To measure non-cognitive facets of competence, we developed and tested a new method that we refer to as Embedded Experience Sampling (EES). Domain-specific problem-solving competence is a multi-faceted construct that is not limited to cognitive facets such as domain knowledge or problem-solving strategies but also comprises non-cognitive facets in the sense of domain-specific emotional and motivational dispositions such as interest and self-concept. However, in empirical studies non-cognitive facets are usually either neglected or measured by generalized self-report questionnaires that are detached (...) from the performance assessment. To enable an integrated measurement, we developed the EES method to collect data on non-cognitive facets during scenario-based low-stakes assessments. Test-takers are requested to stop at certain times and spontaneously answer short items (EES items) regarding their actual experience of the problem situation. These EES items are embedded in an EES event that resembles typical social interactions with non-player characters. To evaluate the feasibility and validity of the method, we implemented EES in a series of three studies in the context of commercial vocational education and training (VET): A feasibility study with 77 trainees, a pilot study with 20 trainees, and the main study with 780 trainees who worked on three complex problem scenarios in a computer-based office simulation. In the present paper, we investigate how test-takers perceived the EES events, and whether social desirability biased their answers, and investigate the internal structure of the data and the relationship between EES data and data from several other sources. Interview data and survey data indicated no biases due to social desirability and no additional burden for the test-takers due to the EES events. A correlation analysis following the multitrait-multimethod approach as well as the calibration of a multidimensional model based on Item Response Theory (IRT) also supported the construct validity. Furthermore, EES data shows substantial correlations with test motivation but almost zero correlations with data from generalized retrospective self-report questionnaires on non-cognitive facets. Altogether, EES offers an alternative approach to measuring non-cognitive facets of competence under certain conditions. For instance, EES is also based on self-reporting and thus might not be suitable for high-stakes testing. (shrink)

Reducing the global treatment gap for mental health conditions in low- and middle-income countries requires not only an expansion of clinical psychology training but also assuring that graduates of these programs have the competency to effectively and safely deliver psychological interventions. Clinical psychology training programs in LMICs require standardized tools and guidance to evaluate competency. The World Health Organization and UNICEF developed the “Ensuring Quality in Psychological Support” platform to facilitate competency-based training in psychosocial support, psychological treatments, and foundational helping (...) skills, with an initial focus on in-service training for non-specialists. Our goal was to design the first application of EQUIP to implement competency-based training into pre-service education for clinical psychology trainees. With Makerere University in Uganda as a case study, we outline an approach to develop, implement, and evaluate a competency-based curriculum that includes seven steps: Identify core clinical psychology competencies; Identify evaluation methods appropriate to each competency; Determine when competency evaluations will be integrated in the curriculum, who will evaluate competency, and how results will be used; Train faculty in competency-based education including conducting competency assessments and giving competency-based feedback; Pilot test and evaluate the competency-based education strategy with faculty and students; Modify and implement the competency-based education strategy based on pilot results; and Implement ongoing evaluation of the competency-based curriculum with continuous quality improvement. This approach will be formally evaluated and established as a foundation for pre-service training in other low-resource settings. (shrink)

While consensus exists among many practitioners of ethics consultation about the need for and identification of core competencies and standards, there has been virtually no attempt to determine how these competencies and standards are best taught and assessed. We believe that clinical ethics consultation has reached a state of sufficient maturity that expert practitioners can evaluate those who are new to the field. We will outline several steps that can facilitate the creation of a certification process for clinical ethics consultants, (...) assuring the competency and quality of consultation for the patients, families, and healthcare professionals who utilize ECSs. (shrink)

The curricula of the undergraduate study programs on Zakat and Waqf management in Indonesia are still in their early stages of development. In this research, we aim to evaluate these curricula using a competency-based approach towards several study programs. Specifically, we compare the needs of Zakat and Waqf management with the curricula of undergraduate study programs in Indonesian universities. To fulfil our objective, we conduct several interviews with the program heads and practitioners. We also propose a particular curriculum for the (...) study programs on Zakat and Waqf management. For this purpose, we apply a comparative research method and engage in qualitative research. Our results show that some competencies are not accommodated in the current curricula to meet the expectations of the Zakat and Waqf management. Therefore, we argue that it is important to change these curricula content to achieve the expected competencies. (shrink)

This paper notes the critical response that the ‘competence movement’ has received from writers in philosophy of education and argues for a more positive assessment of what it offers in relation to: (i) the place of practical competence in a liberal education, (ii) the meritocratic principles underlying the competence movement, (iii) the ‘transparency’ of expectations in assessment, and even (iv) the element of practical competence in moral performance. It emphasises, however, that not all versions of ‘competence’ can be (...) defended in these terms and that this requires a more generic and cognitively laden concept of personal and professional competence. (shrink)

Paul Hager and I worked on a large number of research projects and publications throughout the 1990s. The focus of this work was on developing a competency-based approach to professional education and assessment. I review this work and its impact over the years. Notwithstanding the fact that most professional associations today have a competency framework and that most university courses use them in their courses for initial professional education, they still have a relatively naïve view of the relationship between (...) theory and practice. The second part of the article outlines how this might be theorized in health education. (shrink)

This book radically counters the optimism sparked by Competence Based Education and Training, an educational philosophy that has re-emerged in Schooling, Vocational and Higher Education in the last decade. CBET supposedly offers a new type of learning that will lead to skilled employment; here, Preston instead presents the competency movement as one which makes the concept of human learning redundant. Starting with its origins in Taylorism, the slaughterhouse and radical behaviourism, the book charts the history of competency education to its (...) position as a global phenomenon today, arguing that competency is opposed to ideas of process, causality and analog human movement that are fundamental to human learning. (shrink)

Public health ethics began to emerge in the 1990s as a development within bioethics. Public health ethics education has been implemented in schools of public health in recent years, and specific professionalism and ethics competencies were included in the Master of Public Health (MPH) competency set developed nationally and adapted by individual schools of public health around the country. The University of Texas School of Public Health approved the present set of MPH competencies in 2005. After 4 years of experience, (...) we now report information measuring the extent to which Professionalism and Ethics competencies and subcompetencies are being met in the MPH degree program. To this end we have audited the MPH Professionalism and Ethics competency forms for FY2009 MPH graduates (n = 61). Eight courses, including required MPH core courses plus the practicum and culminating experience, were found to have substantial professionalism and ethics content. Further, 67.2% of graduates met eight or more of the 13 competencies and subcompetencies, but only 36.1% met all thirteen, indicating a need to identify topic areas to be added to, or enhanced in, the MPH curriculum. In addition, these findings will inform ongoing efforts to enhance ethics education in our health science center. Assessment of these competencies and subcompetencies is an essential step in strengthening ethics education at our institutions and in better preparing our graduates for a challenging future. We report our efforts here to demonstrate one way of carrying out programmatic assessment of ethics education in a school of public health. (shrink)

