Improving teaching capacity to increase student achievement: the key role of communication competences in Higher Education

Rodríguez, A. and Souto, Jaime E. (2019): Improving teaching capacity to increase student achievement: the key role of communication competences in Higher Education. Published in: Studies in Educational Evaluation , Vol. 60, (4 March 2019): pp. 205-213.

Abstract

The educational model based on competences established under the unifying framework of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), has brought new challenges and threats for educational institutions at university level, who now have to adapt, update and face up to this new educational paradigm. This paper addresses the competences from two different perspectives; the first relating to the level reached by the student through university training received; and the second concerning the level required by labour market in the profession studied. The empirical analysis was performed using nonparametric statistics on a sample of 236 individuals, following the methodology of the Tuning project. The results support the existence of differences between the two blocks of analysed competences, as well as the importance of communication competences and the relationships of competences related to communication with all other competences with highest differences. This point to a course of action based on these competences, especially communication competences, as a way for working on improving the competence results in higher education.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: higher education, communication competence, teaching-learning, university training
• Subjects: A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics; A - General Economics and Teaching > A2 - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics; L - Industrial Organization > L0 - General; L - Industrial Organization > L2 - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M0 - General; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M1 - Business Administration; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M1 - Business Administration > M13 - New Firms ; Startups; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M1 - Business Administration > M14 - Corporate Culture ; Diversity ; Social Responsibility; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M2 - Business Economics; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M2 - Business Economics > M21 - Business Economics; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O15 - Human Resources ; Human Development ; Income Distribution ; Migration; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Innovation ; Research and Development ; Technological Change ; Intellectual Property Rights; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Innovation ; Research and Development ; Technological Change ; Intellectual Property Rights > O31 - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics

References

Albers, P. (2001). Oral and Written Communication. In Many, J. E. (Ed.). Handbook of instructional practices for literacy teacher-educators: Examples and reflections from the teaching lives of literacy scholars (pp. 99-106). Abingdon: Routledge.

Arene (2007). The Bologna Process and Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences. Participation of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences in the European Higher Education Area. The Final Report of the Project. Helsinki: Edita Prima Oy.

Arguelles, A., & Gonczi, A. (2000). Competency Based Education and Training: a world perspective. México: Editorial Limusa.

Astin, A. W. (1993). What matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Auria, P., & Carmen, M. (2007). Nuevos entornos y nuevos modelos pedagógicos para el aprendizaje de las destrezas orales [New environments and new pedagogical models for learning oral skills]. El desarrollo de competencias en Lenguas Extranjeras: Textos y otras estrategias, 99-119.

Bajo, M. T., Maldonado, A., Moreno, S., Moya, M., & Tudela, P. (2003). Las competencias en el nuevo paradigma educativo para Europa [Competencies in the new educational paradigm for Europe]. Granada: Universidad de Granada.

Beckett, D. (2004). Embodied competence and generic skill: The emergence of inferential understanding. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(5), 497-508.

Bergsmann, E., Schultes, M. T., Winter, P., Schober, B., & Spiel, C. (2015). Evaluation of competence-based teaching in higher education: From theory to practice. Evaluation and Program Planning, 52, 1-9.

Bianchi, M., Hernández-Lara, A. B., & Gualdi, D. (2015). The contribution of virtual enterprises to competence-based learning: an assessment from the students’ perspective: Case study. Technology, Innovation and Education, 1(1), 4.

Bigelow, J.D. (1995). Teaching Material Skills. Journal of Management Education, 5, 23-35.

Boni, A., & Lozano, J. F. (2007). The generic competences: An opportunity for ethical learning in the European convergence in higher education. Higher Education, 54, 819-831.

Bowden, J.A. (1993). Implications for Higher Education of a Competency-Based Approach to education and Training, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.

Brown, H. Douglas. (1994). Principles of language learning and teaching. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.

Bruce, C., & Gerber, R. (1995). Towards university lecturers’ conceptions of student learning. Higher Education, 29(4), 443-458.

Burms, R. W., & Klingstedt, J. L. (1981). Competency-Based Education. An Introduction. NJ: Englewood Cliffs, Educational Technology Publications.

Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied linguistics, 1, 1.

Canale, M. (1983). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. Language and communication, 1(1), 1-47.

Carracedo, F. S., Soler, A., Martín, C., López, D., Ageno, A., Cabré, J., Garcia, J., Aranda, J. & Gibert, K. (2018). Competency Maps: an Effective Model to Integrate Professional Competencies Across a STEM Curriculum. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 1-21.

Colvin, (2015), Humans are underrated. Fortune, 172, 2, 100-113. http://fortune.com/2015/07/23/humans-are-underrated/.

Dalle Rose, L. F. D. (2015). Impact of Erasmus mobility for study on the development of Tuning Europe generic competences, as assessed by outgoing and incoming students in a large university: a revealing analysis. Tuning Journal for Higher Education, 3(1), 57-98.

De la Orden, A. (2011). El problema de las competencias en la educación general [The problem of competencies in general education]. Bordón. Revista de Pedagogía, 63(1), 47-61.

