Competences

The concept of competence has been with us for a very long time. Many qualifications are now based around definitions of competence for specific roles, the most famous of which are NVQs. Using competence springs from the idea of that having a good grasp of the knowledge and theory behind a subject does not guarantee the ability to turn that into competent performance.

Many organisations now use the concept of competence during their recruitment processes, and subsequently to measure and improve employee development. In fact, job descriptions are a basic definition of the knowledge, skills and attitude that are required for a given role. Competence is defined as being the mix of these three things.

It is easiest to define a competence as "the ability to perform activities to the standards required in employment, using an appropriate mix of knowledge, skill and attitude". All three aspects must be present if someone is to be effective in the workplace. To improve competence you need to increase not only your knowledge, but also your understanding of how that knowledge can be applied; your skill in applying it; and the attitude to apply it correctly.

To break this down further, knowledge can be considered as the underpinning principles or theory of a process or procedure. For example, at an extremely simple level, if you are repairing an item of electrical equipment, you may need to know what class of equipment it is and what tests should be performed. Increased knowledge might take the form of managing the test and maintenance programme.

To continue this example, skill could mean the ability to calibrate the test results. Greater skill may be required to immediately recognise that the component is damaged and, subsequently, to propose modifications.

Attitude, in this example, could be expressed as deciding whether it is safe to carry out the test. An extension of this would be ensuring that others, who also carry out the procedure, do so in a safe manner; and taking corrective action if this is not so. It could also mean reviewing the test procedure so that any unnecessary steps are eliminated or that further steps to enhance safety or efficiency are introduced.

Remember, overall competence is made up of competences in many different areas. All technical professionals need to consider the important question of how to develop competences in areas that are appropriate to their job, and these may be commercial as well as technical.

Defining competences

Before you can start to work with competences you need to define 4 things:

what your role encompasses - i.e. what you need to be competent to do
the knowledge, skills and attitude that make up that competence
at what level you need to be competent - i.e. whether a basic knowledge of the subject is adequate, or do you need to be an expert?
what you could do to prove that competence - e.g. what evidence you could provide.

Defining exactly what tasks you need to be competent at, and to what level, can be very difficult. Wherever possible you should always seek out existing competence frameworks, and your personnel department may be able to help you identify where these might exist for your particular industry or function. Indeed, many companies have already created their own frameworks, or there may be existing published standards you can use. (Find out more about existing Standards.)

If you are unable to find any existing frameworks you will need to create your own. Some organisations have very detailed job descriptions or person specifications, which can go a long way towards helping you create your own set of competences. To start with you should aim to assess yourself at this broad level, rather than trying to analyse the minute detail of every task you do.

You will need to identify the performance standards which apply to your work. Standards may be laid down at international, national or company level, and include quality, safety and environmental standards. Effectively, standards enable you to assess whether you have done the job properly.

Using the broad details of the tasks and standards that make up your work, you can then consider the combination of knowledge, skill and attitude that are needed to perform your work competently. Think about technical, business, managerial and personal skills. Very often, improving your personal skills will enhance the way you demonstrate your wider competences. For example, presentational or time-management skills can substantially raise overall performance and confidence.

Using competences for professional development

Once you are aware of your current position, defining where you want to be and deciding which competences are your priority for development will be much easier tasks. This will then enable you to produce your Development Action Plan. We would suggest that you work to develop only a few new skills or areas of competence at any given time.

If your goal is to perform a particular aspect of your current job better, use your job specification to determine which aspects of knowledge or skills you need to work on. Similarly, you do not have to limit yourself to using specifications that have been created for your current job. You may find it useful to make an assessment of your competence against a framework for a higher level of responsibility or different job, particularly if you are aiming for a promotion or to move into a different role. This will enable you to complete a gap analysis, showing you where you need to take development action in order to achieve your target level of competence - and therefore your goal.

