eaelig cient and e aring ective behaviour occurs This requires speciallsquoabilities rsquo that take into account the characteristics of a speci c context(Ferguson-Hessler 1989 Scheeres and Hager 1994)

Obviously competences are needed to engage situations involvingintricate multidimensional problems in which no straightforwardapproaches to problem solving are appropriate White (1959) refers tolsquoe aring ective rsquo behaviour and links competences with the idea of self-esteemcompetence is regarded as an outgrowth of feelings after the successfulcompletion of a task or course of study It is interpreted as the result oflsquoe aring ectance rsquo that is the drive or motivation to have a manifest e aring ect on one rsquo senvironment

Stephenson and Weil (1992) in an attempt to cover self-con dencemotivation and persistence assume that competences also include atti-tudinal components Gagne (1977) refers to lsquostrategic abilities rsquo rather thanmore or less automated routines Barnett (1994) associates competenceswith unpredictable behaviours in unpredictable and unexpected situationscoping with new situations in a creative way is assumed to be a critical partof the concept of competence He opts for an operational approach to thecompetence concept that covers skills outcomes transferability enterpriseand credit accumulation Finally Kirschner et al (1997) follow Barnett in

competences in education 79

de ning a competence as lsquothe ability to make satisfactory and e aring ectivedecisions in a speci c setting or situationrsquo

All of these considerations about competences as extended capabilitiesinvoke the idea of conscious and intentional decision making rather thanroutine behaviours Indeed competences seems to include metacognitionbecause competent individuals are assumed to re ect upon their knowl-edge their skills and their functioning1

Competence the need for a distinct concept

On the basis of this review it seems that there are (roughly) two distinctdenotations of lsquocompetences rsquo in education From a theoretical perspectivecompetence is conceived as a cognitive structure that facilitates speci edbehaviours From an operational perspective competences seem to cover abroad range of higher-order skills and behaviours that represent the abilityto cope with complex unpredictable situations this operational de nitionincludes knowledge skills attitudes metacognition and strategic thinkingand presupposes conscious and intentional decision making Figure 1 oaring ersa schematic view of this common operational de nition of competencewhile taking into account the possibility that lsquocompetence rsquo may cover bothmental performance and observational behaviour In the next sections Iwill focus on this broad operational competence concept because of itspresent popularity in education

80 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled behaviour

Competent behaviour

Mental competences

Attitudes

Knowledge

Skills

Figure 1 A competence model according to common de nitions

The general operational competence concept can be explained asfollows An individual rsquo s cognitive structures contain considerable theor-etical and practical knowledge This knowledge can be made available tothe outside world by way of reproductive skills (ie speech writingpointing etc) or can become supportive to skills and the associated skilledbehaviour Human behaviour in standard situations is likely to becomehighly automated although sometimes skills may demand conscious think-ing In complex non-standard situations competences are needed whichcombine knowledge (cognitive) skills and speci c attitudes Competenceshave a mental component representing thought and a behavioural com-ponent representing competent performance Competent behaviour isalways associated with conscious thinking

The need for a distinct concept of competence that surpasses the levelsof knowledge skills and attitudes originates from the observation thatsomething lsquoextrarsquo seems to be necessary to ensure e aring ective and e aelig cientperformance Individuals should be able to make the right choice out ofmany di aring erent possible behaviours by anticipating the e aring ects of theirinterventions But in the end is such extra ability signi cantly di aring erentfrom advanced re ective (meta)cognitive skills Indeed if competencesdi aring er substantially from skills other questions emerge concerning the waycompetences should be learned how competences should be assessed howcompetences relate to knowledge and re ective skills how competencesshould be speci ed and so on In the next sections I will discuss variousproblematic aspects of the competence concept

The problem of competence as a theoretical entity

When competence is directly linked with e aring ective performance in complexsituations it is thought to serve as a causal factor for success However itmust be concluded that the competence concept has no explanatory powerbecause of its post hoc character inasmuch as competence is a theoreticalrather than an observational entity the causal law takes the form of ade nition lsquocompetent performance presumes competence rsquo Such a causallaw is tautological because neither its truth nor its untruth can bedetermined Whenever successful performance is observed the wordlsquocompetence rsquo is used as a label For instance managers who realize acomplex re-organization are by de nition termed competent physicianswho successfully revive a road casualty are also by de nition competentand so on All we know about the internal structure of competence is that itcomprises knowledge skills attitudes and something extra that is associ-ated with a new unknown (theoretical) dimension It is not clear how thissomething extra associated with competence can be in uenced and how itsrole as an explanatory variable can be tested As a consequence we have tosee competence as no more than a descriptive term that could easily bereplaced with other terms like eg lsquoconditions for successful performance rsquo lsquodivine expertisersquo lsquomagical touchrsquo and the like E aring orts to build a causaltheory around the notion of competences are not encouraging because

competences in education 81

unfortunately conclusions about competence seem to coincide with itsde nition

The problem of competence standards

When competences are chosen as the ultimate objectives of education (as ineg competence-based education) they should be described in terms ofwell-expressed behaviours in well-expressed situations If someone islabelled as lsquocompetent rsquo his or her performances meet a standard (Barnett1994) But any such standards con ict with the idea that competences areassociated with unique complex situations and ill-de ned problems Thisproblem also has consequences for the assessment of competences assess-ment is usually associated with reproducibilitymdashwhich requires controlledconditions Competence de ned as the ability to produce successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations seems to vitiate the possibilityof using competences as an educational frame of reference

The problem of assessment

The assessment of competences should deal with the reproducibility ormore precisely with the prediction of success in future behaviours As Ihave suggested a well-de ned and controlled test situation would not beappropriate for assessing competences because competences assume ill-de ned and unique environments But once successful performance insuch a unique environment is assessed it is far from clear if this successwould guarantee similarly successful performance in a new but substan-tially di aring erent complex situation From this it may be concluded that theassessment of competences must include the issue of transfer but suchassessment would require a number of environments each of suaelig cientcomplexity This would not only be laborious to set up and costly but itwould also require detailed insight into the structure and functioning of thecompetence concept Furthermore the testing of reproducibility in suchcomplex processes would be a problem because of the unique character-istics inherent in each di aring erent situation we need to remember thatsuccessful and celebrated lmmakers writers or managers (who obviouslyare ascribed competence) often fail in their later projects

In addition there is another problem involved with the assessment ofcompetence Competence as a cognitive lsquoabilityrsquo is determined by theobservation of successful performance Successful performance howevermay easily be the result of chance while cognitive malfunctioning can beobscured To some extent this also seems to hold for cognitive skillshowever when assessing cognitive skills the focus on outcomes is supple-mented with a focus on cognitive procedures or processes that refer to theconditions for success This seems to be impossible for lsquocompetence rsquobecause of its poor theoretical basis Therefore within the logic of Aristotle(modus tollens ie denying the consequent) it is likely that only incom-petence can be determined not competence

82 w westera

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

understanding should not be mistaken for an intellectual process of super-natural dimensions it arises from an extended knowledge of the world andan ability to interrelate this knowledge in new situations far better than anyautomaton

Cognitive skills

While knowledge refers to static entities that can be stored in and retrievedfrom memory cognitive skills are associated with the mental operationsthat process this knowledge Such cognitive skills are referred to in a varietyof di aring erent ways as lsquoprocedural knowledge rsquo (Anderson 1980) lsquointellectualskillsrsquo (Gagne 1977 White and Mayer 1980) lsquomental processes rsquo or lsquomentaloperations rsquo (Snow 1980) lsquoknowing how rsquo (Salomon 1981) lsquostrategic knowl-edge rsquo (Renner and Marek 1990) or lsquocognitive strategiesrsquo (Gagne 1977)Although these terms may have slightly di aring erent connotations they allrefer to mental processes that occur in the mind (or rather in the brain)while using transforming or supplementing available knowledge Further-more cognitive skills are highly associated with higher-order activities likeproblem solving reasoning thinking assessing concluding and includethe mental processes of analysis synthesis and evaluation (Bloom et al1956) to produce a re-ordering or extension of the existing cognitivestructure

