Abstract
The chapter assesses the empirical evidence about the outcomes of competence-based education (CBE) by a review of the research literature documented in bibliographical databases that cover academic publications (EBSCOHOST) and in more practical material (Google). Several generic searches were run and included not only specific competence expressions but also a set of related terms as ‘outcomes’ and ‘learning’. The staggering conclusion of this exercise is that hardly any evidence about the effectiveness of competence-based education exists, despite the long period since the 1970s when the approach came up in the USA and despite the high-priority policymakers and practicians devote to this approach. Whether this is an artefact of the diverse and mostly vague operationalisation of the outcomes of competence-based education or not, it seems that there is only very little attention to testing the policy assumptions that competence-based education is a worthy educational innovation. Insofar some evidence exists, we find positive results in specific applications of the approach, whereas more broad political attempts rather lead to disputes among the actors and only seldom yield positive results. Medicine education is somewhat outstanding in providing research about effects of the approach; moreover, traditional fields that include established expression of competence seem to deal easier with questions about effects than newly arising fields. As a consequence of the overall disturbing results, it is recommended that more efforts are being made to prove (or falsify) the putative-added value of competence-based education initiatives.
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Annex Tables/Figures
Annex Tables/Figures
Google searches, overview about distribution of topics and regions of top 20 ranked hits
Google searches, overview about topics and regions of top 20 ranked hits, absolute numbers
Total number of hits in search EBSCOHOST 1976–2014, proportion of ‘effect’ in titles and abstracts
Time related pattern of search hits total and ‘effective’ included
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Lassnigg, L. (2017). Competence-based Education and Educational Effectiveness. In: Mulder, M. (eds) Competence-based Vocational and Professional Education. Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41713-4_31
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