Many of your goals are likely to be concerned with technical areas. However, do not forget your interpersonal skills. Very often improving your interpersonal skills, such as your ability to influence people, can bring considerable benefit.

Assessing competence

Having defined your set of competences, the next step is to assess yourself against these. This will give you an indication of your ability to perform your current role. You will need to examine yourself against each competence statement and decide what level you think you are operating at. Comparing yourself to others may help here, using respected colleagues as a benchmark of good practice.

Of course, you will not always be able to do this for yourself: you may need help from another professional such as your manager or mentor. Arrange a time to talk over your performance with them, but be prepared to accept their feedback!

Levels of competence

It takes time to develop competences, and you will realise that you will have different competences, at varying levels of expertise, in different areas. You may wish to develop some to a very high level, while to advance in others may not be so important or relevant. Remember that it takes time to develop competence and, in order to remain competent in a particular area, you will need to use the knowledge and associated skills regularly, or you will slowly lose your proficiency.

Some organisations have formal scales for assessing competence in particular areas. Here, line managers/assessors are trained to judge levels of competence against set standards. Of course, where standards exist and where they are relevant to you, they may be used as benchmarks. However, many professionals use standards not to measure themselves in any absolute way, but to be able to observe/measure their own improvement. So, if you choose to use levels of competence for your own development, do not worry about defining absolute scales. Do not feel bound to use any particular measures or definitions, but do try to use a framework to help you focus and improve. The broad definitions of supervised practitioner, practitioner, and expert, may be useful. Other possible scales might be:

	Category A	Fully competent in area.
	Category B:	Can demonstrate competence in most elements associated with area.
	Category C:	Can demonstrate competence in some elements associated with area.
	Category D:	Unable to offer any evidence of competence in area.

For grading your knowledge and skill level, use a five-point scale:

	Level 1:	Performs the activity with significant supervision and guidance Performs basic routines and predictable tasks Little or no responsibility or autonomy
	Level 2:	Supervision is only required in more complex circumstances Some individual responsibility or autonomy
	Level 3:	Performs the activity in some complex and non routine contexts Significant responsibility and autonomy Can oversee the work of others
	Level 4:	Performs the activity in a wide range of complex and non-routine contexts Substantial personal autonomy Can develop others in the activity
	Level 5:	Can take a strategic view Applies a significant range of fundamental principles and complex techniques across a wide and often unpredictable variety of contexts. Wide scope of personal autonomy.

Use some form of chart or framework to monitor the improvement in your competences over time. There are some suggested forms in the section on Forms.

Confirming your attainments

In general, providing you are as honest with yourself as possible, you should feel comfortable with assessing your own level of competence. However, you may find it valuable to use a third party, such as those listed below, to question your thoughts and give an independent view:

your manager
your mentor
your colleagues
your clients

You should, however, be aware of conflicts of interest, which may bias any third party's viewpoint, especially when talking to line managers, clients or colleagues.

Mapping employer's competence statements

If you are using your employer's competence framework/profile, but you also wish to use an additional framework, for example if you want to attain professional registration, then you will need a process for mapping the company competence framework onto the additional competence statements.

This can be a daunting task, but discussion with your manager and/or mentor should help you to match one set to the other.

Using published standards

If you do not have a competence framework within your company that you can use, then you can create your own, based on what other people have done. There are a number of published general standards, elements of which may apply to your particular role and will provide you with a starting point in developing your own.

Some examples can be found in the section on Standards.

Standards

If you want help defining what you need to learn, or would like some proven measures against which to compare yourself, you will need to find some standards. If your employer does not have their own standards or frameworks for you to use, you will need to seek them elsewhere.