Cognitive skills are by de nition restricted to internal (mental) pro-cesses It is therefore essential to disconnect cognitive skills from obser-vable interactions with the outside world Indeed some cognitive activitieshave no behavioural consequences whatsoever For instance solving amathematical (or the like) problem can be undertakenmdashand completedmdashwhile gazing motionless out of the window or while lying in bed Howevercognitive skills do play an important role in the way humans interact withreality Cognitive processes may give rise to various observational beha-viours causing a person to intervene in the environment while performingplanned operations and applying available knowledge In reverse thecontinuous ow of external stimuli produces new experiences and newknowledge that causes an ongoing adaptation and alteration of internalcognitive structures

In skills-training substantial repetition which allows learners to grad-ually improve their performance levels in terms of speed precision and uency is usually involved As a consequence skills-performance becomesmore and more automated experienced drivers for example are hardlyaware of the complex cognitive tasks they perform while their inexper-ienced counterparts must consciously think about almost any operationthey carry out Unfortunately such patterns of increasing automatism or uency tend to obscure the distinction between cognitive skills and theassociated behaviours

In contrast with knowledge cognitive skills are di aelig cult to test directlyDirect observation of the brain during cognitive processes is hindered bytechnical and ethical obstacles But even if these obstacles would be by-passed it is unlikely that the monitoring of billions of nerve cells would

competences in education 77

give a satisfactory explanation for sophisticated cognitive processes Theonly way to test the mastery of a cognitive skill is to provoke observationalbehaviours that can directly be linked to the skill For this reason learningobjectives for cognitive skills are usually described in operational (be-havioural) terms Clearly this linkage creates confusion Observationalbehaviours like crossing a street are easily mistaken for cognitive skills Insuch a context the relationship between cognitive skills and observationalbehaviour has a causal or more precisely a sequential character First thereis a mental process the observation of the green light is connected with theexisting knowledge that a lsquogreen light rsquo means lsquosafe crossingrsquo Consequentlya decision is taken that it is safe to start crossing Next this cognitiveprocess gives rise to the actual behaviour of crossing the street Note thatthis idea of lsquothinking before doing rsquo is prototypical for modern rationalismIn practice however we should acknowledge that behaviour is often likelyto precede the cognitive processes ( rst doing than thinking) whichmdashofcoursemdashmay have tragic e aring ects when crossing a street Reversal can also beobserved in various learning models that start from the premise thatmaterial operations precede the acquisition of cognitive skills (Galrsquo perinand Leontjev 1972) eg abstract counting is learned best by using theabacus

Furthermore in many cases the relationship between cognitive skillsand behaviour appears to be simultaneous rather than sequential This mayhold for speech which is supposed to represent the ability to constructmeaningful sentences that are instantaneously operationalized here thebehaviour is close to being a carrier for the mental operations The processof lsquothinking aloud rsquo also illustrates the idea of simultaneity Naturally suchstrong interdependence of cognitive skills and behaviour causes confusionabout the essential and di aring erent meanings of the two concepts Chomsky(1965) recognized this problem and distinguished between the actual act ofspeaking (lsquolinguistic performance rsquo ) and the associated cognitive skills(lsquolinguistic competences rsquo )

Ideas about competence

Many de nitions of competence are available An exhaustive inventorymdashifpossiblemdashwouldn rsquo t make much sense Instead I try to identify the mostsigni cant characteristics of lsquocompetences rsquo to be found in the literature

Many authors follow Chomskyrsquo s (1965) approach by distinguishingbetween competences and performances (Cohen 1983 Evans et al 1993Langford and Hunting 1994) According to Chomsky the concept oflsquolinguistic competence rsquo represents the cognitive structure and rules thatare necessary to produce speech in contrast lsquolinguistic performance rsquorepresents the way speech actually functions in practice when it is con-taminated by external factors For instance a limited capacity of theworking memory may cause a long sentence to end ungrammaticallybecause the speaker has forgotten the sentence rsquo s initial set-up Herelinguistic competence may be perfect while linguistic performance ismuch less than perfect

78 w westera

Chomsky adopting a functionalist perspective assumes linguistic com-petence to be general and invariant whilemdashin contrastmdashlinguistic perform-ance is strictly individual and variable Evans et al (1993) extendedChomskyrsquo s approach to the domain of human reasoning they de necompetence as the ability of subjects to reason logically under ideal con-ditions ie the reasoning competence is not disguised by performancefactors they go on to describe the di aelig culties of eliminating such per-formance factors in order to uncover competences

Anderson (1992) distinguishes between abilities and competencesAbilities represent the (operational) outcomes of tests while competencesrepresent the underlying cognitive functioning Gronlund (1981) elabor-ating on competence-based tests uses the word competences as a synonymfor operational skills ie writing skills computational skills reading skillsetc Here competences are not assumed to be xed structures but in-dividual abilities that can be improved by training Probably the associ-ated competence-based tests Gronlund (1981) advocates are equivalent toperformance tests Langford and Hunting (1994) used Chomskyrsquo s de ni-tions of competence and performance in deductive and inductive reasoningEliminating interference by performance factors Langford and Hunting(1994) found evidence suggesting that the competence of deductive reason-ing is constructed rather than activated Di aring ering with Chomsky theyconclude that competences ie the basic cognitive structures can beacquired by learning processes

Others starting from ordinary language use the word lsquocompetence rsquo in amuch broader sense Competence is a highly-valued quali cation thataccounts for the e aring ective use of knowledge and skills in speci c usuallycomplex contexts The mastery of relevant knowledge and skills alone is noguarantee of successful performances in complex environments individualsshould be able to select from their available knowledge and skills in such away that eaelig cient and e aring ective behaviour occurs This requires speciallsquoabilities rsquo that take into account the characteristics of a speci c context(Ferguson-Hessler 1989 Scheeres and Hager 1994)

Obviously competences are needed to engage situations involvingintricate multidimensional problems in which no straightforwardapproaches to problem solving are appropriate White (1959) refers tolsquoe aring ective rsquo behaviour and links competences with the idea of self-esteemcompetence is regarded as an outgrowth of feelings after the successfulcompletion of a task or course of study It is interpreted as the result oflsquoe aring ectance rsquo that is the drive or motivation to have a manifest e aring ect on one rsquo senvironment

Stephenson and Weil (1992) in an attempt to cover self-con dencemotivation and persistence assume that competences also include atti-tudinal components Gagne (1977) refers to lsquostrategic abilities rsquo rather thanmore or less automated routines Barnett (1994) associates competenceswith unpredictable behaviours in unpredictable and unexpected situationscoping with new situations in a creative way is assumed to be a critical partof the concept of competence He opts for an operational approach to thecompetence concept that covers skills outcomes transferability enterpriseand credit accumulation Finally Kirschner et al (1997) follow Barnett in

competences in education 79

de ning a competence as lsquothe ability to make satisfactory and e aring ectivedecisions in a speci c setting or situationrsquo

All of these considerations about competences as extended capabilitiesinvoke the idea of conscious and intentional decision making rather thanroutine behaviours Indeed competences seems to include metacognitionbecause competent individuals are assumed to re ect upon their knowl-edge their skills and their functioning1

Competence the need for a distinct concept

On the basis of this review it seems that there are (roughly) two distinctdenotations of lsquocompetences rsquo in education From a theoretical perspectivecompetence is conceived as a cognitive structure that facilitates speci edbehaviours From an operational perspective competences seem to cover abroad range of higher-order skills and behaviours that represent the abilityto cope with complex unpredictable situations this operational de nitionincludes knowledge skills attitudes metacognition and strategic thinkingand presupposes conscious and intentional decision making Figure 1 oaring ersa schematic view of this common operational de nition of competencewhile taking into account the possibility that lsquocompetence rsquo may cover bothmental performance and observational behaviour In the next sections Iwill focus on this broad operational competence concept because of itspresent popularity in education

80 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled behaviour

Competent behaviour

Mental competences

Attitudes

Knowledge

Skills

Figure 1 A competence model according to common de nitions

The general operational competence concept can be explained asfollows An individual rsquo s cognitive structures contain considerable theor-etical and practical knowledge This knowledge can be made available tothe outside world by way of reproductive skills (ie speech writingpointing etc) or can become supportive to skills and the associated skilledbehaviour Human behaviour in standard situations is likely to becomehighly automated although sometimes skills may demand conscious think-ing In complex non-standard situations competences are needed whichcombine knowledge (cognitive) skills and speci c attitudes Competenceshave a mental component representing thought and a behavioural com-ponent representing competent performance Competent behaviour isalways associated with conscious thinking

