THE CAREER-SPAN COMPETENCE APPROACH
What is it?
The Career-Span Competence (CSC) Approach©, developed by the CSC Collab Inc., is evidence-informed, incorporating published research and professional expertise of our team and our Clients (Canadian Regulators). It is also based on accepted principles that relate to competency-based learning, professional development, quality practice, and practice enhancement.
Here we provide a detailed description and explanation of the CSC Approach©. This content is organized in three parts:
1. Understanding the evolution of competence over a career-span
2. Conceptual underpinnings of the CSC Approach
3. Description of the CSC Approach
1. Understanding the evolution of competence over a career-span
The CSC Approach is based on the following understanding, framed within a regulatory context, of how professional competence of registrants develops over time:
At Entry-to-Practice
After completion of required education and pre-registration assessment, newly qualified professionals embark on career journeys that may take them in many different directions. At the point of entry-to-practice in a profession, practitioners generally possess very similar sets of knowledge and skills, designed to meet the needs of typical entry-level practice situations.
Professional regulatory organizations keep a tight rein on the abilities required for entry-to-practice. They typically do this by reviewing and approving the curricula of pre-registration education programs, and by controlling pre-registration assessment. Standardization of the requirements for entry-to-practice is clearly in the public interest. But it’s only possible since all new registrants need to possess similar abilities in order to practice effectively in entry- level positions. In a sense, we could say that the requirements for entry into a profession are a one-size- fits-all standard; however it’s an entry-level standard, not one that’s appropriate, nor beneficial to the public, to maintain career-long.
Post Entry-to-Practice
But once in the workforce, experience becomes a powerful teacher and motivator, and together with informal learning from professional colleagues, and continuing education, it drives rapid and ongoing evolution in a practitioner’s abilities.
Over time, practitioners mature. Many professionals also begin to identify areas of specific interest, or focus, and this influences their long-term goals. As such, ability-sets diversify in a manner shaped by practice focus and context, and professional aspirations. Ultimately, every practitioner follows a somewhat individualized career trajectory that reflects their professional, as well as their personal, experiences, desires and goals.
When it comes to the evolution of professional ability-sets over time, divergence is important and should be anticipated. It better serves the needs of the public at large, which are themselves divergent. However, this presents a challenge to Regulators. A registrant who focuses on, for example, general practice legitimately needs a somewhat different ability-set than a registrant whose focus is within a particular niche of practice; a registrant who provides direct client service legitimately needs a different ability-set from a registrant who is an educator in a pre-registration education program or researcher. Across the profession as a whole, beyond entry-level, practitioners are not look-a-likes; they are more of a moving target.
The challenge for the Regulator is how to effectively and efficiently manage this moving target - how to fit divergent abilities into a profession-wide standard that is ongoing, and performance-based. In other words, how to standardize a moving target!
Traditionally, Regulators have approached this problem by setting a standard for professional development that is based on taking continuing education courses, counted as ‘hours’ or ‘credits’, with a minimum annual amount being required. But evidence indicates that taking courses often has little to do with performance in practice: performance is about the application of learning.
What’s really needed is a performance-based standard that can be applied to the ‘moving target’ of registrant ability-sets over time. The solution to this dilemma:
The Career-Span Competence Approach
2. Conceptual underpinnings of the CSC Approach
The CSC Approach is built upon the following evidence-informed principles (research references in brackets):
Professional competence is context-specific, developmental and impermanent (1).
Following entry into practice, a professional’s knowledge-base and performance continue to evolve.
Competence is dynamic, shifting in response to work context as well as professional interests and aspirations.
As a result, ability-sets of individual practitioners will vary; some competencies will continue to develop while others may deteriorate or be lost, and new ones - absent at entry-to-practice - may develop (2,3).
Competence - the ability to effectively perform in the workplace - results from a combination of knowledge, skills and behaviours.
Effective workplace performance requires knowledge about a task (cognitive, to use Bloom’s Taxonomy), knowledge of how-to-perform the task (cognitive/psychomotor), and ability to actually perform the task (cognitive/advanced psychomotor/affective). These three factors build one-upon-the-other, and together, result in competence; importantly, each requires a different form of learning and assessment (4).
