Education, Odontology and Social work : Interactive and continous assessment for development of professional competence

• Abstract What do dentists, social workers and teachers need to know in order to succeed in working in a culturally heterogeneous society? In addition to developing the competence within the subject field they need to improve their ability to act in situations where different kinds of citizenship are expressed contingent on time, contexts and reference groups. Every professional needs to reflect upon and being able to handle the fact that “our norms are human and historical rather than immutable and eternal” (Nussbaum 1997, p.52). Professionals working in care, education and health must be able to handle “real life scenarios” which are connected to social cultural and ethnic variation, as well as gender. The effect of globalization has over the last decades created a new attention to politics concerning identity and citizenship (Giddens 1991). As Wenger (1998) points out, educational institutions are multifaceted organisms consisting of related interacting sub-communities. Concepts like ‘periphery’ and ‘centre’ (Giddens 1984, Labrie 1999, Giampapa 2004), will be adequate to use when analysing how students interact and negotiate their identities. The aim of the project is to use assessment in developing students’ professional competence during their courses of studies for qualification as social workers, teachers and dentists in a culturally heterogeneous society. The difficulty of uniting theory and practise into a cohesive whole is solved by the use of “simulated” authentic situations. The students describe professional activity in their work-placement reports. These are also described by the teachers. They are used in self-assessment, group discussion and examination. The situations are characterized partly by specific theoretical knowledge and partly by the obscure. In practice, the concept means that the students describe, analyse and act, compare their own handling of the situation with others’ and articulate their need to further develop their competence. Access to a learning management system (LMS) means that everything is documented and easy to search through.

Nyckelord

assessment

authentic scenarios

professional

citizenship

social cultural

heterogeneity

simulation

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