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2HUMAN COMPETENCE: DEDALIAN EPISTEMOLOGY
Abstract
The paper deals with human competence as part of a competency-based approach. The primary focus is on the fact that ignoring the ideas of human competence makes it impossible to develop competence ideology. The superconcept of human competence is supposed to be defined in the foreseeable future.
Keywords
human competence, competency-based approach, civilizational gap, built-in competence, social induced competence, ontologically determined competence
AUTHOR Lada Lichman
PhD in Education, Associate Professor Head of the Department of Foreign Languages Shupyk National Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education
Kyiv, Ukraine lichman1967@maH.ru
A competency-based approach as a principle and method of social arrangement is prevalent in Western Europe and America. Education, economy, politics and other spheres of public life are correlated by the criteria of competence. Indeed, the idea of success, professionalism, qualifications, material status, life values are largely associated with the concept of competence. The functioning of government institutions, commercial entities and public organizations are also determined by the parameters of competence; the caliber of the staff depends on its competence in all spheres of life. The educational systems of European countries, as well as the majority of post-Soviet states are now the competency-based ones. In short, it is hardly a stretch to call competence a paradigm of modernity.
The mentioned approach prevalence in the arrangement of public space explores the mentality of the academic circles; the concept of competence as applied to economy, politics, pedagogy, medicine, ecology, culture is totally analyzed and interpreted.
Guided by the theoretical results, sweeping generalizations and state-of-the-practice the scientists undertake attempts to work out an integrated strategy for making a competent social environment. The documents (1, 2, 6) adopted by a number of international organizations are indicative of it.
However, the difficulties to be surmounted are great. Among them, the researchers (R. Boam, D. le Deist, W. Hutmacher, A. Hutorskoy, A. Klein, D. McClelland, D. Ulrich, I. Zimnyaya and others) highlight the inconsistent definitions; such imperfection often leads to the curiosity that basic concepts of "competency" and "competence" have long been proved to be beyond scientific rigor and accuracy. There is a blurring of the semantic boundaries for competence. Currently, even the unbiased analysis shows that concerning the competency-based approach there is a terminology collapse, a branched conceptual rhizome, which can result in potential challenges.
At the same time the issue mentioned above is not the only shortcoming of the concept of one or another competency formation. For example, the implementation or incorporation of a competency-based mode to education shows that to accept the Western
European experience uncritically is a dead-end for Eastern Europe, especially against the background of the former Soviet Union reality. Suffice it to mention the factor of a civilizational gap among geographically adjacent social systems whose centers as the phenomena of the sphere of values, symbols and ideas" (10, 4-6) are incompletely congruent.
However, improving the conceptual apparatus by the convergence of the central concepts in the competency-based approach can speed up creating a relatively unequivocal terminology. Then again, it is unlikely to solve the key controversy: the design and enhancement of the competency-oriented social model happen quite spontaneously, as they do not correlate with the superconcept of human competence.
In fact, it's impossible to plot action or design any subject, being in ignorance of the nature and purpose of the subject and the action. This is exactly what makes the competency-based ideologeme specific as its large-scale distribution and all-round replication occur outside the kernel superconcept - human competence.
The purpose of this work is to define the significance of human competence in its autocorrelation with the theoretical platform of a competence model.
To come to the point of a human competence refers to philosophical thought to begin with. It is quite natural that ancient and medieval scholars had their own ideas about human competence regarding certain philosophical and religious dogmas. However, the attitude towards a human was changed in the Modern history which was notable for the development of science, technology and manufacturing, and according to M. Heidegger, " man makes his life as subject the primary center of reference. This means: the being counts as in being only to the degree and extent that it is taken into, and referred back to, this life, i.e., is lived out, and becomes life-experience" (3, 71). It should be noted that identification, acquisition and fulfillment directly depend on the measure of insight by dint of inner experience. In precisely this way a human acquires the status of being. In the other words, the event of insight means finding oneself as a person. In the meanwhile it is easy to understand that not everyone is prone to these types of reflections. This implies that not everyone can claim the status of being. If so, we have to consider a human as a kind of clone which is involved in a global production and communicative circulation. In this view, a human with an unperceived essence becomes the contrary and turns into an object. J. Ortega y Gasset in his "Introductory Essay To Aesthetics", when contemplating on Kant's maxima, i.e. a human shouldn't be used as a mean but an object of his activity, noted that if one follows this maxima, then one should treat other humans as simply objects with no essence. Thus, the only way to avoid this burden of emptiness and find the human essence, hence to become an individual is "to transform the object into one's own "self" with one's own essence... " (9, 483, 485).