Professional development should focus on performance enhancement, not simply on amassing continuing education credits.
The evidence that continuing education is an indicator of continuing competence is weak; and yet, the strong attachment to counting education units persists in regulatory Quality Assurance and/or Continuing Competence Programs (5).
Reflective practice is a critical and core aspect of functioning as a professional.
Attempts by regulators to use self-assessment for summative assessment purposes clouds its true objective as a stimulus for self-reflection, making it a hoop for practitioners to jump through, and susceptible to faking to satisfy the Regulator (6).
“Professional regulation is working in the public interest when it supports professionalism and allows it to flourish” (7).
The public interest is best served not just by a Regulator enforcing minimum standards. While falling below minimum standards is cause for concern, the public is served best when registrants not only meet a minimum requirement but rise above it. This involves development of mastery, and sometimes expertise, in a given field or area, beyond the novice point when one enters a profession and minimum standards. As such, the goal should be to enable and support registrants in actively engaging in and developing their personal careers, and being the best they can be.
The CSC Approach provides a way of understanding why and how a professional’s abilities evolve over the span of their career. It puts to rest the notion that professional competence is a static condition that is achieved at the point of entry-to-practice, and consequently only needs to be ‘continued’ career-long to effectively serve the public.
3. Description of the CSC Approach
The CSC Approach enables Regulators to employ a standardized methodology to QA/’Continuing Competence’ programs, which enables registrants to effectively steer their ability-set in a direction consistent with their desired career trajectory and enabling them to move towards mastery and expertise. The CSC Approach is based on the following key aspects:
Use of terminology ‘career-span competence’ rather than ‘continuing competence’ - To emphasis that registrant’s competence does not continue, it evolves over their career-span, and that this evolution should be consciously managed by the registrant themself.
Use of the Career-Span Competencies© – A standardized set of broadly-stated behavioural statements developed by the CSC Collab that that are applicable across practice settings, professional roles and professions, providing a framework for defining desired performance, performance assessment, and professional development planning.
The career-span competencies can be thought of as macro-level behavioral competencies applicable to generalized professional practice, in contrast to micro-level task-specific competencies that typically appear in entry-to-practice profiles.
The Career-Span Competencies are based upon the CSC Collaborative’s recognition that, when described in broad behavioural terms, there remains a fundamental consistency in requirements for effective professional practice. This is so not just within a profession, but also across a great many professions. The high-level lens provided by the Career-Span Competencies can be used as a framework for competence management both intra- and inter-professionally, enabling the regulator to macro-mange performance-based development of registrants across the career span, while empowering the registrant to take control at the micro-level.
An emphasis on Workplace performance – The CSC Approach to professional development focuses on performance improvement relative to Career Span Competencies rather than (or as a supplement to) a traditional CEU- based approach.
Reflective Practice – Understanding that effective on-going development and evolution of competence requires continuous reflection on the part of the registrant using a comprehensive performance-oriented framework such as the CSC Approach.
An important aspect of reflection is input – through self assessment, ideally supplemented by feedback from other valid sources.
References:
Epstein, R.M. & Hundert, E.M. (2002). Defining and assessing professional competence. Journal of the American Medical Association, 287, 226-235
Benner, P. (1984). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice. Menlo Park: Addison- Wesley.
Dreyfus, H.L. & Dreyfus, S.E. (1986). Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer. New York: The Free Press.
Miller, G.E. (1990). The Assessment of Clinical Skills / Competence / Performance. Academic Medicine, Vol 65(9), S65-S67.
Austin, Z. & Gregory, H.L (2017). Quality Assurance and Maintenance of Competence Assessment Mechanisms in the Professions. Journal of Medical Regulation,103(2), p 26.
Austin, Z. & Gregory, H.L (2017). Quality Assurance and Maintenance of Competence Assessment Mechanisms in the Professions. Journal of Medical Regulation,103(2), p 27.
Cayton, H. in Right-touch regulation, Revised (2015). Professional Standards Authority (UK), p9.