Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Competencies seem to be the new buzzword but they've been around perhaps for over 100 years! In terms of origin, some academic articles point to Ralph Tyler’s work on competence-based teacher education which was carried out in the 1920s. Tyler's work was focused on creating a system of teacher education that was based on the idea of competencies.
But the concept of competencies as applied to job performance is understood to have its roots in the field of psychology, specifically in the work of David McClelland and his colleagues in the 1960s. They developed the idea of "competency modeling," which involves identifying the specific skills, knowledge, abilities, and personal characteristics that are necessary for successful performance in a particular job or role.
David McClelland and his colleagues published several articles on competency modeling, including:
- "The Achievement Motive" (1953) - This article introduced the concept of the achievement motive and its importance in predicting job performance.
- "Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence" (1973) - This article proposed that tests of general intelligence are not sufficient for predicting job performance and that specific competencies should be assessed instead.
If you have anything to do with training, learning, and professional development and are a competency nerd like me OR you are curious about competencies and want to know more about what they are and how they can be used to meet multiple stakeholder needs, you should check out this open textbook from eCampusOntario. The Open Competency Toolkit is about developing the foundation, structure, and tools to support the iterative development of open competency frameworks. The Toolkit was developed by Dennis Green and Carolyn Levy and has two main purposes as identified by the authors:
1) The first is to foster the development of open competency frameworks that can be shared across industry sectors and for different end users.
2) The second is to provide guidelines and good practices for people developing competency frameworks. There are sections of the toolkit dedicated to developing and writing competency descriptions as well as ways of grouping and clustering competencies to build frameworks.
Even if you are experienced in developing competency frameworks, this is a good refresher. In my work of facilitating the design and development of occupational competency profiles, I often find myself sharing and recommending this resource to both my team and my clients to establish a shared understanding of competencies and how to develop competency profiles.
For more information: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/competencytoolkit/
#Competencies #CompetencyProfile #CompetencyFrameworks