The need for a distinct concept of competence that surpasses the levelsof knowledge skills and attitudes originates from the observation thatsomething lsquoextrarsquo seems to be necessary to ensure e aring ective and e aelig cientperformance Individuals should be able to make the right choice out ofmany di aring erent possible behaviours by anticipating the e aring ects of theirinterventions But in the end is such extra ability signi cantly di aring erentfrom advanced re ective (meta)cognitive skills Indeed if competencesdi aring er substantially from skills other questions emerge concerning the waycompetences should be learned how competences should be assessed howcompetences relate to knowledge and re ective skills how competencesshould be speci ed and so on In the next sections I will discuss variousproblematic aspects of the competence concept

The problem of competence as a theoretical entity

When competence is directly linked with e aring ective performance in complexsituations it is thought to serve as a causal factor for success However itmust be concluded that the competence concept has no explanatory powerbecause of its post hoc character inasmuch as competence is a theoreticalrather than an observational entity the causal law takes the form of ade nition lsquocompetent performance presumes competence rsquo Such a causallaw is tautological because neither its truth nor its untruth can bedetermined Whenever successful performance is observed the wordlsquocompetence rsquo is used as a label For instance managers who realize acomplex re-organization are by de nition termed competent physicianswho successfully revive a road casualty are also by de nition competentand so on All we know about the internal structure of competence is that itcomprises knowledge skills attitudes and something extra that is associ-ated with a new unknown (theoretical) dimension It is not clear how thissomething extra associated with competence can be in uenced and how itsrole as an explanatory variable can be tested As a consequence we have tosee competence as no more than a descriptive term that could easily bereplaced with other terms like eg lsquoconditions for successful performance rsquo lsquodivine expertisersquo lsquomagical touchrsquo and the like E aring orts to build a causaltheory around the notion of competences are not encouraging because

competences in education 81

unfortunately conclusions about competence seem to coincide with itsde nition

The problem of competence standards

When competences are chosen as the ultimate objectives of education (as ineg competence-based education) they should be described in terms ofwell-expressed behaviours in well-expressed situations If someone islabelled as lsquocompetent rsquo his or her performances meet a standard (Barnett1994) But any such standards con ict with the idea that competences areassociated with unique complex situations and ill-de ned problems Thisproblem also has consequences for the assessment of competences assess-ment is usually associated with reproducibilitymdashwhich requires controlledconditions Competence de ned as the ability to produce successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations seems to vitiate the possibilityof using competences as an educational frame of reference

The problem of assessment

The assessment of competences should deal with the reproducibility ormore precisely with the prediction of success in future behaviours As Ihave suggested a well-de ned and controlled test situation would not beappropriate for assessing competences because competences assume ill-de ned and unique environments But once successful performance insuch a unique environment is assessed it is far from clear if this successwould guarantee similarly successful performance in a new but substan-tially di aring erent complex situation From this it may be concluded that theassessment of competences must include the issue of transfer but suchassessment would require a number of environments each of suaelig cientcomplexity This would not only be laborious to set up and costly but itwould also require detailed insight into the structure and functioning of thecompetence concept Furthermore the testing of reproducibility in suchcomplex processes would be a problem because of the unique character-istics inherent in each di aring erent situation we need to remember thatsuccessful and celebrated lmmakers writers or managers (who obviouslyare ascribed competence) often fail in their later projects

In addition there is another problem involved with the assessment ofcompetence Competence as a cognitive lsquoabilityrsquo is determined by theobservation of successful performance Successful performance howevermay easily be the result of chance while cognitive malfunctioning can beobscured To some extent this also seems to hold for cognitive skillshowever when assessing cognitive skills the focus on outcomes is supple-mented with a focus on cognitive procedures or processes that refer to theconditions for success This seems to be impossible for lsquocompetence rsquobecause of its poor theoretical basis Therefore within the logic of Aristotle(modus tollens ie denying the consequent) it is likely that only incom-petence can be determined not competence

82 w westera

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

give a satisfactory explanation for sophisticated cognitive processes Theonly way to test the mastery of a cognitive skill is to provoke observationalbehaviours that can directly be linked to the skill For this reason learningobjectives for cognitive skills are usually described in operational (be-havioural) terms Clearly this linkage creates confusion Observationalbehaviours like crossing a street are easily mistaken for cognitive skills Insuch a context the relationship between cognitive skills and observationalbehaviour has a causal or more precisely a sequential character First thereis a mental process the observation of the green light is connected with theexisting knowledge that a lsquogreen light rsquo means lsquosafe crossingrsquo Consequentlya decision is taken that it is safe to start crossing Next this cognitiveprocess gives rise to the actual behaviour of crossing the street Note thatthis idea of lsquothinking before doing rsquo is prototypical for modern rationalismIn practice however we should acknowledge that behaviour is often likelyto precede the cognitive processes ( rst doing than thinking) whichmdashofcoursemdashmay have tragic e aring ects when crossing a street Reversal can also beobserved in various learning models that start from the premise thatmaterial operations precede the acquisition of cognitive skills (Galrsquo perinand Leontjev 1972) eg abstract counting is learned best by using theabacus

Furthermore in many cases the relationship between cognitive skillsand behaviour appears to be simultaneous rather than sequential This mayhold for speech which is supposed to represent the ability to constructmeaningful sentences that are instantaneously operationalized here thebehaviour is close to being a carrier for the mental operations The processof lsquothinking aloud rsquo also illustrates the idea of simultaneity Naturally suchstrong interdependence of cognitive skills and behaviour causes confusionabout the essential and di aring erent meanings of the two concepts Chomsky(1965) recognized this problem and distinguished between the actual act ofspeaking (lsquolinguistic performance rsquo ) and the associated cognitive skills(lsquolinguistic competences rsquo )

Ideas about competence

Many de nitions of competence are available An exhaustive inventorymdashifpossiblemdashwouldn rsquo t make much sense Instead I try to identify the mostsigni cant characteristics of lsquocompetences rsquo to be found in the literature

Many authors follow Chomskyrsquo s (1965) approach by distinguishingbetween competences and performances (Cohen 1983 Evans et al 1993Langford and Hunting 1994) According to Chomsky the concept oflsquolinguistic competence rsquo represents the cognitive structure and rules thatare necessary to produce speech in contrast lsquolinguistic performance rsquorepresents the way speech actually functions in practice when it is con-taminated by external factors For instance a limited capacity of theworking memory may cause a long sentence to end ungrammaticallybecause the speaker has forgotten the sentence rsquo s initial set-up Herelinguistic competence may be perfect while linguistic performance ismuch less than perfect

78 w westera

Chomsky adopting a functionalist perspective assumes linguistic com-petence to be general and invariant whilemdashin contrastmdashlinguistic perform-ance is strictly individual and variable Evans et al (1993) extendedChomskyrsquo s approach to the domain of human reasoning they de necompetence as the ability of subjects to reason logically under ideal con-ditions ie the reasoning competence is not disguised by performancefactors they go on to describe the di aelig culties of eliminating such per-formance factors in order to uncover competences

Anderson (1992) distinguishes between abilities and competencesAbilities represent the (operational) outcomes of tests while competencesrepresent the underlying cognitive functioning Gronlund (1981) elabor-ating on competence-based tests uses the word competences as a synonymfor operational skills ie writing skills computational skills reading skillsetc Here competences are not assumed to be xed structures but in-dividual abilities that can be improved by training Probably the associ-ated competence-based tests Gronlund (1981) advocates are equivalent toperformance tests Langford and Hunting (1994) used Chomskyrsquo s de ni-tions of competence and performance in deductive and inductive reasoningEliminating interference by performance factors Langford and Hunting(1994) found evidence suggesting that the competence of deductive reason-ing is constructed rather than activated Di aring ering with Chomsky theyconclude that competences ie the basic cognitive structures can beacquired by learning processes

Others starting from ordinary language use the word lsquocompetence rsquo in amuch broader sense Competence is a highly-valued quali cation thataccounts for the e aring ective use of knowledge and skills in speci c usuallycomplex contexts The mastery of relevant knowledge and skills alone is noguarantee of successful performances in complex environments individualsshould be able to select from their available knowledge and skills in such away that eaelig cient and e aring ective behaviour occurs This requires speciallsquoabilities rsquo that take into account the characteristics of a speci c context(Ferguson-Hessler 1989 Scheeres and Hager 1994)

