Intellectual outputs

This Compendium of scientific literature is prepared for general education teachers to help them better understand the importance of developing and assessing competences in daily school life. Since the term “competence” is itself a confusing one, with several similar meanings, we first attempt to give a clear answer to what is meant by “competence”, “competence development” and what are its components. We also provide evidence and arguments for the need for competence development. Finally, we discuss possible ways of assessing competences and the evidence of their effectiveness. 

Competence education is at the core of the general education content in Finland, Lithuania and Romania, but each country have taken different approaches to developing and implementing a competence-enriched curriculum. In this paper it is explore the origins and development of the competence-enriched curriculum in each country, as well as the representation of competences in their national curricula. There it is also examined the challenges associated with competence development and assessment, and identify successful practices that can be shared and learned from. This review will contribute to a better understanding of national policy orientations and experiences of their implementation in schools and classrooms. 

In this document, we introduce a model and the guidelines for the development and assessment of competences, which is symbolically named COMPASS, just like our project. Our intention is to provide guidance for planning the development and assessment of competences, rather than a rigid framework that overlooks contextual differences.

The COMPASS model aims to be universal and adaptable to any national curriculum. Different countries' curricula and legislation use different names for competences, provide different configurations and lists, and emphasise different competences, because of the different approaches to competence development (see “COMPENDIUM of scientific literature on competence development and assessment” and “BRIEF REVIEW of competence development and assessment policies and practices in general education”). 

The COMPASS model implementation guidelines are designed to explain in more detail:

• how to think about and prepare for the development and assessment of competences, i.e. how to plan.

• how to organise and implement the learning activities in which competences are developed, i.e. how to provide ample opportunities for learning and acquiring competence.

• how to understand if and how competence is developed in the learning process and at the end of it - whether and to what extent the planned competences have been achieved, i.e. how to evaluate.

• three different types of assessment - diagnostic, formative and summative.

The guidelines also provide a concrete example of how the COMPASS model can be implemented in a specific educational activity, by describing each part of the spiral model.

The present volume is a selection of 13 good practice examples shared by teachers actively engaged in the COMPASS project. Under the guidance of mentor teachers trained within the project, these teachers used the COMPASS Model and Guidelines for the development and assessment of generic competences. They were guided by the model to plan and teach lessons, and assess learning in a variety of school contexts – in curricular, cross-curricular and extracurricular activities, with students of different age groups – from primary school to upper secondary, including vocational education, within various school disciplines – from language and literature to science and social studies, as well as technical disciplines. The teachers and mentor teachers who described the practices presented in this collection come from the three countries where the COMPASS project has been implemented: Lithuania, Finland and Romania.

We hope that teachers will find the good practice examples inspiring to plan lessons, teaching materials and assessment instruments, striving to create the best conditions for students to develop their generic competences.

We also hope that head teachers, teacher trainers or a mentors will find our publication useful as a guide their school staff or fellow teachers through professional development in the specific domain of students’ competence development and assessment.

Although it is often claimed that contemporary education is competence based, in many cases it is merely competence enriched. The analysis of scientific literature and in-countries documents, as well as existing practices, conducted by the COMPASS project team, revealed that competence development, and especially assessment, is still complicated.

The experience gained by all participants during the project made it possible to identify and highlight several key aspects which might help to implement competence-based learning and assessment more smoothly and effectively. These aspects include both educational policy and educational practice – in fact, the creation of a certain culture that enables the consistent development of competences, provides opportunities to demonstrate them, and ensures that they are properly assessed and nurtured throughout the rest of the life.