A distinctive feature of contemporary professional, vocational and continuing education is the prevalence of the ‘competency’ approach. So-called competency-based education or training (CBE/T) can be adopted as a basis for programs of learning, frameworks for development within occupations, or for national systems of vocational education. Its application is observed across a wide range of occupations – from gardening to teaching to piloting aircraft – and to diverse levels of expertise, from entry-level to continuing professional development. Although acceptance of the competency-based approach is widespread, there is still debate about its meaning and merits. Just as diverse applications can be cited, there are varying definitions and rationales for the approach. And while CBE/T appeals to common sense, there have been and continue to be challenges and criticisms from different disciplinary perspectives and with respect to its features and impacts. In this paper a special set of problems with CBE/T is examined. A model is presented which differentiates three interrelated components: competence, competency texts and CBE/T. By separating the definition into three components, a little-understood characteristic of the approach is foregrounded – processes of interpretation that translate between these components. The model thus exposes ‘hermeneutic’ dimensions of the competency approach which are argued to be key to understanding a number of problems associated with CBE/T. The paper concludes that the hermeneutic features of the competency approach represent challenges for basic assumptions of the model.

中文翻译：

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基于能力的教育和培训的诠释学维度

当代专业，职业和继续教育的一个显着特征是“胜任力”方法的盛行。可以采用所谓的基于能力的教育或培训（CBE / T）作为学习计划，职业发展框架或国家职业教育体系的基础。它的应用广泛，从园艺到教学到驾驶飞机，广泛应用于从入门级到持续专业发展的各种专业知识。尽管人们普遍接受基于胜任力的方法，但是关于其意义和优点仍存在争议。正如可以引用各种应用程序一样，该方法也有不同的定义和原理。尽管CBE / T具有常识，从不同的学科角度以及就其特征和影响而言，一直存在并且将继续存在挑战和批评。本文研究了CBE / T的一系列特殊问题。提出了一个模型，该模型区分了三个相互关联的组件：竞争力，竞争力的文本和CBE / T。通过将定义分为三个部分，可以看到该方法的一个鲜为人知的特征-在这些部分之间转换的解释过程。该模型因此揭示了胜任力方法的“解释性”维度，这被认为是理解与CBE / T相关的许多问题的关键。本文得出结论，能力方法的解释学特征对模型的基本假设构成了挑战。