A significant historical role in the development of competence-based vocational qualifications in England and Wales is customarily ascribed to the 1985 to 1986 Review of Vocational Qualifications (RVQ), the body which invented the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ). This paper analyses the RVQ's internal debates. The paper demonstrates that the RVQ proposed only the general principles of a structure and an administration for a reformed vocational qualifications system. The RVQ did not address in detail either the definition of occupational competence or (...) the curriculum and assessment models to be embodied in the NVQ. In the light of this analysis, the paper re-evaluates the role of the RVQ in the development of competence-based vocational qualifications, and suggests some potentially fruitful areas for future research. (shrink)

At the University of Newcastle, health law and ethics is taught and assessed in each year of the five-year curriculum. However, the critical question for assessment remains: 'Does teaching ethics have a measurable effect on the clinical activity of medical students who have had such courses?' Those responsible for teaching confront this question each year they sit down to construct their assessment tools. Should they assess what the student knows? Should they assess the student's moral reasoning, that is, (...) what decisions the student makes, and, how these decisions are justified, or should they assess what the student actually does when dealing with patients in the clinical setting, and how he or she does it? From 1982 to 1991, assessment at Newcastle was primarily aimed at determining the quality of the students' ethics knowledge base. This paper describes the strengths and limitations of a purely knowledge-based method of evaluation and why in 1992, we are now attempting to redefine and assess, what we call 'clinical ethical competence' in terms of how students actually apply this knowledge base in a controlled clinical context. (shrink)

While translation competence assessment has been playing an increasingly facilitating role in translation teaching and learning, it still failed to offer fine-grained diagnostic feedback based on certain reliable translation competence standards. As such, this study attempted to investigate the feasibility of providing diagnostic information about students’ translation competence by integrating China’s Standards of English with cognitive diagnostic assessment approaches. Under the descriptive parameter framework of CSE translation scales, an attribute pool was established, from which seven attributes were identified (...) based on students’ and experts’ think-aloud protocols. A checklist comprising 20 descriptors was developed from CSE translation scales, with which 458 students’ translation responses were rated by five experts. In addition, a Q-matrix was established by seven experts. By comparing the diagnostic performance of four widely-used cognitive diagnostic models, linear logistic model was selected as the optimal model to generate fine-grained information about students’ translation strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, relationships among translation competence attributes were discovered and diagnostic results were shown to differ across high and low proficiency groups. The findings can provide insights for translation teaching, learning and assessment. (shrink)

Drowning has been the cause of over 2.5 million preventable deaths in the past decade. Despite the fact that the majority of drownings occur in open water, assessment of water safety competency typically occurs in swimming pools. The assessment of water safety competency in open water environments brings with it a few difficulties, but also promises tremendous benefits. The aim of this position paper is to discuss the benefits and caveats of conducting assessments in open water environments as (...) opposed to closed and controlled environments, and to provide recommendations for evidence-based practice. The first theoretical section discusses the effects of the environment and key variables on various factors of assessment. These discussions are linked to the two perspectives of representative learning design and information processing theory. The second section presents two pilot studies of relevance and provides practical implications for assessment of water safety competency. It seems that a combination of pool-based practice and open water education may be ideal in assessing aquatic skills competency. Assessment in open water presents clear benefits regarding validity, but often poses seemingly unsurmountable barriers, which providers may have reservations about in the absence of clear evidence. Hence this article provides a robust discussion about competency assessment and signals the practical importance of faithfully reproducing the environment in which skilled behavior is most relevant. (shrink)

Critical aspects in the field of education are currently related to low levels of socioemotional competences and high rates of school dropouts. However, there are no standard practices or guidelines for helping countries to assess and train social and emotional competences. To overcome this limitation, the project Learning to be (L2B) aims to propose a comprehensive model of the assessment and development of social and emotional competences that bring together policymakers, researchers, teachers, school authorities and learners from different participating (...) countries: Finland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. The project attempts to create an international framework for regulating activities and supporting teachers working on the social and emotional competences of the students and to provide tools which can be used across countries. The aim of the paper is to describe how L2B has been developed in Spain by analyzing the contributions of the international framework and extracting the specific needs in the Spanish context. Specifically, we describe two products of the project: a) the process for creating a toolkit, a tool focused on creating activities and materials for helping teachers develop social and emotional competences of students and b) the results of an exploratory study in Spain in which social and emotional competences are assessed and compared to the international framework. First, we explain the definition of social and emotional competences used for creating the toolkit. Second, we analyze responses of Spanish students to questionnaires administered before applying the toolkit in the schools. The paper describes social and emotional competences in Spain and evaluates the overlap between relevant variables in Spain and those used for developing the toolkit, the international tool. Specific needs in Spain are discussed, as well as the contribution of the project for promoting the improved development of students’ social and emotional competences, improving learning outcomes and stronger social cohesion in schools and local communities, as well as the utility of the results for creating new educational policies. (shrink)

Fear of cancer is mostly related to cancer recurrence, metastasis, additional cancer, and diagnostic tests. Its legacy as a lethal disease has raised fear of approaching death. Currently, cancer’s total suffering and the worsening phenomena have raised fear, especially among female patients. Family caregivers (FCGs) who are responsible for the day-to-day cancer care at home need to help the patients deal with this fear frequently. Due to the limited care competencies, they need supportive care from healthcare professionals in cancer fear (...) management. This study aims to assess how types of demanded healthcare information affect the FCG’s role in reducing the fear of female cancer patients. The mindsponge theory was used in conceptual development and interpretation. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics were used for statistical analysis on a dataset of 48 spouses (husbands) and 12 other family members in five congested communities of Surabaya, Indonesia. Results showed that among the six types of healthcare information, FCGs with higher demand on cancer-specific information and information on cancer physical needs were more likely to need support in reducing the fear of female cancer patients. Meanwhile, FCGs with a higher demand for information on support services were less likely to need support to reduce cancer patients’ fear. Other types of healthcare information have ambiguous effects on the need for support in reducing cancer-induced fear. This study reveals that the demanded cancer-specific information, e.g., cancer’s prognosis or likely outcome and information on cancer physical needs, need to be met in priority to assist FCG’s role in cancer fear management. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that probabilistic grammars may be modulated by communication mode and genre. Accordingly, the question arises how complex language users’ lectal competence is, where complexity is proportional to the extent to which choice-making processes depend on the situation of language use. Do probabilistic constraints vary when we talk to a friend compared to when we give a speech? Are differences between spoken and written language larger than those within each mode? In the present study, we aim to approach (...) these questions systematically. Guided by theorizing in cognitive (socio)linguistics and using logistic regression based on corpus materials, we analyzed the dative alternation with give (The government gives farmers money vs. The government gives money to farmers) in four broad registers of English: spoken informal, spoken formal, written informal, and written formal. Corpus analysis was supplemented with a scalar rating experiment. Results suggest that language users’ probabilistic grammars vary as a function of register. (shrink)

