Designing complex, challenging and creative assessments for work preparedness: A review of competency-based assessment

Abstract

This review article reports on assessment practices drawn from the recent international Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) literature. The literature suggests that college tasks, if they are to be valid, need to assess something of the complexity of the social and material variances of authentic work situations. This is referred to broadly as a form of competency-based assessment (CBA), which is an advance on earlier, more limited technically orientated CBA interpretations. The purpose of the article is, first, to provide teachers with snapshots of innovative practices from CBA in order to enrich their understandings of assessment. Secondly, it is proposed that the CBA literature may provide the sector with assessment tools to mitigate some of the criticisms of current assessment practices in quality reviews.