(Change, Culture, GTM method, Practical learning, real situations, authentic tools and material)

    Change is an inevitable part of organizational life and if you have any leadership role, you'll soon be called upon to help lead it. But, we often fear change. This leads to resistance. So, managing and leading change is a challenging role. It will take you outside of your comfort zone and beyond your existing management and supervision tool-set. 

    This thesis has been written on commission by me, Girgis Hanna Haroun, a supervisor of English at high schools and colleges in Egypt.

we Improve student outcomes, particularly in chronically underperforming schools that disproportionally serve poor and minority students, is a national priority.

  The findings of our research revealed that this researching study is designed to develop thoughtful and highly skilled educators, administrators, policy analysts, and academic practitioners.

Research Content:

What is a Competency?

Competency:

    The combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes that contribute to enhanced employee performance and ultimately result in organizational success. Competencies are typically a mix between behaviors and skills.

    Competency-based learning or competency-based education and training is an approach to teaching and learning more often used in learning concrete skills than abstract learning. It differs from other non-related approaches in that the unit of learning is extremely fine-grained. Rather than a course or a module, every individual skill or learning outcome (known as a competency) is one single unit. Learners work on one competency at a time, which is likely a small component of a larger learning goal.

5-Traits

• Knowledge is the cognizance of facts, truths and principles gained from formal training and/or experience. Application and sharing of one's knowledge base is critical to individual and organizational success.

• A skill is a developed proficiency or dexterity in mental operations or physical processes that is often acquired through specialized training; the execution of these skills results in successful performance.

• Ability is the power or aptitude to perform physical or mental activities that are often affiliated with a particular profession or trade such as computer programming, plumbing, calculus, and so forth.
  

• Individual attributes are properties, qualities or characteristics of individuals that reflect one's unique personal makeup. Individual attributes are viewed as genetically developed or acquired from one's accumulated life experiences.
  
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• Traits:

  A personality trait is often ingrained. When we think of traits we think: outgoing, shy, gregarious or introverted.

Different types of Competency

Competencies usually fall into two categories:

• Behavioural Competencies, which are usually an expression of the softer skills involved in an employee's effective performance at a company.

• Technical Competencies, which are usually concerned with effective use of IT systems and computers, or any technical skills which are necessary for a job role.

Kinds of competencies:

Administrative Competencies:

  They involve "management of the job"

   and this includes more specifically:

1. Management of Time and Priority Setting
2. Goals and Standards Setting
3. Work Planning and Scheduling

Communication Competencies

      They comprise of:

1. Listening and Organising
2. Clarity of Communication
3. Getting Objective Information

Supervisory Competencies

      They encompass:

1. Training, Mentoring and Delegating
2. Evaluating Employees and Performance
3. Advising and Disciplining

 Cognitive Competencies

      They involve:

1. Problem Identification and Solution
2. Assessing Risks and Decision-Making
3. Thinking Clearly and Analytically

What Are Key Competencies?

Key competencies are specific qualities that a company's recruiters have decided are desirable for employees to possess. During interviews and assessment processes, key competencies are used as benchmarks that assessors use to rate and evaluate candidates.

A firm will usually isolate several key skills or core competencies to look for in candidates at interview. You will be graded in terms of each competency based upon your answers to competency-based questions.

See Figure  :  2

 key competencies:

• Teamwork
• Responsibility
• Commitment to career
• Commercial awareness
• Career motivation
• Decision making
• Communication
• Leadership
• Trustworthiness & Ethics
• Results orientation
• Problem solving
• Organisation
• Top Technical Skills

 Finding result  4:

Examples of Core Competency

• Analytical Thinking - Applies logic to solve problems and get the job done.
• Client Service - Ability to respond to the clients and anticipate their needs.
• Computer Competency - Is skilled at operating a computer.
• Conflict Resolution - Works to resolve differences and maintain work relationships.
• Continuous Education - Implements professional development and training.
• Creative Thinking - Ability to look outside the box and develop new strategies.
• Decision Making - Can make decisions and take responsibility for them.
• Document Use - Ability to use and understand documents.
• Empowers Others - Gives employees confidence and allows freedom to complete tasks.
• Ethics - Has personal and professional ethics and fosters a diverse and respectful workplace.
• Evaluation - Ability to evaluate according to accepted methodologies.
• Even Temperament - Controlling emotions and not retaliating to negative behavior.
• Excellent communication - Can use language effectively to gather information and facilitate the exchange of ideas.
• Flexibility - Ability to adapt to changes while keeping focus on goals and apply knowledge to new circumstances.
• Influence - Can enlist the support and cooperation of others and encourage them to be proactive.
• Initiative - Ability to obtain information from several sources to address present needs.
• Interpersonal Relations - Exhibits respect and understand of others to maintain professional relationships.
• Interpersonal Awareness: The ability to have and show empathy to others. Listens well and responds in a non-threatening way.
• Leadership - The ability to establish a team effort that promotes working towards a common goal.