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) defines four risk categories for AI systems: unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. However, it lacks a clear methodology for the assessment of these risks in concrete situations. Risks are broadly categorized based on the application areas of AI systems and ambiguous risk factors. This paper suggests a methodology for assessing AI risk magnitudes, focusing on the construction of real-world risk scenarios. To this scope, we propose to integrate the AIA with a framework developed (...) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and related literature. This approach enables a nuanced analysis of AI risk by exploring the interplay between (a) risk determinants, (b) individual drivers of determinants, and (c) multiple risk types. We further refine the proposed methodology by applying a proportionality test to balance the competing values involved in AI risk assessment. Finally, we present three uses of this approach under the AIA: to implement the Regulation, to assess the significance of risks, and to develop internal risk management systems for AI deployers. (shrink)

America’s increasing obesity problem requires federal, state, and local lawyers, policymakers, and public health practitioners to consider legal strategies to encourage healthy eating and physical activity. The complexity of the legal landscape as it affects obesity requires an analysis of coordination across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically,” including the local, state, tribal, and federal levels, or “horizontally” as agencies or branches of government at the same vertical level. Inspired by the successful tobacco control movement, obesity (...) prevention advocates seek comprehensive strategies to “normalize” healthy behaviors by creating environmental and legal changes that ensure healthy choices are the default or easy choices. With many competing demands on diminishing municipal budgets, strategic coordination both vertically and horizontally is essential to foster the environmental and social changes needed to reverse the obesity epidemic. (shrink)

America’s increasing obesity problem requires federal, state, and local lawyers, policymakers, and public health practitioners to consider legal strategies to encourage healthy eating and physical activity. The complexity of the legal landscape as it affects obesity requires an analysis of coordination across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically,” including the local, state, tribal, and federal levels, or “horizontally” as agencies or branches of government at the same vertical level. Inspired by the successful tobacco control movement, obesity (...) prevention advocates seek comprehensive strategies to “normalize” healthy behaviors by creating environmental and legal changes that ensure healthy choices are the default or easy choices. With many competing demands on diminishing municipal budgets, strategic coordination both vertically and horizontally is essential to foster the environmental and social changes needed to reverse the obesity epidemic. (shrink)

This article gives a brief introduction to the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Treatment (MacCAT-T) and critically examines its theoretical presuppositions. On the basis of empirical, methodological and ethical critique it is emphasised that the cognitive bias that underlies the MacCAT-T assessment needs to be modified. On the one hand it has to be admitted that the operationalisation of competence in terms of value-free categories, e.g. rational decision abilities, guarantees objectivity to a great extent; but on the other hand it (...) bears severe problems. Firstly, the cognitive focus is in itself a normative convention in the process of anthropological value-attribution. Secondly, it misses the complexity of the decision process in real life. It is therefore suggested that values, emotions and other biographic and context specific aspects should be considered when interpreting the cognitive standards according to the MacArthur model. To fill the gap between cognitive and non-cognitive approaches the phenomenological theory of personal constructs is briefly introduced. In conclusion some main demands for further research to develop a multi-step model of competence assessment are outlined. (shrink)

This study attempts to investigate the role of movie and TV series clips in enhancing EFL learners’ pragmatic competence by utilizing an experimental design. The sample of the study was 42 students from the English language department at Cihan University-Duhok, Iraq. The experiment lasted one academic semester. The participants’ English language proficiency, as determined by an IELTS test sample, was intermediate, and then they were randomly split into two groups, namely experimental and control. Before and after the treatment, a Written (...) Discourse Completion Test served as a pre-and post-test given to the two groups to assess statistically significant differences between them. The experimental group received direct instruction on request and suggestion speech acts via the presentation of the carefully chosen movie and TV series clips. In contrast, the control group was exposed to a minimal amount of pragmatics through printed texts. The findings demonstrated that the experimental group outperformed the control group. More precisely, the findings revealed that movie and TV series clips had a significant influence on learners’ production of requests and suggestions. Considering the above findings, the researchers propose EFL teachers apply movie and TV series clips to improve their Students’ pragmatic competence in class. (shrink)

