Bachelor Thesis: Competency-Based Teaching and Learning in Secondary Education (BEd)
Competency-Based Education (CBE) [1] is an educational approach that focuses on mastering specific skills or competencies rather than progressing through a fixed curriculum. Students advance when they demonstrate proficiency in predefined learning objectives or when they have acquired certain competencies. This methodology allows for a more flexible and tailored learning experience, taking into account the strengths and diverse backgrounds of students.
To support the structured capturing and description of competencies, several different taxonomies have been introduced [2,3]. A taxonomy provides a structured framework that defines and categorizes the specific competencies or skills students are expected to master within an educational program. These taxonomies play a crucial role in defining the learning objectives and outcomes of a competency-based curriculum. Taxonomies in CBE typically break down competencies into granular components and include a hierarchy of skills, starting from foundational knowledge to thinking skills, reflecting, and understanding concepts required for each competency.
One widely used CBE taxonomy is Bloom’s (revised) Taxonomy [4], which categorizes learning objectives into cognitive domains such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.
However, what is often missing in practice is a structured description of competencies and learning outcomes for different subjects, their dependencies, and links to teaching and learning materials (e.g., Eduthek [5]).
Tasks
The goal of this Bachelor’s Thesis is to develop a CBE-focused model for the new subject of “Digitale Grundbildung”. This includes
- Automatically extracting competencies from the original curriculum documents (or find an official structured version of the original curriculum).
- Representing the extracted competencies in a structured way, i.e., adopting and extending an existing domain specific language for describing competencies in education.
- Explore (conceptual and technical) means for linking the extracted competencies to respective teaching and learning materials.
Number of Students: 1
Supervisors:
Tobias.Antensteiner@uibk.ac.at
Michael.Vierhauser@uibk.ac.at
Iris Groher
References
[1] Clear, A., Clear, T., Impagliazzo, J., & Wang, P. (2020). From knowledge-based to competency-based computing education: Future directions. In 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
[2] Hubwieser, P., & Sentance, S. (2018). Taxonomies and competency models. Computer science education: perspectives on teaching and learning in school, 221–242.
[3] Irvine, J. (2021). Taxonomies in education: Overview, comparison, and future directions. Journal of Education and Development, 5(2), 1.
[4] Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into practice, 41(4), 212–218.
[5] Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung. (k. D.). Eduthek.(https://eduthek.at/)