Competence and Opportunity to Learn

Competence and standards are closely related. Competence is “a pattern of effective performance in the environment, evaluated from the perspective of salient developmental tasks”(Masten et al., 1995, p. 1636). Masten et al.'s definition emphasizes that competence is a generalization about a person's adaptation based on performances. In science education, competence has been defined as levels of student achievement. For example, the 1996 and 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) defines student science achievement in three competence levels: basic, proficient, and advanced. Figure 1.1 presents the definition of the NAEP science competence levels for grade 4. As can be seen, each competence level is associated with specific performances, and there is a progression from a lower competence level to a higher one.

The NAEP competence suggests that there are four essential aspects of competence: (a) measurement; (b) student population, i.e., target students; (c) content, i.e., objectives; and (d) judgment, i.e., a cutoff score.