Domains of „competency” and „competence” in current pedagogical thesaurus

Abstract

In current pedagogical science competence-based approach is regarded as one of the directions for modernization of vocational education both in Ukraine and abroad. This approach enables, on the one hand, to correspondingly integrate personal ambitions in the field of professional activity and, on the other hand, to use professional potential of each individual to direct the country to more rapid socio-economic progress. In the article the author investigates and specifies the main concepts of the current competence-based approach in education: “competency” and “competence”, which have analogues in many languages of the world and are traditionally used in the pedagogical field; analyzes the difficulties in choosing appropriate Ukrainian lexical units for these concepts; considers the etymology of the term “competence”; studies the emergence and functioning of the idea of competence-based education in historical terms. The thoughts and approaches of Ukrainian and foreign researchers to the definition of the concepts of “competency” and “competence” are introduced. It has been determined that the development of competence-based education as a category of education has passed three stages of development. At the first stage, the use of the terms “competency” and “competence” in educational contexts started both in semantic and grammatical terms. The second stage is characterized by the use of the defined terms in management, administration, in teaching to communication, theory and practice of language learning. At the third stage an impact of globalization processes on education can be observed. It is concluded that understanding and application of the terms “competency” and “competence” in current Ukrainian scientific space are ambiguous, since, on the one hand, they are relatively new to the Ukrainian higher education, and on the other, the competence-based approach in higher education is still under development.