Obviously competences are needed to engage situations involvingintricate multidimensional problems in which no straightforwardapproaches to problem solving are appropriate White (1959) refers tolsquoe aring ective rsquo behaviour and links competences with the idea of self-esteemcompetence is regarded as an outgrowth of feelings after the successfulcompletion of a task or course of study It is interpreted as the result oflsquoe aring ectance rsquo that is the drive or motivation to have a manifest e aring ect on one rsquo senvironment

Stephenson and Weil (1992) in an attempt to cover self-con dencemotivation and persistence assume that competences also include atti-tudinal components Gagne (1977) refers to lsquostrategic abilities rsquo rather thanmore or less automated routines Barnett (1994) associates competenceswith unpredictable behaviours in unpredictable and unexpected situationscoping with new situations in a creative way is assumed to be a critical partof the concept of competence He opts for an operational approach to thecompetence concept that covers skills outcomes transferability enterpriseand credit accumulation Finally Kirschner et al (1997) follow Barnett in

competences in education 79

de ning a competence as lsquothe ability to make satisfactory and e aring ectivedecisions in a speci c setting or situationrsquo

All of these considerations about competences as extended capabilitiesinvoke the idea of conscious and intentional decision making rather thanroutine behaviours Indeed competences seems to include metacognitionbecause competent individuals are assumed to re ect upon their knowl-edge their skills and their functioning1

Competence the need for a distinct concept

On the basis of this review it seems that there are (roughly) two distinctdenotations of lsquocompetences rsquo in education From a theoretical perspectivecompetence is conceived as a cognitive structure that facilitates speci edbehaviours From an operational perspective competences seem to cover abroad range of higher-order skills and behaviours that represent the abilityto cope with complex unpredictable situations this operational de nitionincludes knowledge skills attitudes metacognition and strategic thinkingand presupposes conscious and intentional decision making Figure 1 oaring ersa schematic view of this common operational de nition of competencewhile taking into account the possibility that lsquocompetence rsquo may cover bothmental performance and observational behaviour In the next sections Iwill focus on this broad operational competence concept because of itspresent popularity in education

80 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled behaviour

Competent behaviour

Mental competences

Attitudes

Knowledge

Skills

Figure 1 A competence model according to common de nitions

The general operational competence concept can be explained asfollows An individual rsquo s cognitive structures contain considerable theor-etical and practical knowledge This knowledge can be made available tothe outside world by way of reproductive skills (ie speech writingpointing etc) or can become supportive to skills and the associated skilledbehaviour Human behaviour in standard situations is likely to becomehighly automated although sometimes skills may demand conscious think-ing In complex non-standard situations competences are needed whichcombine knowledge (cognitive) skills and speci c attitudes Competenceshave a mental component representing thought and a behavioural com-ponent representing competent performance Competent behaviour isalways associated with conscious thinking

The need for a distinct concept of competence that surpasses the levelsof knowledge skills and attitudes originates from the observation thatsomething lsquoextrarsquo seems to be necessary to ensure e aring ective and e aelig cientperformance Individuals should be able to make the right choice out ofmany di aring erent possible behaviours by anticipating the e aring ects of theirinterventions But in the end is such extra ability signi cantly di aring erentfrom advanced re ective (meta)cognitive skills Indeed if competencesdi aring er substantially from skills other questions emerge concerning the waycompetences should be learned how competences should be assessed howcompetences relate to knowledge and re ective skills how competencesshould be speci ed and so on In the next sections I will discuss variousproblematic aspects of the competence concept

The problem of competence as a theoretical entity

When competence is directly linked with e aring ective performance in complexsituations it is thought to serve as a causal factor for success However itmust be concluded that the competence concept has no explanatory powerbecause of its post hoc character inasmuch as competence is a theoreticalrather than an observational entity the causal law takes the form of ade nition lsquocompetent performance presumes competence rsquo Such a causallaw is tautological because neither its truth nor its untruth can bedetermined Whenever successful performance is observed the wordlsquocompetence rsquo is used as a label For instance managers who realize acomplex re-organization are by de nition termed competent physicianswho successfully revive a road casualty are also by de nition competentand so on All we know about the internal structure of competence is that itcomprises knowledge skills attitudes and something extra that is associ-ated with a new unknown (theoretical) dimension It is not clear how thissomething extra associated with competence can be in uenced and how itsrole as an explanatory variable can be tested As a consequence we have tosee competence as no more than a descriptive term that could easily bereplaced with other terms like eg lsquoconditions for successful performance rsquo lsquodivine expertisersquo lsquomagical touchrsquo and the like E aring orts to build a causaltheory around the notion of competences are not encouraging because

competences in education 81

unfortunately conclusions about competence seem to coincide with itsde nition

The problem of competence standards

When competences are chosen as the ultimate objectives of education (as ineg competence-based education) they should be described in terms ofwell-expressed behaviours in well-expressed situations If someone islabelled as lsquocompetent rsquo his or her performances meet a standard (Barnett1994) But any such standards con ict with the idea that competences areassociated with unique complex situations and ill-de ned problems Thisproblem also has consequences for the assessment of competences assess-ment is usually associated with reproducibilitymdashwhich requires controlledconditions Competence de ned as the ability to produce successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations seems to vitiate the possibilityof using competences as an educational frame of reference

The problem of assessment

The assessment of competences should deal with the reproducibility ormore precisely with the prediction of success in future behaviours As Ihave suggested a well-de ned and controlled test situation would not beappropriate for assessing competences because competences assume ill-de ned and unique environments But once successful performance insuch a unique environment is assessed it is far from clear if this successwould guarantee similarly successful performance in a new but substan-tially di aring erent complex situation From this it may be concluded that theassessment of competences must include the issue of transfer but suchassessment would require a number of environments each of suaelig cientcomplexity This would not only be laborious to set up and costly but itwould also require detailed insight into the structure and functioning of thecompetence concept Furthermore the testing of reproducibility in suchcomplex processes would be a problem because of the unique character-istics inherent in each di aring erent situation we need to remember thatsuccessful and celebrated lmmakers writers or managers (who obviouslyare ascribed competence) often fail in their later projects

In addition there is another problem involved with the assessment ofcompetence Competence as a cognitive lsquoabilityrsquo is determined by theobservation of successful performance Successful performance howevermay easily be the result of chance while cognitive malfunctioning can beobscured To some extent this also seems to hold for cognitive skillshowever when assessing cognitive skills the focus on outcomes is supple-mented with a focus on cognitive procedures or processes that refer to theconditions for success This seems to be impossible for lsquocompetence rsquobecause of its poor theoretical basis Therefore within the logic of Aristotle(modus tollens ie denying the consequent) it is likely that only incom-petence can be determined not competence

82 w westera

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

Chomsky adopting a functionalist perspective assumes linguistic com-petence to be general and invariant whilemdashin contrastmdashlinguistic perform-ance is strictly individual and variable Evans et al (1993) extendedChomskyrsquo s approach to the domain of human reasoning they de necompetence as the ability of subjects to reason logically under ideal con-ditions ie the reasoning competence is not disguised by performancefactors they go on to describe the di aelig culties of eliminating such per-formance factors in order to uncover competences

Anderson (1992) distinguishes between abilities and competencesAbilities represent the (operational) outcomes of tests while competencesrepresent the underlying cognitive functioning Gronlund (1981) elabor-ating on competence-based tests uses the word competences as a synonymfor operational skills ie writing skills computational skills reading skillsetc Here competences are not assumed to be xed structures but in-dividual abilities that can be improved by training Probably the associ-ated competence-based tests Gronlund (1981) advocates are equivalent toperformance tests Langford and Hunting (1994) used Chomskyrsquo s de ni-tions of competence and performance in deductive and inductive reasoningEliminating interference by performance factors Langford and Hunting(1994) found evidence suggesting that the competence of deductive reason-ing is constructed rather than activated Di aring ering with Chomsky theyconclude that competences ie the basic cognitive structures can beacquired by learning processes