As clinical ethics consultants move toward professionalization, the process of certifying individual consultants or accrediting programs will be discussed and debated. With certification, some entity must be established or ordained to oversee the standards and procedures. If the process evolves like other professions, it seems plausible that it will eventually include a written examination to evaluate the core knowledge competencies that individual practitioners should possess to meet peer practice standards. The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities has published core knowledge (...) competencies for many years that are accepted by experts as the prevailing standard. Probably any written examination will be based upon the ASBH core knowledge competencies. However, much remains to be done before any examination may be offered. In particular, it seems likely that a recognized examining board must create and validate examination questions and structure the examination so as to establish meaningful, defensible parameters after dealing with such challenging questions as: Should the certifying examination be multiple choice or short-answer essay? How should the test be graded? What should the pass rate be? How may the examination be best administered? To advance the field of health care ethics consultation, thought leaders should start to focus on the written examination possibilities, to date unaddressed carefully in the literature. Examination models—both objective and written—must be explored as a viable strategy about how the field of health care ethics consultations can grow toward professionalization. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: (a) To measure the effect of a guideline-based training on the performance of ontology developers compared with the performance after unspecific training by a competency question based evaluation; and (b) to provide empirical evidence for the applicability of competency questions in formal ontology evaluation in general. BACKGROUND: A close connection between ontology development and ontology evaluation as quality management procedure can been attained with the use of competency questions. Competency questions are often used as a semi-formal specification of requirements (...) for an ontology under development. Hence they can also be used as evaluation instruments, in order to check how far an ontology fulfills these requirements. METHODS: A randomized controlled trial was conducted with two groups of 12 students each. The intervention consisted in a differential guideline-based training on ontology development vs. unspecific training. After a group-specific training focusing on three topics per group, performance of students was assessed with 12 exercises (2 exercises per topic), in which the students had to apply their skills. Different types of competency questions were elaborated for the analysis of the students' ontologies. We used the proportion of correct answers as a measure of ontology quality. RESULTS: On single topic level, the performance of ontology developers increased after guideline-based training for two out of the six topics: it increased from a proportion of 0.46 to 0.63 for the topic Process \& Participation and from 0.44 to 0.53 for the topic Collective Material Entity. In regression analysis, a positive correlation was shown between the performance of students on untrained topics and the performance after specific guideline-based training. Moreover, in multiple regression analysis an overall effect of specific training of 0.09 was calculated (p < 0.1). CONCLUSION: The results show an effect of a specific guideline-based training on the performance of ontology developers compared to the performance after unspecific training by an increase of about 10 \% on the rate of correct competency questions. In addition, this study has shown the general applicability of competency questions in a formal ontology evaluation scenario. However, the study also shows that the training of ontology developers and their performance evaluation is a tedious task. The resulting performance of ontology developers is more dependent on the a priori individual competencies than on the specific acquired skills after training. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"But I Don’t Feel It":Values and Emotions in the Assessment of Competence in Patients With Anorexia NervosaJochen Vollmann (bio)Keywordscompetence assessment, mental capacity, informed consent, psychiatry, anorexia nervosaThe respect of the self-determination of patients obliges physicians to obtain the patient's consent before providing medical treatment. One important condition for a valid informed consent is the patient's competence to make autonomous health care decisions. Therefore, a proper assessment (...) of competence to make health care decisions is crucial particularly in patients with mental disorders (Vollmann 2000; Helmchen and Vollmann 2001). In recent years, several empirical studies on the assessment of competence in patients suffering from different mental disorders have been performed using the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Treatment (MacCAT-T; Grisso and Appelbaum1998). This assessment tool is based on legal standards of competence such as understanding, reasoning, appreciation, and expressing a choice. Since its first publication, the MacCAT-T has been widely accepted as a "gold standard" of competence assessment in the psychiatric literature. In recent years the MacCAT-T has been applied to patients suffering from depression, schizophrenia, dementia, angina pectoris, and normal controls (for overview, see Welie [2001] and Bauer and Vollmann [2002]).Tan and her colleagues (2006) use the MacCAT-T the first time to assess competence to make treatment decisions in patients with anorexia nervosa. Coming from clinical practice, the authors have noticed that the MacCAT-T might not work in this group of patients. Therefore, they use semi-structured interviews in addition to the MacCAT-T to identify aspects of thinking that might be relevant to the issue of competence to refuse treatment. They use grounded theory techniques for a qualitative analysis of the data as well as five brief, self-administered questionnaires to ascertain levels of psychopathology.The results of the study show that anorexia nervosa can have complex and variable effects on concentration, beliefs, and thought processing without affecting the ability to perform well on the MacCAT-T. At the same time, participants also report a change in their value system as well as in their personal identity. The authors argue that the results of their studies suggest that the competence to refuse treatment might be compromised in [End Page 289] people with anorexia nervosa in ways that are not captured by the MacCAT-T. This is an interesting finding in patients with anorexia nervosa, because in all other studies with patients suffering from mental disorders such as dementia, depression, and schizophrenia, the MacCAT-T identified more patients as limited in their competence to make health care decisions in comparison with other methods of competence assessment such as clinical judgment (Vollmann et al. 2003). The authors argue on the basis on their qualitative, semistructured interviews that anorexia nervosa–specific difficulties with a thought process and the change of values are missed by the MacCAT-T.Furthermore, Tan and her associated could not find a relationship between the participants' scores on the psychopathological scales, the MacCAT-T scores, and their difficulties expressed during the qualitative interviews, although the small size of the study precludes statistical analysis. In an earlier study, clinical dementia scales but not neuropsychological testing correlated with formal (MacCAT-T) and clinical assessment of competence. Therefore, psychopathological factors might play a different role in different subgroups of patients suffering from different mental problems. However, the idea of an objective neuropsychological model of competence assessment, again, finds no support in the presented empirical data.The qualitative data from patients with anorexia nervosa underline the problem of the cognitive bias of the MacCAT-T assessment and the illusion of value-free categories. It has been argued that the cognitive focus for the MacCAT-T is in itself a normative convention and that the MacCAT-T is missing the complexity of the process to make health care decisions in real life. Therefore, values and emotions should be considered in addition to cognitive functions in assessing competence to make health care decisions (Breden and Vollmann 2004; see also "Mental capacity" 2004). Although many authors agree that the cognitive approach of capacity assessment is important but not sufficient for the assessment of competence to make health care decisions, it remains an... (shrink)

Informed consent is valid only if the person giving it is competent. Although allegedly informed consents are routinely tendered, there are nonetheless serious problems with the concept of competence as it stands. First, conceptual work upon competence is incomplete: the concept is unanalyzed and no logic of competence has been identified. It is thus virtually impossible to reliably discern who is competent. ;Traditional work on competence has explicated three dichotomies from which the necessary conditions for the possibility of competence will (...) be identified, viz., that competence is either a global or a specific notion; is present in varying degrees or in virtue of a threshold; and may or not include appeals to consequences. Past efforts have failed to notice a fourth dichotomy: competence as an affective or cognitive notion. Failure to designate the appropriate arms of these dichotomies is responsible for there being, at present, no reliable test for competence. The inadequacies of a highly regarded particular test for competence, the mental status examination, are examined in light of this failure. ;Competence is located within the rule-governed practice of informed consent. That practice and hence, competence, is justified through a Kantian analysis of respect for persons. This analysis reveals that the logic of competence requires assessment in terms of specific rather than global concerns; degrees of ability rather than a threshold; both cognitive and affective abilities; and no appeal to consequences. ;Based upon the analyses of consent as an example of decision making within the practice of informed consent and of respect for persons, the capacities which jointly comprise competence are identified. These are the capacities to receive, recognize, and retrieve information; to reason about, relate to oneself, and rank options; to choose among alternatives; and, under certain circumstances, to defend one's choice. ;Identification of the logic of competence and explication of and justification for the capacities that comprise competence to consent provide a conceptual foundation for the crucial concept of competence that the informed consent process currently lacks. It should facilitate construction of a test for competence. (shrink)

