JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION, 1990, 9, 184-188 Defining Competence: The Case of Teaching Bernard Oliver St. Cloud State University Over the past few decades, teaching has been characterized as the imperiled profession. This continuing concern over the quality of the nation's teaching force has sprouted the widespread growth of initiatives to enhance the career development and preparation of teachers. A significant portion of this concern has focused on the initial competence and ability of the nation's teaching force. One of the major components of the educational reform movement deals with testing and performance assessment of teachers. Increasingly, state after state has introduced some form of performance based assessment of teachers, be it prior to certification or during the induction phase of teachers' careers. Questions about competence and quality of today's teachers are sure to prompt heated debate and raise serious and complicated issues. What is a competent teacher? How would we know one when we saw one? Before answering these questions, it would be reasonable to ask what is competence in professional action and how might it be measured. The rush to initiate competency testing of teachers came out of the growing concern about achievement in schools during the 1970s and early '80s. The decline in students' test scores prompted many to place the burden of blame on the nation's teachers. Stolz (1979), for example, states "is it reasonable to conclude that all of the blame [for test score decline] should be borne by the students themselves, their families, or the fabric of society? Isn't it reasonable to believe that a share of the blame should rest with the schools and teachers? And when we get to teachers, isn't it possible that in this latter group there might be some who are weak and incompetent?" @. 11). Coupled with this public demand for accountability in teaching has been the dismal performance of teachers on tests of basic skills (Kerr, 1983). Some consider such tests of basic academic skills relative proxy measures for teacher competence. Although there are other precursors to the notion of competence in teaching, the remainder of this discussion will focus on the concept of competency in general. Traditionally, teachers have been subject to credentialing and licensing procedures carried out by state accrediting agencies. Even though such agencies Bernard Oliver is Dean of the College of Education, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN 56301.
DEFINING COMPETENCE 185 have not elaborated definitions of competence in teaching, enforcement of state regulatory standards for teacher education programs has in fact defined competence (Cronin, 1983). As a result of this certification and accreditation process, decisions are made about which prospective teachers meet minimal standards of competence as if the procedures have established such a definition. By default, competent teachers were those who had knowledge of subject matter, knowledge of pedagogy, and some "real" practice in teaching students under the guidance of a supervisor (student teaching). In California, before the recent development of standards now used as indicators of quality in teacher education programs, competent teachers were those who went through state approved programs of study. Completion of such a university program was taken as assurance that a prospective teacher had certain types of knowledge about schools, instruction, and learning. What emerged was a normative view of teacher competence supported by a compendium of standards, experiences, and coursework. Specifications for university course content were viewed as a proxy for the actual evaluation of individual teachers' competence. Two such specifications for the preparation of physical education teachers are shown in Table 1. Lists of curricular content for university courses as specified by the State of California and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) are shown. Such a view presents a judgmental approach to defining competence. This conception of a competent teacher suggests three things: (a) a coursework stan- Table 1 Credentialing Views of Competence California NCATE Preparation for teaching ~evelo~ment of perspective Orientation to childrenladolescents Preparation for cross-cultural education Field experiences Subject matter & basic skill preparation Student rapport & classroom environment Instructional planning skills Diverse and appropriate teaching Student motivation and conduct Presentation skills Student diagnosis, achievement, & evaluation Cognitive outcomes of teaching Affective outcomes of teaching Teaching cross-culturally Teaching diverse students Professional obligations Fundamental motor skills Games and sports Outdoor leisure pursuits Dance, exercise, & health related fitness Physiological knowledge Anatomical knowledge Mechanical knowledge Historical knowledge Sociological knowledge Psychological knowledge Philosophical knowledge Developmental knowledge