Others starting from ordinary language use the word lsquocompetence rsquo in amuch broader sense Competence is a highly-valued quali cation thataccounts for the e aring ective use of knowledge and skills in speci c usuallycomplex contexts The mastery of relevant knowledge and skills alone is noguarantee of successful performances in complex environments individualsshould be able to select from their available knowledge and skills in such away that eaelig cient and e aring ective behaviour occurs This requires speciallsquoabilities rsquo that take into account the characteristics of a speci c context(Ferguson-Hessler 1989 Scheeres and Hager 1994)

Obviously competences are needed to engage situations involvingintricate multidimensional problems in which no straightforwardapproaches to problem solving are appropriate White (1959) refers tolsquoe aring ective rsquo behaviour and links competences with the idea of self-esteemcompetence is regarded as an outgrowth of feelings after the successfulcompletion of a task or course of study It is interpreted as the result oflsquoe aring ectance rsquo that is the drive or motivation to have a manifest e aring ect on one rsquo senvironment

Stephenson and Weil (1992) in an attempt to cover self-con dencemotivation and persistence assume that competences also include atti-tudinal components Gagne (1977) refers to lsquostrategic abilities rsquo rather thanmore or less automated routines Barnett (1994) associates competenceswith unpredictable behaviours in unpredictable and unexpected situationscoping with new situations in a creative way is assumed to be a critical partof the concept of competence He opts for an operational approach to thecompetence concept that covers skills outcomes transferability enterpriseand credit accumulation Finally Kirschner et al (1997) follow Barnett in

competences in education 79

de ning a competence as lsquothe ability to make satisfactory and e aring ectivedecisions in a speci c setting or situationrsquo

All of these considerations about competences as extended capabilitiesinvoke the idea of conscious and intentional decision making rather thanroutine behaviours Indeed competences seems to include metacognitionbecause competent individuals are assumed to re ect upon their knowl-edge their skills and their functioning1

Competence the need for a distinct concept

On the basis of this review it seems that there are (roughly) two distinctdenotations of lsquocompetences rsquo in education From a theoretical perspectivecompetence is conceived as a cognitive structure that facilitates speci edbehaviours From an operational perspective competences seem to cover abroad range of higher-order skills and behaviours that represent the abilityto cope with complex unpredictable situations this operational de nitionincludes knowledge skills attitudes metacognition and strategic thinkingand presupposes conscious and intentional decision making Figure 1 oaring ersa schematic view of this common operational de nition of competencewhile taking into account the possibility that lsquocompetence rsquo may cover bothmental performance and observational behaviour In the next sections Iwill focus on this broad operational competence concept because of itspresent popularity in education

80 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled behaviour

Competent behaviour

Mental competences

Attitudes

Knowledge

Skills

Figure 1 A competence model according to common de nitions

The general operational competence concept can be explained asfollows An individual rsquo s cognitive structures contain considerable theor-etical and practical knowledge This knowledge can be made available tothe outside world by way of reproductive skills (ie speech writingpointing etc) or can become supportive to skills and the associated skilledbehaviour Human behaviour in standard situations is likely to becomehighly automated although sometimes skills may demand conscious think-ing In complex non-standard situations competences are needed whichcombine knowledge (cognitive) skills and speci c attitudes Competenceshave a mental component representing thought and a behavioural com-ponent representing competent performance Competent behaviour isalways associated with conscious thinking

The need for a distinct concept of competence that surpasses the levelsof knowledge skills and attitudes originates from the observation thatsomething lsquoextrarsquo seems to be necessary to ensure e aring ective and e aelig cientperformance Individuals should be able to make the right choice out ofmany di aring erent possible behaviours by anticipating the e aring ects of theirinterventions But in the end is such extra ability signi cantly di aring erentfrom advanced re ective (meta)cognitive skills Indeed if competencesdi aring er substantially from skills other questions emerge concerning the waycompetences should be learned how competences should be assessed howcompetences relate to knowledge and re ective skills how competencesshould be speci ed and so on In the next sections I will discuss variousproblematic aspects of the competence concept

The problem of competence as a theoretical entity

When competence is directly linked with e aring ective performance in complexsituations it is thought to serve as a causal factor for success However itmust be concluded that the competence concept has no explanatory powerbecause of its post hoc character inasmuch as competence is a theoreticalrather than an observational entity the causal law takes the form of ade nition lsquocompetent performance presumes competence rsquo Such a causallaw is tautological because neither its truth nor its untruth can bedetermined Whenever successful performance is observed the wordlsquocompetence rsquo is used as a label For instance managers who realize acomplex re-organization are by de nition termed competent physicianswho successfully revive a road casualty are also by de nition competentand so on All we know about the internal structure of competence is that itcomprises knowledge skills attitudes and something extra that is associ-ated with a new unknown (theoretical) dimension It is not clear how thissomething extra associated with competence can be in uenced and how itsrole as an explanatory variable can be tested As a consequence we have tosee competence as no more than a descriptive term that could easily bereplaced with other terms like eg lsquoconditions for successful performance rsquo lsquodivine expertisersquo lsquomagical touchrsquo and the like E aring orts to build a causaltheory around the notion of competences are not encouraging because

competences in education 81

unfortunately conclusions about competence seem to coincide with itsde nition

The problem of competence standards

When competences are chosen as the ultimate objectives of education (as ineg competence-based education) they should be described in terms ofwell-expressed behaviours in well-expressed situations If someone islabelled as lsquocompetent rsquo his or her performances meet a standard (Barnett1994) But any such standards con ict with the idea that competences areassociated with unique complex situations and ill-de ned problems Thisproblem also has consequences for the assessment of competences assess-ment is usually associated with reproducibilitymdashwhich requires controlledconditions Competence de ned as the ability to produce successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations seems to vitiate the possibilityof using competences as an educational frame of reference

The problem of assessment

The assessment of competences should deal with the reproducibility ormore precisely with the prediction of success in future behaviours As Ihave suggested a well-de ned and controlled test situation would not beappropriate for assessing competences because competences assume ill-de ned and unique environments But once successful performance insuch a unique environment is assessed it is far from clear if this successwould guarantee similarly successful performance in a new but substan-tially di aring erent complex situation From this it may be concluded that theassessment of competences must include the issue of transfer but suchassessment would require a number of environments each of suaelig cientcomplexity This would not only be laborious to set up and costly but itwould also require detailed insight into the structure and functioning of thecompetence concept Furthermore the testing of reproducibility in suchcomplex processes would be a problem because of the unique character-istics inherent in each di aring erent situation we need to remember thatsuccessful and celebrated lmmakers writers or managers (who obviouslyare ascribed competence) often fail in their later projects

In addition there is another problem involved with the assessment ofcompetence Competence as a cognitive lsquoabilityrsquo is determined by theobservation of successful performance Successful performance howevermay easily be the result of chance while cognitive malfunctioning can beobscured To some extent this also seems to hold for cognitive skillshowever when assessing cognitive skills the focus on outcomes is supple-mented with a focus on cognitive procedures or processes that refer to theconditions for success This seems to be impossible for lsquocompetence rsquobecause of its poor theoretical basis Therefore within the logic of Aristotle(modus tollens ie denying the consequent) it is likely that only incom-petence can be determined not competence

82 w westera

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

de ning a competence as lsquothe ability to make satisfactory and e aring ectivedecisions in a speci c setting or situationrsquo

All of these considerations about competences as extended capabilitiesinvoke the idea of conscious and intentional decision making rather thanroutine behaviours Indeed competences seems to include metacognitionbecause competent individuals are assumed to re ect upon their knowl-edge their skills and their functioning1

Competence the need for a distinct concept

On the basis of this review it seems that there are (roughly) two distinctdenotations of lsquocompetences rsquo in education From a theoretical perspectivecompetence is conceived as a cognitive structure that facilitates speci edbehaviours From an operational perspective competences seem to cover abroad range of higher-order skills and behaviours that represent the abilityto cope with complex unpredictable situations this operational de nitionincludes knowledge skills attitudes metacognition and strategic thinkingand presupposes conscious and intentional decision making Figure 1 oaring ersa schematic view of this common operational de nition of competencewhile taking into account the possibility that lsquocompetence rsquo may cover bothmental performance and observational behaviour In the next sections Iwill focus on this broad operational competence concept because of itspresent popularity in education