Some possible sources of standards are:

External Standards - those produced by institutions, such as the Management Charter Initiative. These are usually free and are often cross-referenced to other standards, allowing you to take elements from more than one, to build a profile representative of your individual job.
Academic - NVQ/SVQs and curriculum information for other formal qualifications can give an idea of expected levels of knowledge and ability.
Industry Standards - many larger employers have their own standards and frameworks for specific jobs or functions. In addition, employers’ federations and Sector Skills Councils will have produced standards, or be able to provide information on where these can be obtained.
Peer Review - comparison between yourself and others in your company, or in similar roles within other companies, can be a useful indicator of your expertise level. Networking through institutions is a good way to meet people in similar jobs to yourself who may be interested in a mutual exercise.
Job Specifications - these are always a good starting-point to establish performance level, not just for your own job, but for superior levels - and will prove particularly useful if you are working towards achieving a promotion or job move.
Promotion Boards - valuable feedback on your level of performance can be gained through interview by promotion boards, and you ought to receive specific advice and guidance on any additional development that you need to achieve the desired level.

NVQ/SVQ frameworks

If you wish to use Competences, but don’t have a framework provided by your employer, you may find inspiration from published NVQ frameworks. These are available from organisations such as SEMTA, and you should find that, even if they don’t perfectly fit your role, you will be able to adapt them and make additions to suit your job. Discussion with your manager or mentor will be a great help in doing this.

You may find it useful to consult the following engineering and management standards when attempting to identify Competences for development:

The mark of world-class teachers

Stories by HARIATI AZIZAN and SARAH CHEW

With Malaysia in full gear to achieve a knowledge-based economy by 2020, teachers have a vital role to play in the development of human capital. Are they up to it?
WHEN I interview candidates from professional fields like accountancy, human resource and business for teaching positions at my school, I am always impressed by their confidence, command of the English language and knowledge of their area.
“But when I interview Malaysian government teachers, I get concerned about the standards of education here,” said Ian James Kerr, principal of an international school in Penang. “Many generally lack confidence, are weak in English and are not able to talk about their job.”

Kendall- Seatter (second from right) making a point during a roundtable discussion. With her are (from left to right) Prof Ibrahim, Education Ministry's English Language Teaching Centre deputy director Dr Choong Kam Foong, who served as moderator, and Kerr.

Apart from a smattering of muffled gasps and hushed whispers, the shocked silence that fell in the hall was deafening.

