Defying some difficulties of the assessment of several generic competences

Abstract

A reference to concepts, procedures and attitudes and also to acquisition of capacities was frequent when people were interchanging opinions about the aspects that could be evaluated in a university-level student. Now, we speak in terms of competences: there are specific competences, generic competences,. Just trying to speak about them is a hard job; to obtain competences will represent an enormous challenge. It’s important to mention the extensive difficulty to find a common definition of the word "competence". One of the many meanings is: the knowledge needed to do something, the knowledge needed to do something with people, the knowledge needed to do something with criteria, the knowledge of when and why is necessary to do something. Common elements to the numerous definitions are the references to: a set of conceptual knowledge, the procedures and the attitudes, feasibility in its learning with recurrent training, an explanation on its attainment in the action, its use in an efficient work and a necessary context. Some of the reasons used for the work by the competences in the educative sphere are the overcoming of the design based on content, the integration of diverse intelligences, the advance towards a unification of the areas of the knowledge, the true connection with a final applicability of the education in the work. A formation in competences demands several experiences that integrate knowledge and the practical design to apply these experiences – including several (and/or many) of them -, selecting and preparing the diverse scenes that promote them. One of the objectives of the hands-on session is to explain and to discuss about this kind of experiences, practical designs and stages. Even with all their limitations, the conventional tools have been useful for an evaluation of the degree of assimilation of the concepts and the capacities; nevertheless, the task is much more arduous -and with less explicit experience transmissible and transmitted - when a person moves in the reach of the evaluation in values and attitudes, and of the evaluation of the competitions located within a profile. In order to evaluate competences, the educational team defines evidences. This task must be done in team for many reasons. For example, the fact that many competences transfer the borders of the concrete territory in which an individual professor moves. The mentioned evidences will have to be pertinent, excellent, adapted and realistic. Often, to elaborate a scheme of the knowledge associated to each competence will identify diverse possibilities to demonstrate the possession of this competence through its development in a practical frame. Nevertheless, some competences (or some groups of competences) can be resisted to the previous practice. Perhaps it would be possible to lodge here the ethical behaviour, the capacity to learn, the responsibility, the team work, the creative and enterprising capacity, the multiple attention to sustainability and the subjects around the communicative capacity. Also the evidences for this sort of competences are targeted issues in the debates. Within the previous frame, the authors of this contribution have made tasks destined to the specification of several elements, in the work of the "CAU-AIDA" group of the professors of several universities, within the project #SEJ2007-65786 “Evaluation of competences of the university students in the face of the challenge of the EEES: description of the current scenario, analysis of good practices and proposals of transfer to different environments” and can offer some results of their task that shows there are options to approach some assessments about many generic competences. The planned procedure is to expose briefly some experiences and the referred evidences, devoted to the assessment that can be transferred, concerning each of the above mentioned generic competences.