by R Murali Rajaratenam

What is a topic you understand deeply? What is a skill that you learned in high school that is important to your life and work today? How did you learn these? How did you know that you had learned them?

Competency-based learning (CBL) focuses on questions like these, ones that identify deeper, transferable skills and learning. The purpose and goal of competency-based learning is for a learner to develop knowledge and skills that can be used over time in a variety of contexts. A competency-based learning environment is designed for relevance and performance, where learners absorb key knowledge and develop essential competencies through authentic practice.

Competency-based learning is an essential tenet of student-centered learning as it shifts from using measurements of seat-time and absorption of content to iterative learning experiences that lead to lifelong and transferable knowledge and skills. Each competency-based learning school has identified and clearly articulated competencies and learning outcomes, which guide educators’ decisions about pedagogy, content, and assessments.

Learners develop these competencies and learning outcomes with a shared understanding of what they are working towards, and through feedback and assessment, locate where they are in their learning journey and how they are progressing.

An American Institute for Research (AIR) study, “Does Deeper Learning Improve Student Outcomes?” posits that academic content in and of itself will not be enough to help students fully engage in the 21st century workplace. Their research suggests that the best approach may in fact be coupling content with skill development to achieve deeper learning. Deeper learning entails a more meaningful understanding of core academic content, the ability to apply that understanding to novel problems and situations, and the development of a range of competencies and soft skills.

One common misconception of competency-based learning is that it values skills over content. While CBL is focused on skills that transfer to authentic contexts, essential content is integral to developing those skills. Through authentic application of skills, learners develop understanding and mastery of content. In fact, in a recent study by AIR on math instruction in student-centered classrooms, students displayed higher growth on a test of problem-solving skills than students in less student-centred classrooms. Their findings identified and focused on practices of student-centered learning that included students using mathematical reasoning to understand the “why” as well as the “how;” students communicating their thinking and reasoning, students making connections between math concepts and real-world concepts, and students engaging and persevering through complex problem solving.

At its core, CBL reflects how we acquire and develop skills throughout our lives. By outlining learning processes, learners are known, they are prepared with transferable skills, and they exercise agency through sharing in their learning process