Kerr continued: “Many are keen on rote learning and cannot relax with children. Some expatriate children who can sense this will find their other weaknesses and capitalise on them.”
He was a speaker at the International Seminar on Teacher Education, organised by the Education Ministry’s Teacher Education Division (TED) in Kuala Lumpur recently.
Although Kerr went on to say that he knows many excellent teachers in Malaysia, the brutal honesty in his earlier statement cut to the core of the seminar, aimed at seeking new ideas and approaches for the development of the country’s teachers.
However, his views are far from new. For years, parents have lamented the declining teaching standards in Malaysia while employers have often complained about the low English proficiency among new graduates.
As acknowledged by Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein in his keynote speech, teachers are the backbone of the nation’s move to develop human capital for a knowledge-based economy.
“Frankly, there can be no knowledge-based economy without good, if not excellent, teachers to bring our young people up to the level needed globally. Teachers are indeed the catalyst needed to raise Malaysia’s economic capabilities, and they must make the furthest quantum leap compared to other sectors,” he noted.
However, as the seminar – entitled Teacher Education: Then, Now and For the Future –progressed, it was clear that the 450 local and international educationists present had diverse views on the concept of “world-class teachers”.
Bringing back the glory
Unlike most seminars on the teaching profession, the issues of remuneration and welfare did not dominate the proceedings.
The ministry, said a participant who declined to be named, has demonstrated that it is serious in improving teachers’ lot.
“They are looking into our housing and cost of living allowances, and those in remote areas are given better incentives and hardship allowances. Now I hope he (Hishammuddin) will deliver on his promise to revive respect for the profession.”
As Hishammuddin pointed out: “If our teachers’ morale is low, we cannot expect wonders out of them. We have to revive the glory of the profession and increase the self-esteem of teachers... the whole profession needs a moral uplift to prepare for the challenges of the global world.”
The ministry, he added, has identified key problems areas: how to nurture quality teachers within the system, manage teacher supply, overcome mediocrity in the profession and provide continuous opportunities for improvement.
Five measures have been taken to address some of the concerns: introducing promotion schemes for teachers, attending to their welfare, improving their social standing, enhancing the quality of teacher education and upgrading teachers’ training colleges to institutes of teacher education.
More importantly, he noted, teachers need to “learn, relearn and unlearn all the time.”
Speaker Prof Datuk Dr Ibrahim Ahmad Bajunid, director of the Unesco-Regional Centre for Educational Planning (RCEP), concurred.
“How can we foster intellectual capabilities in students if we don’t foster it in our teachers? Teachers need to have an intellectual character; as long as the teacher is not an intellectual, then we are on losing ground,” he said in a roundtable discussion entitled Producing World-Class Teachers and Capacity Building in Malaysia.
The panel of speakers in the roundtable discussion – which included Kerr, representing the Malaysia International Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MICCI) and Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) Primary Education Department head Sue Kendall-Seatter – raised various salient issues related to the definition of a world-class teacher.
As Kerr noted, it is difficult to define what world class means given the constant shift in the roles of teachers and teaching standards, brought about by the rapid changes in information and communications technology (ICT).
“Teachers need to be equipped with IT knowledge to empower them to manage information,” he said.
Raising the bar
Participants, however, continued to argue over what the concept constitute, with one ministry official even questioning whether world-class teachers can be effective teachers.
Responding to this, Prof Ibrahim said teachers’ roles are complex, and they often have to play multiple roles in school, from knowledge imparter to facilitator, counsellor and even nurse.
Thus, teachers need to be prepared for the unpredictable and reminded that teaching is an art and not a science to keep them in touch with the classroom situation and their students.
“If they can do this, the teachers can be effective. I believe ‘effective teachers’ is just another phrase for world-class teachers,” he added.
Participants identified pre-service teacher education as vital to boosting teaching standards, and resolved that teacher education has to be redefined and redesigned, with a multi-pronged approach adopted.
Ensuring that the quality of teacher education is maintained is a challenge, and the TED has, in fact, already taken the initiative to formulate the Malaysian Teaching Standards (MTS).
According to Education deputy director-general Datuk Alimuddin Mohd Dom, the MTS is a comprehensive guide for quality teacher education, and will ensure that all new teachers have the subject knowledge and pedagogical expertise they need to prepare them for the wider demands of being teachers.
“Quality teachers believe in the best for every student, and do what is necessary to make sure that every child learns,” he said.
Subject knowledge and pedagogical skills aside, SMK Engku Hussein Selangor principal Latifah Mohd Isa believes that, most importantly, a quality teacher is approachable.
“Teachers must know and be close to their students, then only will they be able to teach effectively.
“For example, if you have a popularity contest, a quality teacher will have to come out tops,” she said.
On the other hand, a teacher trainer who declined to be named felt that quality ultimately depends on individual teachers who must set their own standards and strive to meet them.
TED director Wan Mustama Wan Abdul Hayat said it will be unfair to gauge teaching standards based solely on students’ academic achievement, adding that the ministry plans to change the way teachers are assessed.
“We need to include other aspects such as students' development and change of values.
“Quality teaching has always been the focus of teacher training but the MTS will be a good reminder for us to maintain standards in teaching.”
Perhaps Prof Ibrahim captured it best when he said that teacher training is complex but easy.
“It’s about content and method. Maybe we need to follow the example of Singapore, which has redirected the focus of teacher education from curriculum to pedagogy,” he observed.
“What is important is we need to continuously conduct education research if we are to maintain the standards of teacher development in the country.”
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The mark of world-class teachers

Stories by HARIATI AZIZAN and SARAH CHEW