Profiles for Korean Secondary Students’ Key Competencies and the Association with the Effectiveness of Competency-Based Education in South Korea: Using a Latent Profile Transition Analysis

This study investigates changes in profiles for students’ key competencies corresponding to the implementation of competency-based education in South Korea. Using the Korean Educational Longitudinal Survey 2013, a total of 6,131 Korean secondary students’ responses were analyzed. Our target sample is Korean students who were in 8th grade in 2016 and 10th grade in 2018. Three key findings were as follows. First, a series of latent profile analyses found three profiles for key competencies at two different time points, respectively: High-, Medium-, and Low-competency profiles. Second, latent profile transition analysis found membership changes over time, depending on students’ ratings of the effectiveness of competency-based education. Third, a multinomial logistic regression found students’ ratings of the effectiveness of competency-based education to be associated with students’ profile membership in 2018. Implications for future research and contributions are discussed.