In Germany, the discussion about competencies vs qualification ended with the (preliminary) result that competencies constitute the basis for the newly developed ICT / CS standards by the GI. The notion of competency used is one which includes measurability.
The Anglo-American discussion does not focus on competencies or qualifications, but on skills. They are the basis for UK and US standards, and the IFIP’s as well. It
5 In 2000, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) of the US published three standards called NETS, which address the skills students / teachers / administrators should have, including CS related topics.
(http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS, last checked on 30th of January 2010).
can be assumed that the notion of skill they use includes measurability. However, differently from the German GI-Standard, the US-version focuses on knowledge in- stead of skills and competencies, while the UK-version focuses on key skills. The IFIP-version centers on skills.
No definitions have been offered concerning what precisely the terms “skills”,
“key skills” or “competencies” should be taken to mean. Some researchers have given
“definitions” by listing examples of competencies. It is a commonly accepted practice for scientists to use terms taken from colloquial language. However, an important part of scientific work is the clarification of those terms in order to avoid confusions and misunderstanding.
We have seen in this paper that there is a lot of groundwork still to be accomplished in order to achieve more clarity regarding the terms “skills”, “competencies” and
“qualification” – also in combination with the prefix “key”. It would be instructive to see why a certain specific term was used in a research paper and not another one. This would make papers more comparable.
Finally, I would like to mention another aspect, one which goes beyond the scope of this paper. Should we transfer concepts of other areas of science into the compe- tencies discussion of ICT and CS or should we try to develop our own concepts?
There is no question that concepts from other scientific communities are applicable:
Several papers, some of them mentioned in this one, have shown how to do it. It can also be shown that by teaching IT content, competencies can be gained – competen- cies such as those mentioned in the hit list in chapter 2 (see [10]). Competencies are not specific to ICT/CS or other scientific fields. Hence, a competency in “problem solving” (the ability to break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable parts) may refer to different concrete capabilities in different fields. Therefore, the aim should be not only to teach competencies, but “IT competencies”. The compe- tency of “problem solving” should be narrowed down to “problem solving in IT”.
This would constitute a new conception of competency which has not been covered by scientific research yet.
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