Competence-Based Education and Training--About Frequently Asked Questions

Overview & Synopsis

This article follows the author's previous piece on practical guidelines for the development of comprehensive competence-based education and training (Mulder, 2012). It is about the questions that have been and are still frequently asked in presentations, workshops and classes about the introduction of competence-based education. Here, the author attempts to answer these questions. They are the following: (1) Why competence-based education?; (2) What is competence-based education?; (3) How is competence-based education related to outcome-based education?; (4) What are the principles of competence-based education?; (5) What promise does competence-based education have for developing countries?; (6) Is competence-based education possible in universities with limited resources?; (7) What strategies can be used for competence-based curriculum development?; and (8) How do you go from the competence-based curriculum to lesson plans and active student-centred learning? (Contains 1 figure.)