Delgado, A. M., Borge, R., Garcia, J., Oliver, R., & Salomon, L. (2006). Evaluación de las competencias en el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior [Assessment of competences in the European Higher Education Area]. Barcelona: JM Bosch Editor.

De los Rios, I., Cazorla, A., Diaz-Puente, J. M., & Yagüe, J. L. (2010). Innovation and Creativity in Education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 1.368–1.378.

DeKeyser, R. (2016). Of moving targets and chameleons: Why the concept of difficulty is so hard to pin down. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 38(2), 353-363.

Deming, D. J. (2015). The growing importance of social skills in the labor market (NBER Working Paper 21473). Cambridge, MA: Natioanl Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w21473.pdf

Engleberg, I. N., Ward, S. M., Disbrow, L. M., Katt, J. A., Myers, S. A., & O'Keefe, P. (2017). The development of a set of core communication competencies for introductory communication courses. Communication Education, 66(1), 1-18.

Fallows, S., & Steven, C. (2000). Integrating key skills in higher education; employability, transferable skills and learning for life. Londres: Kagan Page.

Fahrutdinova, R. A., Fahrutdinov, R. R., & Yusupov, R. N. (2016). The Model of Forming Communicative Competence of Students in the Process of Teaching the English Language. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 11(6), 1285-1294.

Fisher, R. A. (1924). The conditions under which X2 measures the discrepancy between observation and hypothesis. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 87, 442-450.

Foster, P.,& Skehan, P. (1996).The Influence of Planning and Task Type on Second Language Performance.. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(3), 299-324.

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994).The new production of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage.

Gómez, A. R. (2014). Foreign Language Testing through Competence Assessment Rubrics and Oral Interviews in the European Higher Education Area. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 141, 524-532.

Gómez, M., Aranda, E., & Santos, J. (2017). A competency model for higher education: an assessment based on placements. Studies in Higher Education, 42(12), 2195-2215.

Goodman, L.A., & Kruskal, W. H. (1954). Measures of association for cross classifications. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 49, 732-764.

Grootings, P. (1994). Competencies: the word, the facts. European Vocational Training Journal, 1, 5-6.

Hager, P., & Gonczi, A. (1996). What is competence?. Medical teacher, 18(1), 15-18.

Hayes, J. R. (1996). A new framework for understanding cognition and affect in writing. In C.M. Levy & S. Ransdell (Eds.). The science of writing (pp. 76-97). Mahwah: Erlbaum.

Hawse, S. (2017). Transitioning to Professional Work: A View from the Field. In Success in Higher Education (pp. 229-253). Springer, Singapore.

Horowitz, R., & Samuels, S. J. (1987). Comprehending Oral and Written Language. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc.

Hymes, D. (2017). On Communicative competence. The communicative approach to language teaching/ C. Brumfit and K.Johnson (Eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Houston, W. R. (1974). Exploring Competency Based Education. Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.

Jimenez, A., & Palmero, C. (2007). New approaches to university in Spain: academic change, creative dimensions and ethical commitment in the establishment of the European Higher Education Area. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 39(3), 227-237.

Koenig, J. A. (2011). Assessing 21st century skills: Summary of a workshop. Washington DC: National Academies Press. www.nap.edu.

Kohrt, B. A., Jordans, M. J., Rai, S., Shrestha, P., Luitel, N. P., Ramaiya, M. K., Daisy, T., & Patel, V. (2015). Therapist competence in global mental health: development of the Enhancing Assessment of Common Therapeutic factors (ENACT) rating scale. Behaviour research and therapy, 69, 11-21.

Lobanova, T., & Shunin, Y. (2008). Competence based education–a common European strategy. Journal of Computer Modelling and New Technologies, 12(2), 45-65.

Marina, J. A. (2010). La Competencia emprendedora [The entrepreneurship competence]. Revista de Educación, 351, 49-71.

McCroskey, J. C. (1982). Communication competence and performance: A research and pedagogical perspective. Communication Education, 31(1), 1-7.

McCroskey, J. C., & McCroskey, L. L. (1988). Self‐report as an approach to measuring communication competence. Communication Research Reports, 5(2), 108-113.

Morreale, S. P., Osborn, M. M., & Pearson, J. C. (2000). Why communication is important: A rationale for the centrality of the study of communication. Journal of the Association for Communication Administration, 29, 1–25.

Morreale, S. P., & Pearson, J. C. (2008). Why communication education is important: The centrality of the discipline in the 21st century. Communication Education, 57(2), 224-240. doi: 10.1080/03634520701861713

Morreale, S., Backlund, P., Hay, E., & Moore, M. (2011). Assessment of oral communication: A major review of the historical development and trends in the movement from 1975 to 2009. Communication Education, 60(2), 255-278.

Morreale, S. P., Valenzano, J. M., & Bauer, J. A. (2016). Why communication education is important: a third study on the centrality of the discipline’s content and pedagogy. Communication Education, 1-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2016.1265136

Muñoz, C. (2014). Contrasting effects of starting age and input on the oral performance of foreign language learners. Applied Linguistics, 35(4), 463-482.