80 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled behaviour

Competent behaviour

Mental competences

Attitudes

Knowledge

Skills

Figure 1 A competence model according to common de nitions

The general operational competence concept can be explained asfollows An individual rsquo s cognitive structures contain considerable theor-etical and practical knowledge This knowledge can be made available tothe outside world by way of reproductive skills (ie speech writingpointing etc) or can become supportive to skills and the associated skilledbehaviour Human behaviour in standard situations is likely to becomehighly automated although sometimes skills may demand conscious think-ing In complex non-standard situations competences are needed whichcombine knowledge (cognitive) skills and speci c attitudes Competenceshave a mental component representing thought and a behavioural com-ponent representing competent performance Competent behaviour isalways associated with conscious thinking

The need for a distinct concept of competence that surpasses the levelsof knowledge skills and attitudes originates from the observation thatsomething lsquoextrarsquo seems to be necessary to ensure e aring ective and e aelig cientperformance Individuals should be able to make the right choice out ofmany di aring erent possible behaviours by anticipating the e aring ects of theirinterventions But in the end is such extra ability signi cantly di aring erentfrom advanced re ective (meta)cognitive skills Indeed if competencesdi aring er substantially from skills other questions emerge concerning the waycompetences should be learned how competences should be assessed howcompetences relate to knowledge and re ective skills how competencesshould be speci ed and so on In the next sections I will discuss variousproblematic aspects of the competence concept

The problem of competence as a theoretical entity

When competence is directly linked with e aring ective performance in complexsituations it is thought to serve as a causal factor for success However itmust be concluded that the competence concept has no explanatory powerbecause of its post hoc character inasmuch as competence is a theoreticalrather than an observational entity the causal law takes the form of ade nition lsquocompetent performance presumes competence rsquo Such a causallaw is tautological because neither its truth nor its untruth can bedetermined Whenever successful performance is observed the wordlsquocompetence rsquo is used as a label For instance managers who realize acomplex re-organization are by de nition termed competent physicianswho successfully revive a road casualty are also by de nition competentand so on All we know about the internal structure of competence is that itcomprises knowledge skills attitudes and something extra that is associ-ated with a new unknown (theoretical) dimension It is not clear how thissomething extra associated with competence can be in uenced and how itsrole as an explanatory variable can be tested As a consequence we have tosee competence as no more than a descriptive term that could easily bereplaced with other terms like eg lsquoconditions for successful performance rsquo lsquodivine expertisersquo lsquomagical touchrsquo and the like E aring orts to build a causaltheory around the notion of competences are not encouraging because

competences in education 81

unfortunately conclusions about competence seem to coincide with itsde nition

The problem of competence standards

When competences are chosen as the ultimate objectives of education (as ineg competence-based education) they should be described in terms ofwell-expressed behaviours in well-expressed situations If someone islabelled as lsquocompetent rsquo his or her performances meet a standard (Barnett1994) But any such standards con ict with the idea that competences areassociated with unique complex situations and ill-de ned problems Thisproblem also has consequences for the assessment of competences assess-ment is usually associated with reproducibilitymdashwhich requires controlledconditions Competence de ned as the ability to produce successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations seems to vitiate the possibilityof using competences as an educational frame of reference

The problem of assessment

The assessment of competences should deal with the reproducibility ormore precisely with the prediction of success in future behaviours As Ihave suggested a well-de ned and controlled test situation would not beappropriate for assessing competences because competences assume ill-de ned and unique environments But once successful performance insuch a unique environment is assessed it is far from clear if this successwould guarantee similarly successful performance in a new but substan-tially di aring erent complex situation From this it may be concluded that theassessment of competences must include the issue of transfer but suchassessment would require a number of environments each of suaelig cientcomplexity This would not only be laborious to set up and costly but itwould also require detailed insight into the structure and functioning of thecompetence concept Furthermore the testing of reproducibility in suchcomplex processes would be a problem because of the unique character-istics inherent in each di aring erent situation we need to remember thatsuccessful and celebrated lmmakers writers or managers (who obviouslyare ascribed competence) often fail in their later projects

In addition there is another problem involved with the assessment ofcompetence Competence as a cognitive lsquoabilityrsquo is determined by theobservation of successful performance Successful performance howevermay easily be the result of chance while cognitive malfunctioning can beobscured To some extent this also seems to hold for cognitive skillshowever when assessing cognitive skills the focus on outcomes is supple-mented with a focus on cognitive procedures or processes that refer to theconditions for success This seems to be impossible for lsquocompetence rsquobecause of its poor theoretical basis Therefore within the logic of Aristotle(modus tollens ie denying the consequent) it is likely that only incom-petence can be determined not competence

82 w westera

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

The general operational competence concept can be explained asfollows An individual rsquo s cognitive structures contain considerable theor-etical and practical knowledge This knowledge can be made available tothe outside world by way of reproductive skills (ie speech writingpointing etc) or can become supportive to skills and the associated skilledbehaviour Human behaviour in standard situations is likely to becomehighly automated although sometimes skills may demand conscious think-ing In complex non-standard situations competences are needed whichcombine knowledge (cognitive) skills and speci c attitudes Competenceshave a mental component representing thought and a behavioural com-ponent representing competent performance Competent behaviour isalways associated with conscious thinking

The need for a distinct concept of competence that surpasses the levelsof knowledge skills and attitudes originates from the observation thatsomething lsquoextrarsquo seems to be necessary to ensure e aring ective and e aelig cientperformance Individuals should be able to make the right choice out ofmany di aring erent possible behaviours by anticipating the e aring ects of theirinterventions But in the end is such extra ability signi cantly di aring erentfrom advanced re ective (meta)cognitive skills Indeed if competencesdi aring er substantially from skills other questions emerge concerning the waycompetences should be learned how competences should be assessed howcompetences relate to knowledge and re ective skills how competencesshould be speci ed and so on In the next sections I will discuss variousproblematic aspects of the competence concept

The problem of competence as a theoretical entity

When competence is directly linked with e aring ective performance in complexsituations it is thought to serve as a causal factor for success However itmust be concluded that the competence concept has no explanatory powerbecause of its post hoc character inasmuch as competence is a theoreticalrather than an observational entity the causal law takes the form of ade nition lsquocompetent performance presumes competence rsquo Such a causallaw is tautological because neither its truth nor its untruth can bedetermined Whenever successful performance is observed the wordlsquocompetence rsquo is used as a label For instance managers who realize acomplex re-organization are by de nition termed competent physicianswho successfully revive a road casualty are also by de nition competentand so on All we know about the internal structure of competence is that itcomprises knowledge skills attitudes and something extra that is associ-ated with a new unknown (theoretical) dimension It is not clear how thissomething extra associated with competence can be in uenced and how itsrole as an explanatory variable can be tested As a consequence we have tosee competence as no more than a descriptive term that could easily bereplaced with other terms like eg lsquoconditions for successful performance rsquo lsquodivine expertisersquo lsquomagical touchrsquo and the like E aring orts to build a causaltheory around the notion of competences are not encouraging because

competences in education 81

unfortunately conclusions about competence seem to coincide with itsde nition

The problem of competence standards

When competences are chosen as the ultimate objectives of education (as ineg competence-based education) they should be described in terms ofwell-expressed behaviours in well-expressed situations If someone islabelled as lsquocompetent rsquo his or her performances meet a standard (Barnett1994) But any such standards con ict with the idea that competences areassociated with unique complex situations and ill-de ned problems Thisproblem also has consequences for the assessment of competences assess-ment is usually associated with reproducibilitymdashwhich requires controlledconditions Competence de ned as the ability to produce successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations seems to vitiate the possibilityof using competences as an educational frame of reference

The problem of assessment

The assessment of competences should deal with the reproducibility ormore precisely with the prediction of success in future behaviours As Ihave suggested a well-de ned and controlled test situation would not beappropriate for assessing competences because competences assume ill-de ned and unique environments But once successful performance insuch a unique environment is assessed it is far from clear if this successwould guarantee similarly successful performance in a new but substan-tially di aring erent complex situation From this it may be concluded that theassessment of competences must include the issue of transfer but suchassessment would require a number of environments each of suaelig cientcomplexity This would not only be laborious to set up and costly but itwould also require detailed insight into the structure and functioning of thecompetence concept Furthermore the testing of reproducibility in suchcomplex processes would be a problem because of the unique character-istics inherent in each di aring erent situation we need to remember thatsuccessful and celebrated lmmakers writers or managers (who obviouslyare ascribed competence) often fail in their later projects