How are Skills and Competencies Different?

Skills:

Skills define specific learned activities, and they range widely in terms of complexity. (“Mopping the floor” and “performing brain surgery” can both be classified as skills.)

Knowing which skills a person possesses helps us determine whether their training and experience has prepared them for a specific type of workplace activity.

In other words, skills give us the “what.” They tell us what types of abilities a person needs to perform a specific activity or job.

Competencies:

Skills give us the "what," but don’t give us the “how.”

For example: How does an individual perform a job successfully? How do they behave in the workplace environment to achieve the desired result?

A real-life scenario:

Core Competencies for teachers

1. Interacting Well with Students

Educators must be able to positively interact with all students. This includes difficult students, students who work below grade-level and students whose personalities just grate on a teacher. Teachers must put aside their prejudices and feelings in order to treat all students with respect, provide them with equal opportunities for learning and make them feel confident.

2. Creating a Learning Environment

Creating a safe learning environment that is conducive to learning is essential. Educators must set high expectations for student performance and behavior. All rules must be enforced consistently and fairly. Students should not have to worry about being bullied in the classroom and should feel comfortable when speaking up.

3. Good at Lesson Plan Design

All educators must be capable of designing lesson plans to meet student needs and cover the standards. This requires knowing how to choose and create instructional materials to accommodate students at different levels. It also requires creating a scope and sequence that provides students with enough time to master the standards.

4. Able to Use Varied Teaching Strategies

Best practices and other appropriate teaching strategies allow competent educators to effectively teach the curriculum. Competent educators may lecture, but they also incorporate a variety of strategies, including non-traditional teaching strategies, to help students with multiple learning styles learn and stay engaged. Educators also attend regular professional development sessions to learn new strategies and the latest best practices.

5. Able to Assess

Educators must design or select and administer effective assessments. An assessment must accurately measure what has been taught and what students have learned. Competent educators combine informal and formal assessment techniques to monitor student performance. They also incorporate technology, portfolios and other creative methods to assess students.

6. Able to Identify Student Needs

Being able to identify and address student needs is a crucial component of an educator's job. This is done by partly using formal and informal assessments to help guide instruction. However, it also involves getting to know students beyond an instructional level, learning about their interests, recognizing changes in mood and making sure students are mentally and emotionally focused on learning.

7. Good at Communication

Communicating effectively with parents and other stakeholders in a child's education is a key component of an educator's job. A quality educator provides regular updates on a child's progress and immediately addresses any concerns that may arise. The educator also knows how to calmly discuss issues with difficult parents and how to come to decisions that have the best interests of the child in mind.

8. Able to Collaborate

Educators must be able to collaborate with other teachers and school staff. Teachers can learn from one another and grow into better teachers through collaboration. They can also collaborate to make the school a safe, effective learning environment for all students and to improve the overall image of the school and the instruction that takes place there.

9. Maintaining a Professional Appearance

Being an educator requires maintaining a professional appearance at all times. This includes dressing appropriately and acting professionally. Educators often serve as role models for students. Actions such as using foul language, gossiping about teachers and students or dressing inappropriately can cause students to lose respect for an educator.

10. Demonstrating a Commitment to the Profession

Educators must make a commitment to education and professional development. Subject matter knowledge fades, teaching strategies change and new research is always modifying the way students learn and teacher's teach. By furthering their education and taking part in professional development sessions, educators can continue to improve the quality of the education they provide.

            5-Discussion

     The purpose of the discussion is to interpret and describe the significance of our findings in light of what was already known about the research problem being investigated and to explain any new understanding or insights that emerged as a result of our study of the problem.

      DISCUSSION provides the explanation and interpretation of results or findings by comparing with the findings in prior studies. Then, I can say that: comparted to the previous study about (Learner-centered teaching), I say that my research is different .