Nickse, R.., & McClure, L. (1981). Competency-Based Education: Beyond Minimum Competency Testing. New York: Teachers College Press.

Neyman, J., & Pearson, E. S. (1928). On the use and interpretation of certain test criteria for purposes of statistical inference (2a parte). Biometrika, 20, 263-294.

Palardy, J. M., & Eisele, J. E. (1972). Competency based education. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 46(9), 545-548.

PayScale.com. (2016). Which American workers have the biggest egos? MONEY/Payscale.com. http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/big-ego-jobs

Pearson, K. (1911). On the probability that two independent distributions of frequency are really samples from the same population. Biometrika, 8, 250-254.

Perez-Llantada, C. (2006): Learning to Speak, Speaking to Learn: Research Perspectives on Learner Autonomy through Collaborative Work in ELT. In S. BORG (ed.) Language Teacher Research in Europe (pp. 81-94). London: TESOL Publications.

Pérez, A., Lorenzo, F., & Pavón, V. (2016). European bilingual models beyond lingua franca: key findings from CLIL French programs. Language policy, 15(4), 485-504.

Raigon, A. (2015). The impact of introducing foreign language requirements on the Spanish higher education system: The case of Córdoba University. Language Learning in Higher Education, 5 (1), 265-279.

Richards, J. C. (2006). Communicative language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Richards, J. C. (2008). Second language teacher education today. RELC Journal, 39(2), 158-177.

Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rodrigo-Alsina, M. & Lazcano- Peña, D. (2014). Teaching Communication and its adaptation to the EHEA as object of research: an overview, Communication & Society, 27 (2), 221-239.

Rodriguez, A. R., & Espinar, A.M. (2013). Análisis y percepción por parte del alumnado del requisito lingüístico en el acceso al Máster de Formación del Profesorado de Educación Secundaria [Analysis and perception by students of the language requirement in accessing the Master Teacher Training Secondary Education]. Porta Linguarum: revista internacional de didáctica de las lenguas extranjeras, 20, 63-75.

Rubin, R. B. (1982). Assessing speaking and listening competence at the college level: The communication competency assessment instrument. Communication Education, 31(1), 19-32.

Saliha, C. (2011). The Competency-based Approach in Higher Education. Sciences Humaines, 22.

Savignon, S. J. (1972). Communicative competence: An experiment in foreign-language teaching. Montréal: Marcel Didier.

Savignon, S. J. (1997). Communicative competence: Theory and classroom practice: Texts and contexts in second language learning. New-York: McGraw-Hill Humanities Social.

Sawaki, Y. (2007). Construct validation of analytic rating scales in a speaking assessment: Reporting a score profile and a composite. Language Testing, 24(3), 355-390.

Spitzberg, B. H. (1983). Communication competence as knowledge, skill, and impression. Communication Education, 32(3), 323-329.

Spitzberg, B. H. (2000). What Is Good Communication?. JACA: Journal of the Association for Communication Administration, 29(1), 103-19.

Spitzberg, B. H. (2013). (Re)Introducing communication competence to the health professions (Special issue: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Medical Error). Journal of Public Health Research, 2(3), 126-135.

Spitzberg, B. H. (2015a). The composition of competence: Communication skills. In A. F. Hannawa & B. H. Spitzberg (Eds.), In Communication competence (in P. Cobley & P. J. Schulz, series Eds.; Handbooks of Communication Science series, Vol 22, pp. 237-269). Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Spitzberg, B. H. (2015b). Assessing the state of assessment: Communication competence. In A. F. Hannawa & B. H. Spitzberg (Eds.), In Communication competence (in P. Cobley & P. J. Schulz, series Eds.; Handbooks of Communication Science series, Vol. 22, pp. 559-584). Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. (2002). Interpersonal skills. In M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (3rd ed., pp. 564-611). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. (2011). Interpersonal skills. In M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (4th ed., pp. 481-524). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Tuning (2005). Tuning educational structures in Europe II. Bilbao: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Deusto.

Tuning (2008). Tuning educational structures in Europe. Bilbao: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Deusto. Second Edition.

Vázquez, Y. A. (2001). Educación basada en competencias [Competency-based Education]. Educar: revista de educación/nueva época, 16, 1-29.

Vedder, I., & Benigno, V. (2016). Lexical richness and collocational competence in second-language writing. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 54(1), 23-42.

Velasco-Martínez, L. C., & Tójar-Hurtado, J. C. (2018). Competency-Based Evaluation in Higher Education—Design and Use of Competence Rubrics by University Educators. International Education Studies, 11(2), 118.

Wiemann, J. M. (1977). Explication and test of a model of communicative competence. Human communication research, 3(3), 195-213.

Wiemann, J. M., & Backlund, P. (1980). Current theory and research in communicative competence. Review of Educational Research, 50(1), 185-199.

Woodrufe, C. (1993). Assessment centres: identifying and developing competences. Londres: Institute of Personnel Management.