Competency Development

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Competency Development

This competency-based education is an approach that

applies the knowledge with different thinking skills
and specific expertise in more than one context, so as
to solve problems and formulate alternative or new
creations.

This implies that learning is accomplished by a

Neuropsychological cognitive process consisting in
performing six phases:

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 Sensation occurs when the senses come into play simultaneously receiving all environmental stimuli: our
eyes see, our ears hear, our skin feels the cold or heat, and the nose smells what lies ahead. From this
moment, our brain gets ready, and performs the following process:

Perception, which is to make conscious sensation, this means that we are able to recognize the stimulus we
receive, light, cold, rotten smell, bitter taste. The perception is always accompanied by processes of
discrimination (auditory, tactile, visual), and thanks to it we can distinguish each self-stimulus.

Attention means that, of all possible stimuli, we are able to choose one, focus on it, and thus plan,
implement and evaluate our action. This means, for example, I chose the stimulus that the teacher introduces
in the classroom, multiplication, and in doing so I am able to copy it, do it, and even review it to confirm that I
was not wrong.

Working memory to remember what that stimulus is, what it is for, what I need to regain from my store of
information to work with.

Once I felt, I perceived, I chose the stimulus, I remembered what it is and what it does, then I make use of
conscious thought, the mental process with which I am able to analyze, synthesize, make judgments, make
decisions, create proposals, direct my mental action, regulate my conduct and control my actions to develop
and build what I want. This is the moment I learn.

Finally, cognition makes me act, the implementation of specific performance to take an attitude, which is
regulated by emotions. Clearly, this process is quite complex and fast and it does not take place in a linear
manner, one thing after the other, but sometimes simultaneously in an increasing spiral resulting in
performances:
Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández
Cognition Sensation Memory

Emotion regulates the

Cognitive process

Attention Perception Performance

The approach is focused on developing skills throughout this process optimally, because, in doing so, today's
students have a better chance of getting ahead in life.

Consequently, to achieve a competency, to know how to do something with knowledge, learning various skills
is required through thinking skills and abilities. That is, what happens in our brain (in terms of what we do
cognitively in order to learn something) it necessarily will result in a motor response. Feel the stimulus,
perceive it, deal with it, remember it, and know what it is, lead us to design a plan of action, implementing
and evaluating it: this leads us to the implementation of a specific performance. Thinking skills are the mental
operations or procedures that we perform with an object of knowledge.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Defining a Competency …

"The set of socio-emotional behavior,

and cognitive, psychological, sensory
and motor abilities, which adequately
allow to perform a function, an
activity or a task." UNESCO 99

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 Differences between:

OBJECTIVES AIMS COMPETENCIES

Ultimate Goal Ultimate Goal Ultimate Goal
Behaviourist Framework Conctructivist Framework Cognitive-Behavioural
Framework
Establish goals to be Establish the teacher's Establish what the learner
reached in infinitive after a intention to work. Start should know to do, both in
series of activities. from issues because the the clasroom and at the
learners construct their end of the course.
own learning.
Work by separate Work the cognitive, Work all at once:
domains: cognitive, procedural and attitudinal knowledge, skills and
affective, pschomotor. domains separately. attitudes.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 How to define a competency?
Elements:

Verb Object Condition

Understands the geographical space based on the

relationships between natural, social and economic elements.

No subject is implied and it is always the learner:

• Verb: Understands
• Object: The geographical sapce
• Condition: based on the relationships between natural, social and economic elements

» It is written in simple present in the 3rd person singular

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 Each competency includes “performance
indicators” or subcompetencies which show what
has been acquired during the process.

• Performance Indicators are descriptors of the process in order to

develop the comptency.

– Two main functions:

– They tell us what to evaluate, they are the indicators of

evaluation.

– They are the content to teach.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

How are competencies developed?

Interaction between people and the environment

Successive actions: antecedents and consequences
Experimentation, burden with problems, search for cause and
effect
Use of knowledge through different thinking skills
They use knowledge in a prioritized manner

This is achieved by: a prepared environment

with learning situations that enable the
application of knowledge in problem solving
through skills and abilities.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Learning Situations

Teaching Situation: Creating a learning environment in

which various activities are performed that hinged together
promote competencies.

Teaching situations in specific teaching sequences that

respond to the needs of the group.