As it turns out, rational life experience along with maximal world perception (i. e. "love thy neighbor as thyself.") hypothetically should carry primary self-institutionalization of an individual, hence, as we can imagine, imply certain activities. In this context, a contented fulfilled individual (i.e. a self-contemplating human being) is inspired for meaningful activity, i.e. purposeful life; a correlation between an individual and relevant activity is demonstrated as a result of the above. Wouldn't a dominant idea of the competency-based approach be comprised by a similar interlink? Isn't this theory lies at the root of social competency-based conventions? We suppose, so. This is constantly proven through the competency analysis, to be essentially practiced by the modern human. For example, the European Reference Framework sets out eight key competences for lifelong learning:
"1) Communication in the mother tongue;
2) Communication in foreign languages;
3) Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology;
4) Digital competence;
5) Learning to learn;
6) Social and civic competences;
7) Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship;
8) Cultural awareness and expression" (6, 3).
It is worth noting that the mentioned competences are pragmatic for the most part and they are aimed at assuring social comfort, well-being and psychological harmony. On the other hand, the competences do not cover such ontological dyad as man and nature / man and the world. This indicates that when developing key competences the academic and expert community paid much attention to the secondary life supporting needs, but did not focus on the fundamental competence - the competence of being a human. This is exactly what M. Heidegger had in mind when he wrote: "Ongoing activity becomes mere busyness whenever, in the pursuing of its methodology, it no longer keeps itself open on the basis of an ever-new accomplishing of its projection-plan (in our case -"a competent human"- L. L.), but only leaves that plan behind itself as a given; never again confirms and verifies its own self .. accumulating results and the calculation of them, but simply chases after such results and calculations (4, 138).
"Precisely this balancing out of the essential and the aberrant" (4, 138) determines the urgency of the problem of the competency-based world order: either the projection plan will be highly sustainable or unsustainable. And the problem is caused by the reference point: either we take the superconcept of human competence as a basis of the competency-based paradigm or, wandering in the labyrinth of definitions; we waste time, and finally find ourselves at the same point. Thus, only realizing a human's true self, no matter how abstractly it sounds, one can build up the intrinsic strategy for developing competence.
As far back as the 19th century, the famous Russian philosopher and writer V. Odoyevsky found it necessary to create a new system of sciences about a human and human education principles based on the constant of non acquaintance: "To understand the extend of human non acquaintance (Le nonsavoir) is an incredibly hard task nowadays, and those who are blind to the human non acquaintance are taking significantly higher positions in modern science" (8, 240). Whereas in the early 20th century Teilhard de Chardin pointed that "if we are going towards a human era of science, it will be eminently an era of human science. Man, the knowing subject, will perceive at last that man, ' the object of knowledge ', is the key to the whole science of nature" (11, 281 ). However, in the 21st century, in the world full of conflicts and terrorist threat no science about man has been so far developed.
It goes without saying, nobody can maintain that the science about a human has been developed in the social sphere. On the contrary, a human as well as the essence are beyond the borders of the European mental outlook and European policy: terrorist attacks, a refugee crisis, assimilation problems, etc. strongly suggest that competency-based education and social order are insufficient.
Alongside this, one more fundamental factor can be noticed to damage the ideology of a competency-based approach - this is world-spanning internet. According to M. McLuhan's opinion, "Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act — the way we perceive the world. When these ratios change, men change" (7, 41). At the same time, the cyberspace amputates and suppresses the personality; mankind becomes a brainwashed parrot. Manipulation, misinformation, human control are typical for the modern information society. However, just ideological simulacra lead trends for disintegration, terror and violence, they deal death. Though when there is a clash of civilizations (S. Huntington) "death is applicable as an item of strategy" (5, 213). The competency-based ideologeme should take into account all these facts.
Realizing the concept of human competence stipulates fulfilling such tasks as:
- giving a unified definition for competence;
- developing the concept of competence by associating it with the concept of human's true self;
- detecting the correlation between "a human" and "competence";
- defining the ideologeme of human competence.
It is submitted that the concept of human competence can be displayed as:
FIGURE 1. THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN COMPETENCE
Consequently, human competence is a vital dynamic balance among built-in, social induced and ontologically determined competences.
Certainly, the concept of human competence goes beyond a concise pattern - the prospect for competency-based approach is in the definition of the core competences of man, society and the ontology.
REFERENCES
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