Background Teaching ethical competencies is an essential component of professional and postgraduate curricula. Developing practical–ethical problem-solving competencies as well as appraising program-specific studies and related research ethics are topics typically addressed. However, assessment of these ethical competencies poses a challenge. Written or oral assessment formats addressing relevant learning objectives is mainly limited to knowledge testing alone, often not capturing relevant skills or attitudes pertinent to those competencies. Aim During the reaccreditation of the masters of science program in Nursing (...) Science at Witten/Herdecke University, this challenge was addressed by implementation of an innovative examination format for postgraduate education. Procedure For the module “Ethics in nursing practice and research” a format based on the Objective Structured Clinical Examination format was developed. This assessment method incorporates evaluation of acquired skills and attitudes of nursing students. Conclusion The article demonstrates development and adaption of the OSCE format for this purpose. (shrink)

Rapid Ethical Assessment is an approach used to design context tailored consent process for voluntary participation of participants in research including human subjects. There is, however, limited evidence on the design of ethical assessment in studies targeting cancer patients in Ethiopia. REA was conducted to explore factors that influence the informed consent process among female cancer patients recruited for longitudinal research from Addis Ababa Population-based Cancer Registry. Qualitative study employing rapid ethnographic approach was conducted from May–July, 2017, at (...) the Tikur Anbessa Specialized Referral Hospital. In-depth and key informants’ interviews were conducted among purposively selected 16 participants. Regular de-briefings among the study team helped to identify emerging themes and ensure saturation. Interviews and debriefings were tape recorded in Amharic, and transcribed and translated to English. Coding of the transcripts was facilitated by use of NVivo software. Thematic analysis was employed to respond to the initial questions and interpret findings. Perceived barriers to voluntary study participation included lack of reporting back study results of previous studies, the decision making status of women, hopelessness or fatigue in the patients, shyness of the women, data collectors approach to the patient, and patient’s time constraints. Most of the patients preferred oral over written consent and face-to-face interview over telephone interview. Provision of detail information about the study, using short and understandable tool, competent, compassionate and respectful enumerators of the same gender were suggested to assure participation. Due to the perceived severity, the use of the term “cancer” was associated with fear and anxiety. Alternatively, uses of phrases like “breast or cervical illness/disease” were suggested during patient interviews. Voluntary participation is not straight forward but affected by different factors. Using competent, compassionate and respectful enumerators, short and precise questioning tools to limit the time of the interview could improve voluntary participation. Moreover, careful consideration of the patients and families concept of the disease such as wording and information has to be taken into account. This assessment helped in improving the consent process of the ongoing project on breast and cervical cancer patients. (shrink)

Courting competency: nursing and the politics of performance in practiceNurses have long anguished over how best to assess performance in clinical practice. The ‘competency’ movement appears to have provided a solution to this problem. In this paper I undertake a ‘radical hermeneutic’ interrogation of the cultural text of clinical practice doubled with a poststructuralist interpretation of the literal text of the Australian competency project. Through this work I attempt to expose some of the deeply embedded assumptions that underwrite the competency (...) movement and amplify the problems posed by an uncritical appropriation of competency based training and assessment in nursing education. (shrink)

Digital capability encompasses the skills and attitudes that firms and employees need to thrive in the modern digital era. Digital capability of a firm involves the effective adoption and use of modern digital technologies such as Industry 4.0. From the individual perspective, digital capability is referred to as knowledge and skill sets of people which are essential to work in digitally enabled firms. Not many studies have been conducted to assess how digital capability can help in twin transition, that is, (...) both at individual and firm levels, and how such digital capability can help in improving profitability for the firms. There is also a lack of studies exploring how firm leadership support can enhance digital capability to improve both organizational and employee performance. In this background, the aim of this study is to assess the role of digital capability for both firm and people perspectives with leadership support as moderator. With the support of resource-based view (RBV) and literature, a research model was prepared conceptually which was later validated using PLS-SEM technique considering 348 responses from employees of different types of industries. Based on the analysis of feedback from participants in India, this study has reached a specific conclusion. Consequently, the results suffer from external validity issues which have been considered as one of the critical limitations of this study. It has been demonstrated that impacts of digital competency could improve both people and firm performance enhancing the profitability of the firms. Such enhancement of profitability is facilitated by the impact of leadership support. (shrink)

The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities has created a quality attestation process for clinical ethics consultants; the pilot phase of reviewing portfolios has begun. One aspect of the QA process which is particularly challenging is assessing the interpersonal skills of individual clinical ethics consultants. We propose that using case simulation to evaluate clinical ethics consultants is an approach that can meet this need provided clear standards for assessment are identified. To this end, we developed the Assessing Clinical Ethics (...) Skills tool, which identifies and specifies specific behaviors that a clinical ethics consultant should demonstrate in an ethics case simulation. The aim is for the clinical ethics consultant or student to use a videotaped case simulation, along with the ACES tool scored by a trained rater, to demonstrate their competence as part of their QA portfolio. The development and piloting of the tool is described. (shrink)

This research aimed at investigating the assessment procedures for evaluating the prospective teachers' abilities, developed through the new B.Ed. /ADE curriculum in teacher education institutions of Baluchistan, this research study will also highlights the emerging problems in the use of new modern assessment procedures. The research was conducted in seven Teacher Training institutions of Baluchistan. The data was collected through the survey questionnaire, based on a pilot project, from the seven Heads of the institutions and the nine Teacher (...) Educators/school, involved in teaching different courses of B.Ed. /ADE at different semesters. Focus group discussion with head and nine teacher educators/institution was also conducted. The quantitative and qualitative data from two instruments helped in-depth understanding of the assessment procedure and the emerging problems. The results showed that teacher educators are trying to implement the new competency-based curriculum and are engaged in using interactive and innovative teaching pedagogies suggested in the new curriculum of B.Ed. / ADE program. But they feel difficulty to assess the content knowledge and skills developed among the prospective teachers through this new curriculum. Teacher educators feel difficulty in the use of modern assessment procedures. They are still focusing the paper-pencil test. Teachers lack competencies to assess students’ actual strengths and learning needs, they don’t, know how to measure cognitive, affective and psychomotor objectives. Teacher educators also face problems to make judgments on students’ learning through formative assessment. (shrink)