In addition there is another problem involved with the assessment ofcompetence Competence as a cognitive lsquoabilityrsquo is determined by theobservation of successful performance Successful performance howevermay easily be the result of chance while cognitive malfunctioning can beobscured To some extent this also seems to hold for cognitive skillshowever when assessing cognitive skills the focus on outcomes is supple-mented with a focus on cognitive procedures or processes that refer to theconditions for success This seems to be impossible for lsquocompetence rsquobecause of its poor theoretical basis Therefore within the logic of Aristotle(modus tollens ie denying the consequent) it is likely that only incom-petence can be determined not competence

82 w westera

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

unfortunately conclusions about competence seem to coincide with itsde nition

The problem of competence standards

When competences are chosen as the ultimate objectives of education (as ineg competence-based education) they should be described in terms ofwell-expressed behaviours in well-expressed situations If someone islabelled as lsquocompetent rsquo his or her performances meet a standard (Barnett1994) But any such standards con ict with the idea that competences areassociated with unique complex situations and ill-de ned problems Thisproblem also has consequences for the assessment of competences assess-ment is usually associated with reproducibilitymdashwhich requires controlledconditions Competence de ned as the ability to produce successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations seems to vitiate the possibilityof using competences as an educational frame of reference

The problem of assessment

The assessment of competences should deal with the reproducibility ormore precisely with the prediction of success in future behaviours As Ihave suggested a well-de ned and controlled test situation would not beappropriate for assessing competences because competences assume ill-de ned and unique environments But once successful performance insuch a unique environment is assessed it is far from clear if this successwould guarantee similarly successful performance in a new but substan-tially di aring erent complex situation From this it may be concluded that theassessment of competences must include the issue of transfer but suchassessment would require a number of environments each of suaelig cientcomplexity This would not only be laborious to set up and costly but itwould also require detailed insight into the structure and functioning of thecompetence concept Furthermore the testing of reproducibility in suchcomplex processes would be a problem because of the unique character-istics inherent in each di aring erent situation we need to remember thatsuccessful and celebrated lmmakers writers or managers (who obviouslyare ascribed competence) often fail in their later projects

In addition there is another problem involved with the assessment ofcompetence Competence as a cognitive lsquoabilityrsquo is determined by theobservation of successful performance Successful performance howevermay easily be the result of chance while cognitive malfunctioning can beobscured To some extent this also seems to hold for cognitive skillshowever when assessing cognitive skills the focus on outcomes is supple-mented with a focus on cognitive procedures or processes that refer to theconditions for success This seems to be impossible for lsquocompetence rsquobecause of its poor theoretical basis Therefore within the logic of Aristotle(modus tollens ie denying the consequent) it is likely that only incom-petence can be determined not competence

82 w westera

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

The problem of values

Competence has been associated with successful performance e aring ective useof resources and making the right choices Clearly lsquosuccessful rsquo perform-ance and lsquorightrsquo choices refer to normative criteria This does not necess-arily imply a violation of clarity and objectivity however it may easily giverise to arbitrary and sometimes undesirable standards This is the casewhen dealing with complex non-standard processes in complex environ-ments involving many di aring erent actors perspectives and interests In suchsituations success from one perspective is usually counterbalanced byfailure from another perspective An extreme example would be the caseof Hitler and the associated question of his competence Here again wetouch on the problem that unique complex situations do not t well withstandardized evaluative criteria

The problem of stability

Given the problem of values competences become all too easily subject tochange In retrospect well-regarded lsquocompetent rsquo managers politicians orscientists are easily condemned when the e aring ects of their actions appear tobe in contrast with their promises or pursuits Politicians strive for short-term successes to gain popularity but short-term successes all too easilyproduce and lead to long-term failures (Environmental issues might be agood example) In addition the way behaviours are regarded can changeover timemdashas a result of circumstances or shifting societal attitudes Suchchanges in context can and do lead to the reassessment of competence toincompetence although the abilities of the person in question remainunchanged

Barnett (1994) stresses that the capacity to cope with profound societalinternational and ecological change cannot be covered by any concept ofstandardized competences In his view no competences can be identi edthat will carry us forward in a changing worldmdashbecause no competenceswill carry the value tomorrow that they have today Competences may bestable but become worthless in a changing world

Finally human performance is subject of decay Performance in newsituations may even become lsquoless competent rsquo because of retention prob-lems the problematic transfer of acquired competences or even because ofgratuitous but inappropriate transfer Clearly the assessment of compe-tences requires the perspective of time and in this regard we need to noteagain the lack of valid assessment standards appropriate to complexsituations

The problem of conscious thought

Complex and novel situations provoke intentional and conscious behaviourThis conscious thinking focuses on the selection combination or adapt-ation of existing routines to meet the new situation In competence-based

competences in education 83

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

curricula students are trained to improve the e aring ectiveness and e aelig ciency oftheir behaviours in complex situations with the expectation that theirthinking judgements and selection of relevant skills will move fasterand that as a result the associated behaviours will become more uentBut increased speed and uency implies more automatism and less think-ing paradoxically therefore such training for competencesmdashif possible atallmdashdegrades the competences to routine-like procedures that would not bevery di aring erent from skills When we realize in addition that many skillsalso require conscious thinking any distinction between skills andcompetences seems to fade away

Barnett (1994) argues that conscious thinking occurs less frequently ineducation then we presume In his view learning to conform to standardsas identi ed by practising professionals may even obstruct process-think-ing He also asserts that the notion of competences cannot handle the ideasof thought and understanding because competences are usually de nedfrom an operational perspective that focuses on observed actions outcomesand skills rather than on the underlying processes

This issue of conscious thinking also reminds us of the unresolvedDescartian problem of mind-body dualism and the associated question ofwhether human behaviour is lsquore ective rsquo ie the result of a free will andunderstanding or lsquore exiversquo ie a collection of automated responses Buteven without exploring these topics I would suggest that consciousthinking cannot be the discriminating factor between competences andskills

The problem of complexity

According to Kirby (1988) skills are more or less automated routines thatallow the execution of well-speci ed tasks This does not necessarily meanthat skills are simple and straightforward ying an aeroplane requiressophisticated skills But as the level of complexity increases it is assumedthat successful behaviour cannot be explained by the presence of skillsalone We would all prefer a competent pilot over a skilled one in badweathermdashbut this raises the question of how the level of complexity isdescribed so as to discriminate between competences and skills In theorythe complexity of a given task could be determined from the number ofobjects involved their attributes their interrelationships the rules andprocesses involved etc But quite apart from this being a laboriousundertaking such analysis would not be of help because the complexityof a task must always be assessed relative to the person involved Considerfor example the following problem lsquoAssume that 13 candies are availablefor eight people How many candies would be left if everyone is given one rsquoClearly such subtraction problem is not di aelig cult for an adult and wouldnot require much conscious thinking Yet for a 4-year-old child theproblem is a complex task of a kind unlikely to have been faced beforeConsiderable insight is needed to link the problem of candies to the abstractsystem of numbers knowledge about numbers has to be retrieved andstrategic thinking enters in considering how to approach the problem

84 w westera

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

Counting skills clearly play a role and a choice has to be made fromalternative computational procedures or routines Possibly after sometime the child will be able to solve the problem

Although this case represents a well-de ned closed problem theoperations involved t in the picture of competence very well whenviewed from the childrsquo s perspective This example demonstrates that com-petences do not refer to tasks but rather must be associated with thecharacteristics and background of the person involved Clearly this com-plicates the use of competences as an independent frame of reference foreducational systems In addition it seems to establish that competences aremerely labels for immature skills that lack speed and uency Thus for thecandy problem suaelig cient training of the child would change a competenceinto a skill And to return to another example I used earlier it wouldsuggest a preference for a skilled pilot over a competent one

But such an interpretation of the word lsquocompetence rsquo would seem tocontradict its meaning in common language where the word denotes avalued quali cation in a person rather than a disquali cation Yet Mulder(1998 quoting Eraut 1994) points out that from an etymological point ofview the word lsquocompetence rsquo refers to lsquosuaelig cient in amount quality ordegree rsquo (see Oxford English Dictionary) in other words competence isassociated with a set of minimum requirementsmdashenough to do the jobmdashrather than expert behaviour it is an intermediate state between a noviceand expert This is also implicit in the models of Fuller (1971) and Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1986 also cited by Mulder 1998) which treat competence asa stage preceding the stages of pro ciency and expertise From suchconsiderations I conclude that complexity cannot be an absolute criterionfor the distinction between skills and competences

