Critical Issues Surrounding Competency-Based Education in the Digital Age: The “Wickedness Narrative of the Problem”

Abstract

Key Terms in this Chapter

Higher Education: education beyond the secondary level offered by a college or university.

Innovative Education: Innovation in education isn’t a specific term with fixed definitions. The spirit of innovation education is an openness to looking with fresh eyes at problems and to address them in different, new ways. It is a recognition that we don’t have all the answers and are open to new approaches to improve such as methods of knowledge transfer with innovative teaching strategies.

Competence based education: Competency-based learning is an approach to education that focuses on the student’s demonstration of desired learning outcomes as central to the learning process. It is concerned chiefly with a student’s progression through curriculum at their own pace, depth, etc. As competencies are proven, students continue to progress. It is similar to mastery-based learning, with the primary difference being that competency-based learning often focuses on observable skills or ‘competencies,’ while mastery learning may be academic–as likely to focus on concepts as skills.

Education Framework: Also called curriculum frameworks, provide a broad description of the content and the sequence of learning expected of all students by the time they graduate from a learning institution. Framework development is the first step toward developing clear and high quality standards that all students are expected to achieve.

Policy: A set of ideas or a plan of what to do in particular situations that has been agreed to officially by a group of people, a government, or a political party.

Strategies: Refers to a long-range plan for achieving something or reaching a goal, or the skill of making such plans.

Social Welfare: The social welfare definition is broad and includes many programs that are designed to help people in need of goods and services that they are unable to provide for themselves. Local, state, and federal government programs are available for such arrangements.

Digital Age: The digital age, also called the information age, is defined as the time period starting in the 1970s with the introduction of the personal computer with subsequent technology introduced providing the ability to transfer information freely and quickly.

Wicked Problems: A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult to solve because of the following reasons: Incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems. Poverty is linked with education, nutrition with poverty, the economy with nutrition, and so on. These problems are typically offloaded to policy makers, or are written off as being too cumbersome to handle. Yet these are the problems—poverty, sustainability, equality, and health and wellness—that plague our cities and our world and that touch each and every one of us. These problems can be mitigated through the process of design, which is an intellectual approach that emphasizes empathy, reasoning, and rapid prototyping.