WINDSOR C, DOUGLAS C and HARVEY T. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 213–222 Nursing and competencies — a natural fit: the politics of skill/competency formation in nursingThe last two decades have seen a significant restructuring of work across Australia and other industrialised economies, a critical part of which has been the appearance of competency based education and assessment. The competency movement is about creating a more flexible and mobile labour force to increase productivity and it does so by redefining work (...) as a set of transferable or ‘soft’ generic skills that is transportable and is the possession of the individual. This article sought to develop an analysis of competency based clinical assessment of nursing students across a bachelor of nursing degree course. This involved an examination of a total of 406 clinical assessment tools that covered the years 1992–2009 and the three years of a bachelor degree. Data analysis generated three analytical findings: the existence of a hierarchy of competencies that prioritises soft skills over intellectual and technical skills; the appearance of skills as personal qualities or individual attributes; and the absence of context in assessment. The article argues that the convergence in nursing of soft skills and the professionalisation project reform has seen the former give legitimacy to the enduring invisibility and devaluation of nursing work. (shrink)

Bayesian models of legal arguments generally aim to produce a single integrated model, combining each of the legal arguments under consideration. This combined approach implicitly assumes that variables and their relationships can be represented without any contradiction or misalignment, and in a way that makes sense with respect to the competing argument narratives. This paper describes a novel approach to compare and ‘average’ Bayesian models of legal arguments that have been built independently and with no attempt to make them consistent (...) in terms of variables, causal assumptions or parameterization. The approach involves assessing whether competing models of legal arguments are explained or predict facts uncovered before or during the trial process. Those models that are more heavily disconfirmed by the facts are given lower weight, as model plausibility measures, in the Bayesian model comparison and averaging framework adopted. In this way a plurality of arguments is allowed yet a single judgement based on all arguments is possible and rational. (shrink)

Higher education has become more student-centered as the Bologna process assigns students more time to study and research. Online teaching has been needed during the pandemic, which can be challenging regarding didactic and assessment. This paper analyzes project-based learning (PBL) as a form of teaching and assessing students in a bioethics course on reproductive ethics. The team project was the final assessment of the Faculty of Bioethics core curriculum course, "Bioethics, Technology and Procreation,” offered to two student groups (...) in the 2019–2020 school year. The analysis of the results of PBL is descriptive qualitative with semi-quantitative data from student feedback. Forty students were presented with a detailed methodology of team projects and were encouraged to form teams of 3 to 5. They need to develop a team project with creativity and pastoral sensibility that will communicate the content assimilated in class to a selected target audience, with adequate means to measure the impact of their project on their target. Thirty-eight students formed ten teams and presented ten projects. Each team had 2–4 encounters with the professor and 6–10 encounters among team members. Six of the ten projects were categorized as didactic, three mediatic, one didactic-mediatic and 0 artistic. The grades of this final assignment ranged from 7 to 10, with an average of 8.7 out of 10. The survey feedback demonstrated high satisfaction, as students discovered new values in teamwork and pastoral applications. However, this innovation can be more time-consuming for the professor and the students, requiring more significant time management, teamwork and communication competency. (shrink)

Chomsky's competence/performance distinction has been traditionally understood as a distinction between our knowledge of language and how we put that knowledge to use. While this construal has its purposes, this article argues that the distinction as Chomsky proposes it depends upon no substantiation of the knowledge locution; rather, the distinction is intended to abstract one system out of an ensemble of systems whose integration underlies performance. The article goes on to assess and reject an argument that the knowledge locution, independent (...) of its traditional construal, is of some substance due to the peculiar evidential base of generative theories. (shrink)

Teachers’ social-emotional competence is considered important to master the social and emotional challenges inherent in their profession and to build positive teacher-student relationships. In turn, this is key to both teachers’ occupational well-being and positive student development. Nonetheless, an instrument assessing the profession-specific knowledge and skills that teachers need to master the social and emotional demands in the classroom is still lacking. Therefore, we developed the Test of Regulation in and Understanding of Social Situations in Teaching (TRUST), which is a (...) theory-based situational judgment test measuring teachers’ knowledge about strategies for emotion regulation and relationship management in emotionally and socially challenging situations with students. Results from three studies (N = 166 in-service teachers, N = 73 in-service teachers, N = 107 pre-service teachers) showed satisfactory internal consistency for both the emotion regulation and relationship management subtests. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analyses supported the differentiation between the two facets of social-emotional competence. Regarding convergent validity, results from Study 3 revealed a positive association between the profession-specific TRUST and pre-service teachers’ general emotional intelligence. Furthermore, small to moderate correlations with the Big Five personality traits provided evidence for the discriminant validity of TRUST. In Studies 1 and 2, we found evidence for a correlation with external criteria, that is, teachers with higher test scores reported providing more emotional support for students and having better teacher-student relationships. For teachers’ occupational well-being, we found a link with symptoms of depersonalization and job satisfaction, but none for emotional exhaustion. We will discuss the use of TRUST in research, for the evaluation of interventions, in teacher education, and professional development and will illustrate ideas for enhancing the tool. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that there has been a ‘paradigm shift’ in the field of assessment over the last two or three decades: a new preoccupation with what learners can do, what they know or what they have achieved. It is suggested in this article that this change has precipitated a need to distinguish two conceptually and logically distinct methodological approaches to assessment that have hitherto gone unacknowledged. The upshot, it is argued, is that there appears to be (...) a fundamental confusion at the heart of current policy, a confusion occasioned by the demand to know what learners know and compounded by a failure to recognise what this properly entails for assessment methodology. (shrink)

Patient competence, defined as the ability to reason, appreciate, understand, and express a choice is rarely discussed in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, and coercive measures are seldom used. Nevertheless, a psychiatrist of psychologist may doubt whether OCD patients who refuse treatment understand their disease and the consequences of not being treated, which could result in tension between respecting the patient’s autonomy and beneficence. The purpose of this article is to develop a notion of competence that is grounded in clinical (...) practice and corresponds with the experiences of patients with obsessions and/or compulsions. We present a naturalistic case study giving both the patient’s and the therapist’s perspective based on in-depth interviews and a narrative analysis. The case study shows that competence is not merely an assessment by a therapist, but also a co-constructed reality shaped by the experiences and stories of patient and therapist. The patient, a medical student, initially told her story in a restitution narrative, focusing on cognitive rationality. Reconstructing the history of her disease, her story changed into a quest narrative where there was room for emotions, values and moral learning. This fitted well with the therapist’s approach, who used motivational interventions with a view to appealing to the patient’s responsibility to deal with her condition. We conclude that in practice both the patient and therapist used a quest narrative, approaching competence as the potential for practical reasoning to incorporate values and emotions. (shrink)