186 OLIVER dard must be satisfactorily met; (b) necessary skills are assumed to accrue from experience; and (c) program certification implies that teachers trained in this way have requisite skills for entering the teaching force. This habitual view of skill and knowledge is obviously different from the emerging reflective view of skill and knowledge that require judgment, decision making, and exercise of common sense. Borich (1977) suggests that teacher competency is an extremely complex phenomena that is made up of both behavior and knowledge. He views competency as a developmental phenomenon. One would start out by describing a general teacher behavior, transfer this general behavior to a specific instructional situation, and then translate these teacher behaviors into competencies with specification for a desired quantity and a level of proficiency. According to Borich, there are three categories of such competence: 1. Knowledge competence, which specifies the cognitive understanding a teacher is expected to possess (this is subdivided into process and content knowledge); 2. Performance competence, which specifies the day-to-day behaviors teachers exhibit in class; 3. Consequence competence, which we know as student outcomes. Thus the model described by Borich (1977) assumes that the existence of these abilities in teachers results in competent teaching, a connection that Noddings (1984) and others have questioned. Looking at these notions of competence, it is easy to accept the definition of competence in teaching in terms of Aoki's (1984) metaphor for teaching as instrumental action. His metaphor is attended by concepts like meansends analysis, control, efficiency, and cost-benefit ratios. This is a technological notion of teacher competence. In Aoki's (1984) view, competent teachers are rule oriented, rule governed beings cast within a manipulative ethos, an ethos in which even the future is conceived in terms of rules. Despite the recent trend toward testing teachers for competence and the overwhelming propensity for educators to think of teachers in this technological fashion, there are some alternatives. The first alternative describes teacher competence as practical action (Aoki, 1984). In this view the teacher is seen as a "reflector upon action" within the social context of others. It is the root of the word competence (em, meaning together, and petence, meaning to seek) which gives rise to this way of thinking about competence. Within this framework, teaching is seen as occurring in the social context of complex interactions with students, mediated by the day-to-day realities of everyday classroom events. From this perspective, teacher competency is seen as praxis or thoughtful action. This notion of teaching competence is also present in the work of Doyle (1983), who talks about mediational processes in the classroom, and Elbaz' (1981) work on the practical knowledge of teachers and teaching. To summarize, then, four exclusive definitions of competence can be formed:
DEFINING COMPETENCE 187 1. Competence can be viewed as a behavior. In terms of teachers and teaching, it means being able to identify or designate specific behaviors independent of thought or analysis of appropriateness. 2. Competence can be viewed as having a set of skills or a collection of knowledge that one selects and implements. The selection of action is attended by reflection. Teachers choose to teach in a certain way. Teacher cognition and the application of knowledge are central to this view of competence. Shulman's (1987) recent efforts to isolate competent thought in teachers typifies this view. 3. Competence can also be viewed as being at a degree or level of capability that must be judged by someone outside the teacher's personal perspective. This value or judgmental notion of competence is attended by difficult ethical, professional, and moral questions. 4. A fourth conception of competence is that it is a quality of a person or state of being (Clandinin, 1986). How a given teacher's identity is defined by the ever-present interaction of student, teacher, content, and experience gives evidence of that teacher's quality of character. It can be seen that some of these notions of competence do not fit present technological definitions of teacher competency. Defining teacher competence in terms of testing on basic skills, knowledge, or pedagogical behavior does not tell us anything about appropriate action. Specifications for what, when, how, and with whom teachers should act do not emerge from these parochial conceptions. The search for the meaning of competence in professional action is in its infancy. As the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance (1982) asked about professional action and competency, What does (professional action) consist of: what tasks, activities, or modalities are involved; what cognitive and affective knowledge and skills are critical to being able to do these things; what are the consequences of lack of these knowledges and skills; are those consequences sufficiently hazardous to make the absence of competence critical; what educational or training experiences are essential to attaining competence, and are there viable alternatives; can competence be measured, and if so how; who is competent to make evaluation of the competence of practitioners; how can the outcomes of teaching be evaluated and so on. (pp. 23-24) In sum, the confused state of understanding about professional competence is best characterized by Schon (1983), who states, "the sense of confusion and unease [about competence] which is discernible among professionals and the lay public... is the disturbance that professionals cannot account for the processes they have come to see as central to professional competence. It is difficult for them to imagine how to describe and teach what might be meant by making sense of uncertainty, performing artistically, setting problems, and choosing among competing professional paradigms, when these processes seem mysterious in the light of the prevailing model of professional knowledge" (p. 20).
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