Robin Goodfellow's Self Assessment
The question is 'do you find it a convincing approach to self-assessment of professional competence'?
This value of this kind of competency mapping depends on the audience. As a personal activity is has value because:
- It involves and is a product of reflection
- Helps to map personal progress and determine development needs
However in a professional context it would need to be mapped against standards determined by the profession. In FE these would be the FENTO standards and in HE the Higher Education Academy standards. It therefore needs to be:
- mapped against the competencies required of a role - eg mapped to a job specification
- validated, for example evidence needs to be accepted by management
The limitations of this approach are:
- It depends on how it is carried out by the individual. It may be a paper exercise and an expectation which doesn't really achieve the objectives of competency mapping.
- It needs to ensure that evidence does support the self assessment, that it is relevant and appropriate
- Terminology needs careful definition - what is meant by novice or expert?
- The general difficulties associated with subjectivity
In the example we were given from Robin Goodfellow, the competency was the 'Ability to support students with diverse technical backgrounds following different pathways through material', of which he rated himself 'above average'. The supporting evidence is 'the environment map that I produced for H808 students and tutors at the start of the course'.
It could be questioned if the evidence does support the competency. The environment map is a product, whereas to demonstrate that it actually supports students it would need results of a student satisfaction survey. It would require an outcome as well as a product.
Therefore a limitation of this kind of approach is that there is likely to be disagreement between people as to whether evidence accurately supports a person's assessment of their competency.