Do Professions Represent Competence for Entry-to-Practice in Similar Ways? An Exploration of Competence Frameworks through Document Analysis

Abstract

Professional accrediting and regulating bodies are increasingly trying to delineate the knowledge and skills needed for entry-to-practice for quality assurance and international labor mobility. The purpose of this study was to compare how professions describe and represent competence. Current, publicly accessible Canadian entry-to-practice competence frameworks for ten professions (Medicine, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Pharmacy, Psychology, Social Work, Teaching, Engineering, Law, and Planning) were analyzed through content and inductive thematic analysis. Findings revealed that although professions describe similar core competencies across technical and intrinsic domains, systematic differences exist in the architectures of the frameworks. Professions with 'meta-competencies' describe competence as being more integrated/holistic. Whereas professions without meta-competencies describe competence as either behavioral-/performance-like lists of 'attributes' or groups of knowledge, skills, and ethical/professional values. How competence is represented within frameworks has implications for how professional education programs conceptualize competence and subsequently design and enact curricula, teaching and learning opportunities, and systems of assessment.