My research recommended the following:

Practical Examples:

See Figure  :  4

1-Communication

I used communication to convince some of my colleagues to share in the active learning training program.

2-Decision making

I used the skill of decision making to include the slow learners who were poor in listening and speaking with theirmates in the same class and made a decision to add  3 extra  periods a week for those slow learners to raise their standard of learning. The plan succeeded .

3-Leadership

I used my leadership; lecturing and modeling to teach my  teachers how to plan a lesson through holding workshops.

4-Results Orientation and team work

I used my team work  and problem solving techniques to work with my colleagues to use Practice instead of GTM Method in teaching English and the result was successful when learners could listen and speak English well.

6-Responsibility

It was the final period when I entered my colleague's classroom. He faced a problem with presenting the new vocabulary. At the end of the period, he asked me to teach him how to present new vocabulary. The bell rang and it was time for all to leave school. I took the responsibility and made a decision to stay with my colleague for more than an hour till he learnt how to perfect it.

7-Commercial Awareness

After my Ministry of education had sent me to East Anglia University, It waited for me to come back and benefit from my experiences in reforming the education system in Egypt. I did it perfectly through using my workshops and my international education website to pass my experiences on to all my colleagues.    

8-Technical Skills

I used my computer, the network, data show, CDs elecrtronic programs and my site in all my workshops.

Teachers should Have Good Communication Skills

                              6-Limitations

 “The empirical results reported herein should be considered in the light of some limitations.”

1-Time constraints

Just as researcxhers have deadlines to turn in their class papers, academic researchers also must meet the deadline for submitting a research manuscript to a journal. Therefore, the time available to study a research problem and to measure change over time is constrained by the deadline of my “assignment.” I should have Made sure I choose a research problem that I will be able to complete well before the assignment’s deadline. If time constraints negatively impacted my study in any way, acknowledge this impact by mentioning a need for a future study (e.g., a longitudinal study) to answer this research problem.

2-Conflicts arising from cultural bias and other personal issues

Researchers might be biased views due to their cultural backgrounds or perspectives of certain phenomena, and this can affect a study’s legitimacy. Also, it is possible that researchers will have biases toward data and results that only support their hypotheses or arguments. In order to avoid these problems, the author(s) of a study should examine whether the way the problem was stated and the data-gathering process were carried out appropriately. I found a difficulty , but I did it .

3-More study:

As a learning method:

    Competency-based teaching method is learner‑focused and works naturally with independent study and with the instructor in the role of facilitator. Learners often find different individual skills more difficult than others. This learning method allows a student to learn those individual skills they find challenging at their own pace, practising and refining as much as they like. Then move rapidly to other skills to which they are more adept.

    While most other learning methods use summative testing, competency-based learning requires mastery of every individual learning outcome, making it very well suited to learning credentials in which safety is an issue. With summative testing, a student who got 80% in the evaluation may have an 80% mastery of all learning outcomes or may have no mastery what-so-ever of 20% of the learning outcomes. Further, this student may be permitted to move on to higher learning and still be missing some abilities that are crucial to that higher learning. For example, a student who knows most traffic laws and has mostly mastered controlling a vehicle could be treated equally with a student who has mastered vehicle control but no understanding of traffic laws, but only one of these students will be permitted to drive.

     What it means to have mastered a competency depends on the learning domain (Subject matter). In a subject matter that could affect safety, it would be usual to expect complete learning that can be repeated every time. In abstract learning, such as algebra, the learner may only have to demonstrate that they can identify an appropriate formula, for example, 4 of 5 times since when using that skill in the next competency, resolving a formula, will usually allow an opportunity for the learner to discover and correct his/her mistakes.
See Figure  :  5

         7-Conclusion

Benchmark competency-based practices in learning and development are:

• Assessments against competencies –
  
• Once the competencies have been defined for particular job / roles, it becomes possible for employees and others to assess the employee's competencies against those required for current or future roles within the organization. This assessment can occur in the following ways:

• Self-assessment –
  
• Typically, the behavioral indicators for the competencies and proficiency levels needed within the target role / job are used as the standard for assessing the performance of the employee using a common rating scale (e.g., five-point scales from Never to Always) for assessing each indicator. The results are compiled and a report is provided that includes the results for all competencies, highlighting both employee strengths as well as competencies requiring improvement. This information can then be used to support the development of an individual learning plan.

Figure  1