Competency Based Education: Organizational Issues and Implications

tangle, this diversity seems to embrace two major themes. One involves using competencies of various kinds as the new focus of schooling activities and graduation criteria. The other concerns the processes by which education is expected to become competency based. This paper represents a first step in clarifying some of the organizational issues related to these two themes. The range of competency (i.e. outcome) expectations reflected in current state policies brings to light two major notions discussed by Spady. One is the distinction between competencies and capacities, and the other is the concept of liferole. In the context of his analysis, the term competency refers exclusively to the ability to perform successfully in the patterned activities which constitute adult life-roles. The term capacity identifies the more discrete skills and capabilities that underlie a competency. When combined and utilized (often in complex ways in life-role contexts), these capacities serve as the enablers or building blocks on which competencies rest. Outcome expectations stated in capacity terms rest on the assumption that students will be able to manage successfully both the integration of individual capacities and the transfer of those ca-