In an earlier post today I said "I don't think educating for 'skills' is really very different than educating for 'knowledge'." In this item Tony Bates seems to go in the opposite direction, drawing distinctions between competencies, skills and learning outcomes. "Competence is the ability to do something successfully or efficiently." But it's only a first step. "A good sportsperson is not just competent but highly skilled" (now this seems to equivocated between the noun 'skill' and the adjective 'skilled', but I quibble). Finally, while both competencies and skills are possible learning outcomes, he says, "they need to be defined and measured if they are to become a learning outcome." And content is designed to produce learning outcomes. Thus, he says, "the balance in most higher education instruction is on mastery of content (a learning outcome) over the development of skills (or even competencies." All of which is fair enough - but which to me says they're all part of the same thing.
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