The problem of sub-competences

Another problem arises from the idea of complexity Competences may bedecomposed into contributing sub-competences For instance ying anaeroplane competently includes the sub-competences of taking-oaring landingdealing with emergencies and so on Repeating such a decompositionprocedure results in a hierarchical structure of conditional sub-competences that become more speci c and limited as we travel downthe hierarchy Eventually there comes a stage in which the sub-competences are identical to the supportive skills ie there seems to be agradual transition of competences into skills such that discriminationbetween the two types is not possible

However while maintaining the idea of skills as di aring erent from compe-tences we should also acknowledge that skills themselves can also bedecomposed into a hierarchical system of sub-skills Consequently theentanglement of the skills-hierarchy and the competence-hierarchy pro-duces a complex confusing and inconsistent conceptual system that cannotbe taken seriously The distinction between skills and competences asdi aring erent entities is very troubling

competences in education 85

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

Conclusions

I conclude from the above argument that the concept of competence isproblematic While the term has become more and more widely used as alsquonew rsquo entity to explain certain behaviours in certain situations the causallaw that relates lsquocompetence rsquo to lsquocompetent performance rsquo constitutes atautology that lacks any explanatory power lsquoCompetence rsquo is no more thanan unclear label and does not increase our knowledge and understanding ofthe world By de nition competences are associated with successfulbehaviours in non-standardized situations such a de nition seems tocon ict with the use of competences as educational standards In otherwords the assessment of competences and the predictive value of suchassessments for future performances is highly questionable This con-clusion also links to the instability of competence and its strong value-dependency And with respect to the di aring erences between competences andskills we see both that conscious thinking cannot serve as a discriminatingfactor and that the idea of complexity seems to indicate that competencesare a sub-class of skills rather than a co-ordinating category

I conclude that there are two major problems with the competenceconcept First it tries to set cognitive standards for behaviours that cannotbe standardized Secondly from a research point of view competencesmake up a sub-category of cognitive skills the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as adistinct category di aring erent from lsquocognitive skillsrsquo cannot be sustainedAccordingly the competence model of gure 1 has been modi ed in gure 2

86 w westera

Knowledge reproduction

Skilled (competent) behaviour

Knowledge

Skills

Attitudes

competences

Figure 2 Competences as subskills

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

However the rejection of the idea of lsquocompetence rsquo as a distinct categoryof human abilities does not mean that the term should not be used Thereare no objections to using the term lsquocompetence rsquo as a label and it can beused successfully for the purposes of public relations because of its primaryassociations with quality and expertise The term might also be reserved toindicate that the associated knowledge and skills originate from a profes-sional practice However from a research point of view the term compe-tence is too problematic and lacks an appropriate and commonly acceptedde nition Within educational research its use should be restricted to aclass of cognitive sub-skills involved in coping with complex problems

Although the outcomes of this analysis may be disappointing to thoseconcerned with lsquocompetence learning rsquo the rejection of the notion of adistinct category of lsquocompetences rsquo seems to be the only way to maintain acoherent research vocabulary Likely we could have come to this conclusionbefore the analysis when all is said and done the only determinants ofhuman abilities are possessing (knowledge) feeling (attitudes) and doing(skills)

Note

1 It should be noted that the concept of competence is not exclusively reserved foreducation but is widely used in the domains of professional practice personnelmanagement and business administration (Bos 1998) Pralahad and Hamel (1990)introduced the term lsquocore competencesrsquo to identify the qualities associated with thecompetitiveness of companies Here competence is generally equated with individual ororganizational characteristics that are directly related to e aring ective behaviour or perform-ance (McClelland 1973 Spencer and Spencer 1993) An analysis of such domains isbeyond the scope of this paper

References

Anderson J R (1980) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (New York WHFreeman)

Anderson M (1992) Intelligence and Development A Cognitive Theory (Oxford Blackwell)Barnett R (1994) The Limits of Competence Knowledge Higher Education and Society

(Buckingham UK Open University Press)Bloom B S Engelhardt M D Furst E J Hill W H and Krathwohl D R (1956)

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook I Cognitive Domain (New YorkDavid McKay)

Bos E S (1998) Competentie Verheldering van een begrip (Heerlen The Netherlands OpenUniversity of the Netherlands)

Chomsky N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA MIT Press)Cohen G (1983) The Psychology of Cognition (London and New York Academic Press)Dreyfus H L and Dreyfus S E (1986) Mind over Machine the Power of Human Intuition

and Experience in the Era of the Computer (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Eraut M (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence (London Falmer)Evans J St B T Newstead S E and Byrne R M J (1993) Human Reasoning The

Psychology of Deduction (Hove UKHillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)Ferguson-Hessler M G M (1989) On Knowledge and Expertise in Physics A Study of

the Cognitive Aspects of Learning and Instruction in Physics Doctoral thesisEindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven The Netherlands [in Dutch]

competences in education 87

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education

Fuller F (1971) Personalized education for teachers one application of the TeacherConcerns Model (Austin University of Texas RampD Center for Teacher Education)ERIC ED 048 105

GagnE R M (1977) The Conditions of Learning (New York Holt Rinehart amp Winston)Galrsquo perin P J and Leontjev A W (1972) Probleme der Lerntheorie (Berlin Germany

Volk und Wissen)Gardner P L (1975) The Structure of Science Education (Hawthorn Australia Longman

Australia)Greeno J G (1980) Trends in the theory of knowledge for problem solving In D T

Tuma and F Reif (eds) Problem-Solving and Education (Hillsdale NJ LawrenceErlbaum Associates) 9ndash23

Gronlund N E (1981) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (New York Macmillan)Kirby J R (1988) Style strategy and skill in reading In R R Schmeck (ed) Learning

Strategies and Learning Styles Perspectives on Individual Di aring erences (New YorkPlenum Press) 229ndash274

Kirschner P Vilsteren P v Hummel H and Wigman M (1997) The design of a studyenvironment for acquiring academic and professional competence Studies in HigherEducation 22 (2) 151ndash171

Langford P E and Hunting R (1994) A representational communication approach to thedevelopment of inductive and deductive reasoning In A Demetriou and A Efklides(eds) Intelligence Mind and Reasoning Perspectives on Individual Di aring erencesAdvances in Psychology Vol 106 (Amsterdam The Netherlands North-Holland)193ndash233

McClelland D C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence AmericanPsychologist 28 (1) 1ndash14

Mulder M (1998) Het begrip competenties Enkele achtergronden en invullingenOpleiding en ontwikkeling 11 (10) 5ndash9

Nelson T O (1978) Saving and forgetting from long-term memory Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behaviour 10 (5) 568ndash576

Olson D R (1976) Towards a theory of instructional means Educational Psychologist 12(1) 14ndash35

Posner M I and Keele S W (1973) Skill learning In R M W Travers (ed) SecondHandbook on Research on Teaching (Chicago Rand McNally) 805ndash831

Pralahad C K and Hamel G (1990) The core competence of the corporation HarvardBusiness Review 68 (3) 79ndash91

Renner J W and Marek E A (1990) An educational theory base for science teachingJournal of Research in Science Teaching 27 (3) 241ndash246

Salomon G (1981) Interaction of Media Cognition and Learning (San Francisco CAJossey-Bass)

Scheeres H and Hager P (1994) Competences and the curriculum ftpftpswineduaupubaareaare94conf94scheh94233 (Visited 17 April 2000)

Snow R E (1980) Aptitude learner control and adaptive instruction Paper presented atthe 1980 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association ERICED 180 447

Spencer L M and Spencer S M (1993) Competence at Work Models for SuperiorPerformance (New York Wiley)

Stephenson J and Weil S (1992) Quality in Learning A Capability Approach in HigherEducation (London Kogan Page)

White R T and Mayer R E (1980) Understanding intellectual skills InstructionalScience 9 (1)101ndash127

White R W (1959) Motivation reconsidered the concept of competence PsychologicalReview 66 (3) 297ndash233

88 competences in education