Professional Competence Assessment Diagnostics as an Instrument for Quality Assurance in TVET

Abstract

The international community of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has basically reached a consensus that outcome-oriented quality control should be strengthened through external assessment. Professional competence assessment is generally accepted as an economical evaluation approach to acquire large amounts of in-depth and valid information. Two assessment programs are presented as case studies on the outcome-oriented quality assurance of TVET. The students’ assessment program based on COMET was implemented by local government Chongqing as a quality assurance measure for secondary vocational education, while the teachers’ professional competence assessment program aims at providing methodological reference for quality assurance in teacher further training programs. A fundamental research on the predictive validity of professional competence assessment is also presented to justify its availability as a quality assurance approach.