Teaching sequence: The order in which the activities take

place in the situation.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 1. Stepwise Planning

A. The Competency
is defined.

B. What knowledge, skills, abilities,

and attitudes are required?

C. The didactic situation is chosen, the teaching sequence is

designed, the evaluation process is established.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

2. Separation of Contents

Any Competency inlcudes:

Knowledge
Abilities
Skills
Attitudes

Planning is a conscious exercise in which these

elements are split apart.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

What is included in “knowledge”?

Syntax

Morphology

Semantics

Phonology

Lexicon

Phonetics

Pragmatics

Spelling

Punctuation
Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández
What is it understood by abilities?

Thinking Abilities

Mental Verbs

Actions to understand,
analyze and change the world

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 Thinking abilities:

Basic Sensation, perception, attention, memory,

Functions conscious thought, action.

Choice of stimulus, initiative, willingness,

Executive functions decision making, planning, implementation,
Thinking
to perform job control, evaluation and anticipation of what follows.
Abilities

Know, understand, analyze,

Micrologic synthesize, judge.

Cognitive functions
of conscious thought Take a complex decision, solve problems,
Macrologic make hypotheses and test them,
think critically, creatively, purposefully.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Skills:

Implementation of knowledge.

Using motor skills

Automating knowledge

Read, manage, listen, explain, propose, design,

build, execute any action

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Distinguishing Abilities and Skills:

By abilities we mean all those mental processes we do to be able to act

on a given stimulus. When we feel and perceive a stimulus we attend,
we identify, we associate to a name, we analyze it, decide what we
want from it, make a plan, carry it out, and then evaluate if we reach
the goal or not. To any stimulus, our thinking makes a series of multiple
reactions, with which we are able to carry out various performances.
Thinking abilities are performed in the frontal lobes of the brain.

By skills we understand the multiple specific performances that run

automatically, without thinking: reading, driving, cutting, walking. To
carry them out, both the occipital and parietal regions of the brain are
used mostly, where the memory works; the frontal ones are rarely used
because its performance does not require reasoning, they are
automatic.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Bloom's Taxonomy

Today it is handled as a basic outline to define certain

skills that lead the learner to know something more or
less in depth.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

In the following table the micrological levels of
thought defined by Benjamin Bloom are
observed, which relate to certain thinking skills
necessary to know something

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández
Suggested Instructional Strategies for Use for
Each Level of Bloom's Taxonomy

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 There are also other thinking skills called
macrologic, and are considered superior thinking
abilities, which help use, produce and create
more knowlegde of that learned, these skills are:

Deciding on different scenarios to be analyzed in several manners in more than one context,
noting advantages and disadvantages, costs and benefits.

Executive Thinking: refers to the preparation of plans and projects, sets its own objectives,
planning process, indicators and evaluation mechanisms.

Critical thinking: it is the process by which two or more events, items, conditions, circumstances,
dynamic objects, among others, are compared to each other to find what is missing, what is
considered an advantage or disadvantage, etc., it is a rational and emotional process.

Independent thought: the ability to think independently, no matter what the others think or the
social pressure. It includes an attitude of autonomy and integrity and respect towards others.

Systemic thinking: the ability to think watching all interacting elements and dynamic processes,
paying attention to both the role played by each party, as complementarity, antagonism,
subsidiarity and the relationship amongst them.

Morphogenic Thinking: the ability to think identifying the most important factor of the system,
the key, the one that gives shape or which can generate the reproduction of the system.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 There are also other thinking skills called
macrologic, and are considered superior thinking
abilities, which help use, produce and create
more knowlegde of that learned, these skills are:

Epistemic Thinking: the ability to recognize the other's perspective versus a particular case, for
example, how my partner sees the problem and how I see it, or how men and women perceive
(gender), how to define it and how young adults (age equality perspective) observe, how the
Indians and how the rest of the population percieve something (ethnic and cultural perspective). It
also involves different viewpoint areas of knowledge.

Scientific Thinking: the ability to apply the scientific method in solving natural, social, economic
problems or otherwise. It involves asking questions, generating hypotheses to explain the causality
of a particular phenomenon and its verification through actions that reach this goal.

Creative thinking: the ability to propose solutions nonexistent today, original and unique, with
problems that arise, either invented, unimagined, designed or previously embodied products.