Several bioethicists have recently advocated the force-feeding of prisoners, based on the assumption that prisoners have reduced or no autonomy. This assumed lack of autonomy follows from a decrease in cognitive competence, which, in turn, supposedly derives from imprisonment and/or being on hunger strike. In brief, causal links are made between imprisonment or voluntary total fasting and mental disorders and between mental disorders and lack of cognitive competence. I engage the bioethicists that support force-feeding by severing both of these causal (...) links. Specifically, I refute the claims that VTF automatically and necessarily causes mental disorders such as depression, and that these mental disorders necessarily or commonly entail cognitive impairment. Instead, I critically review more nuanced approaches to assessing mental competence in hunger strikes, urging that a diagnosis of incompetence be made on a case-by-case basis—a position that is widely shared by the medical community. (shrink)

This study aims to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on social competence and social acceptance among adolescents. The participants were 106 adolescents aged 12-15 years (M = 13.41 years; SD = 0.81 years). Participants were randomly assigned to the control group (n = 44) and an experimental group (n = 69). In the experimental group, an intervention based on the Sport Education Model (SEM) was applied. While in the control group, an intervention based on the Traditional Model of (...) Direct Instruction (TM-DI) was carried out. An experimental design with repeated pretest and posttest measurements was developed. The Adolescent Multidimensional Social Competence Questionnaire (AMSC-Q) was used to assess social competence. The Guess Who (GW4) questionnaire was used to assess social acceptance (SA) among peers. The preliminary results obtained in this investigation showed that the intervention based on the SEM (experimental group) promoted greater improvements in some indicators of social competence and social acceptance among peers than those obtained with the TM-DI (control group). Furthermore, the results confirm a similar impact of the intervention between boys and girls. It is also relevant to note that these findings highlight the efficacy, feasibility, and suitability of this educational intervention with adolescents. (shrink)

BackgroundSocial cognition and competence are a key part of daily interactions and essential for satisfying relationships and well-being. Pediatric neurological and psychological conditions can affect social cognition and require assessment and remediation of social skills. To adequately approximate the complex and dynamic nature of real-world social interactions, innovative tools are needed. The aim of this study was to document the performance of adolescents on two versions of a serious video game presenting realistic, everyday, socio-moral conflicts, and to explore whether (...) their performance is associated with empathy or sense of presence, factors known to influence social cognition.MethodsParticipants first completed a pre-test measure of socio-moral reasoning based on three dilemmas from a previously validated computer task. Then, they either played an evaluative version or an adaptive version of a video game presenting nine social situations in which they made socio-moral decisions and provided justifications. In the evaluative version, participants’ audio justifications were recorded verbatim and coded manually to obtain a socio-moral reasoning maturity score. In the adaptive version, tailored feedback and social reinforcements were provided based on participant responses. An automatic coding algorithm developed using artificial intelligence was used to determine socio-moral maturity level in real-time and to provide a basis for the feedback and reinforcements in the game. All participants then completed a three-dilemma post-test assessment.ResultsThose who played the adaptive version showed improved SMR across the pre-test, in-game and post-test moral maturity scores, F = 9.81, pHF < 0.001, ϵ2 = 0.21, but those who played the Evaluative version did not. Socio-moral reasoning scores from both versions combined did not correlate with empathy or sense of presence during the game, though results neared significance. The study findings support preliminary validation of the game as a promising method for assessing and remediating social skills during adolescence. (shrink)

Although Western biomedical ethics emphasizes respect for autonomy, the medical decision-making of Muslim patients interacting with Western healthcare systems is more likely to be motivated by relational ethical and religious commitments that reflect the ideals of equity, reciprocity, and justice. Based on an in-depth cross-cultural comparison of Islamic and Western systems of biomedical ethics and an assessment of conceptual alignments and differences, we argue that, when working with Muslim patients, an ethics of respect extends to facilitating decision-making grounded in (...) the patient’s justice-related customs, beliefs, and obligations. We offer an overview of the philosophical contestations of autonomy-enhancing practices from the Islamic tradition of biomedical ethics, and examples that demonstrate a recommended shift of emphasis from an autonomy-centered to a justice-focused approach to culturally competent agency-promotion. (shrink)

In the past decade, ASEAN has been the primary driver of East Asian regionalism, and Korea has been an active supporter of ASEAN plus Three. Korea has explored the idea of an East Asian Community, and has been relatively open to notions of Asia–Pacific regionalism. The ROK has involved itself comparatively heavily in regional projects as both an initiator and a participant, but its notion of ‘region’ has oscillated between more and less inclusive forms of regionalism. This article examines how (...) competing conceptions of region have influenced Korea's pursuit of regional initiatives. By revisiting historical understandings of Korea's regional identity, we explore the normative bases and material interests which motivate Korean regional initiatives, and assess the impact of its proposals. (shrink)

This book makes the case for a revival in interest in the viva. As an oral assessment of a treatise or dissertation or of a student's performance in art or dance the viva has a long history dating back to the time of the Greeks. It can be found today in the form of professional, vocational and academic vivas, where a judgment of oral performance is required to gain entry into a profession or community of scholars. In a time (...) when there are scandals about students selling essays to other students, the viva provides a fertile ground for probing the student to see whether they are in fact the authors of the work being assessed and know its content and how to think cognitively or otherwise. Given that we actually know so little about the viva, the book theorises the viva based on a unique sample of vivas that have been filmed or in which the author himself has been participant, and discusses why its format is so different in Anglo-Saxon languages and Latin and other languages. The book offers educational policy-makers and examiners a trade-off between arguments in support of the viva and the demand for other, ever more cost-effective forms of assessment as the numbers of both undergraduate and postgraduate students threaten to increase. It also argues that with demand in the labour market for qualified graduates who are better equipped with transferable skills, such as the ability to communicate complex ideas verbally in a competent, well-argued fashion and not merely through the use of rhetoric, what appear to be cost-effective forms of assessment in the short run (e.g. written exams with standardised questions or multiple choice) may actually in the long run be of less value if we are investing in a future workforce with so-called 21st century communication skills. If the viva were abandoned, the student would be robbed of the opportunity to stage a defence. (shrink)