Proactive thinking: the ability to make useful suggestions to negotiate against the ideas and
demands of another person, identifying what the other wants, but also what you want.

Alternative thinking: the ability to point out alternatives to existing dilemmas; in this case
originality is not relevant, because the emphasis is on problem solving.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 There are also other thinking skills called
macrologic, and are considered superior thinking
abilities, which help use, produce and create
more knowlegde of that learned, these skills are:

Assertive Thinking: the ability to identify what we like and what we dislike, to point in the best
way possible in a timely manner.

Holistic thinking: the ability to bring into play all previous thoughts.

These thinking skills are also used to design curriculum so that

you can know to what level of performance we want our learner to
be, because it is essential to achieve higher levels of thinking and
performance. Not only are the learners intended to carry out
specific actions as a result of learning (say you already know color
red), but that they are capable of creating alternatives to color
red. Therefore, what competencies want, in contrast to aims and
objectives, is to raise the level of performance in the use of
knowledge in each and every context.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

The acquired knowledge is classified as:

Verbal Knowledge: with respect to the conventional language used to name

objects and phenomena (eg days of the week).

Conceptual knowledge: which refers to the abstract concepts of objects,

phenomena, facts, feelings and subjective thoughts (think of slavery, which has
certain characteristics to be considered as such and appearing in different
historical moments).

Factual knowledge: concerning the facts (the Mexican Revolution, or what

happened in a crime that leaves evidence).

Sequential Knowledge: which has to do with procedures, defined as the

necessary steps to do something (to light a bulb I have to get to the light and then
push the button).

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

When the subject comes into action with the
object and interacts with a mediator, it
causes a wide range of types of knowledge,
which, when analyzed with different
abilities, it produces thinking skills. This is
to say that it uses the knowledge to change
the present or future reality. The skill is,
then, the automation of the use of
knowledge with varying levels of thinking
skills.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

Attitude... Motivation... Value...

But the final performance invariably includes an attitude, a way of

behaving when using knowledge: someone is interested, is
motivated, then gives a value to what they do: honesty or respect.
In this sense, an attitude is never short of two factors: motivation
and value. Such is the case with an attitude of interest, curiosity,
which has a value: the importance given to the task. An honest
attitude shows interest in disclosing the truth, but it is
accompanied by honesty. The attitude is the first level of domain.
When someone learns, the first thing is the attitude involved. If
you want to learn, you show interest. If not, there will be no
human power to make you learn. In this sense, competencies
always carry an attitude before performance.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 A competency, thus, has knowledge, thinking
abilities, skills, and attitudes that contain values,
which are reflected in concrete performance in
different contexts in an integrated way. This means
that anywhere you put the subject, they will perform
the competency.

Nonetheless, when a subject carries out a competency

which translates into concrete performance, more
elements, such as their beliefs, their traditions, their
insights, their customs are encompassed. A
competent person puts all who they are in performing
the task.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 A competency has subjective and
objective elements

The objective elements are The subjective elements are

the factors that the teacher
in charge of the mediation
can promote and regulate
externally. These are
knowledge, thinking abilities,
skills and attitudes.
They are conventional
amongst teachers who
may agree on how they
are presented and generated.
those that the subject has
and brings into play
regardless of what the
teacher does in the
classroom (such as intuition,
perception, interpretation
of things, customs,
traditions, religious beliefs).
Certain conventions about
Them may exist or not .

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

3. Teaching situations are chosen which are
appropriate to include knowledge, skills and
attitudes selected:

Projects

Problems

Skits

Collective work

Research Units

Experiments

Recipes

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

4. Teaching sequence is defined:

Sequence of steps and activities.

Development of the competency.

Achievement: Learning by discovery.

5. We define a closing activity:

Recap what has been learned.

Demonstrate the knowledge, skills and attitudes which have

been acquired.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández

 Planning:

Competency: Identifies the organization of the decimal

system in units, tens, hundreds and value of each digit
by its position.

Teaching situation: Bank

Knowledge Abilities Skills Attitudes

Decimal Identifies the Arms quantities Honesty against

System: units, positional using tickets. the use of
tens, hundreds difference when money.
and thousands. writing
numbers.
Positional Value
Identifies value.

Julio Cesar Salinas Fernández