Despite increasing popularity and intensive worldwide use, few studies have assessed the validity and factorial structure of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale. However, scientific literature showed that the original factorial structure of the HFS was not fully replicated and—in addition—the Italian translation is still lacking. To fill this gap, this study aims to extend evidence about the original HFS factorial validity by analyzing the Italian version. The final sample was composed of 523 randomly enrolled participants [139 males, 384 females ] aged (...) from 18 to 82 years who completed the Italian version of the HFS. The confirmatory factor analysis showed good fit indices for the original hierarchical factor solution and a significant decrease in model fit was found for all of the competing models. Also, the Italian version of the HFS revealed good reliability and very good psychometrical properties. Findings suggest that the Italian version of the HFS can be considered a reliable and good psychometrically based instrument for the assessment of dispositional forgiveness of the Self, Other, and Situation. (shrink)

The paper is an opinionated tour of the literature on the reasons for which we hold beliefs and other doxastic attitudes, which I call ‘operative epistemic reasons’. After drawing some distinctions in §1, I begin in §2 by discussing the ontology of operative epistemic reasons, assessing arguments for and against the view that they are mental states. I recommend a pluralist non-mentalist view that takes seriously the variety of operative epistemic reasons ascriptions and allows these reasons to be both propositions (...) and truth-making facts. In §3, I turn to consider what it takes for a consideration to be an operative epistemic reason, examining three conditions – the representational, treating, and explanatory conditions – that have been proposed. I offer a novel view about the explanatory condition. In §4, I discuss the special case of inferential operative reasons and examine attempts to understand them in terms of rule-following, sketching a competence-based spinoff of dispositionalism. Finally, in §5, I consider whether there are non-inferential operative reasons, observing that one needn't countenance them to be a foundationalist but then developing a view about what they are and how they do and don't differ from inferential reasons. (shrink)

In developed countries, companies are now substantially reliant on the skills and abilities of their leaders to tackle a variety of complex issues. There is a growing consensus that leadership development training and assessment methods should adopt more holistic methodologies, including those associated with the emotional and neuroendocrine aspects of learning. Recent research into the assessment of leadership competencies has proposed the use of objective methods and measurements based on neuroscience. One of the challenges to be faced in (...) the development of a performance-based methodology to measure leadership skills is how to generate real-life situations with triggers that allow us to study management competencies under controlled laboratory conditions. A way to address this question is to take advantage of virtual environments to recreate real-life situations that might arise in performance-based assessments. We propose virtual reality (VR) as a very promising tool to observe various leadership related behavioral patterns during dynamic, complex and realistic situations. By seamlessly embedding assessment methods into virtual learning environments, VR can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity. VR also holds unlimited opportunities for leadership training providing subjects with intelligent tutoring systems that adapts situations in real time according to the observed behaviors. (shrink)

BackgroundParent-mediated intervention has been studied in promoting skill acquisition or behavior change in the children with autism spectrum disorder. Most studies emphasize on the improvement of child’s core symptoms or maladaptive behaviors, making parental perceived competence and self-efficacy secondary. Yet, the evaluations of intervention implementation are under-reported, especially when translating such interventions into a new population or context. This research investigated the intervention implementation of a 12-week parent coaching intervention which was delivered through telehealth and tailored to Chinese population. The (...) intervention was based on the Parent-mediated Early Start Denver Model with culturally adapted lectures, manuals, and demonstration and commentary videos. This study aimed to evaluate the intervention implementation by assessing parents’ satisfaction, acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility.MethodA randomized controlled trial was conducted with two telehealth conditions: self-directed and web+group therapy. Parents in the self-directed condition received intervention individually through the online learning platform. The web+group therapy condition navigated the same program with weekly 1.5-h group coaching sessions via videoconferencing. This mixed-methods study used a concurrent convergent design to evaluate the intervention implementation at post-intervention. The quantitative data was collected from the Program Evaluation Survey and the qualitative data was collected from five focus groups.ResultsParents in self-directed group reported significantly lower scores in total perceived competence than parents in web+group therapy condition, while there was no group difference on the total self-efficacy. Tailored feedback, demonstration and commentary videos, peer commenting, live coaching, and guided reflection were the top-five acceptable telehealth strategies that were strongly endorsed by parents. Family centered care, home-based intervention, strategies relative to daily activities, the remote learning platform, and the program-based community were elements that parents considered when evaluating the program’s appropriateness. Parent modeling, step-by-step instructions, and tailored feedback were key components in making intervention strategies feasible for parents to implement at home.ConclusionFindings indicate the application of telehealth was acceptable, appropriate, and feasible for Chinese parents. Group-based parent coaching intervention via videoconferencing could be a promising home-based service model to increase parental perceived competence. A large-scale RCT is needed to investigate the effectiveness of group-based PMI via telehealth. (shrink)

Handling the impacts and consequences of technology has become a problem of political, social and scientific relevance since the Sixties. The earlier assumption that technological evolution would automatically lead to social and human progress in an emphatic sense can no longer be sustained. The ambivalence of technology has become a standing topic in the public, philosophical and scientific debate .In this situation new challenges to technology policy are emerging. Functions of an `early warning' with respect to the risks or potentials (...) of new technologies or to ways of avoiding or, at least, resolving technology conflicts by compromise have been postulated . Technology policy pursued by parliament or government, therefore, is in need of scientific consultation . Since the Seventies a number of institutions in this field have been founded , either primarily as parliamentary bureaus of knowledge-transfer to the decision-makers , as networks with a low degree of institutionalization or as independent scientific institutes .The scientific discussion on how to acquire and establish orientational knowledge for decision-makers facing the ambivalence of technology is sectoralized into two branches: the ethics of technology and technology assessment . These two branches are based on fundamentally different assumptions concerning how to give orientation to technology policy: the philosophical ethics, of course, emphasizes the normative implications of decisions on technology and the importance of moral conflicts , while technology assessment relies mainly on sociological or economic research .Both approaches have largely been developed and practised without regard to one another. In Germany, at the beginning of the Nineties the conceptual discussion around these questions was initiated. At first, a lot of misunderstandings appeared, both parties fundamentally criticizing each other, often one denying the competence of the other to deal appropriately with technology problems . In this paper the conflict is analyzed by looking at the situation in Germany, summarizing and weighing the main arguments which have been brought up by TA and the ethical approach to technology.As a result it will be shown that both are partly right, whereby the relative weight of both approaches in their capacity to give orientation is dependent on contextual circumstances. A non-reductionistic overall approach must take into account the normative aspects of the ethics of technology when handling moral conflicts as well as the need for operationalization, concreteness and established knowledge about the processes of “managing technology in society” postulated by TA. (shrink)