Striving for competence in the assessment of competence: Psychology's professional education and credentialing journey of public accountability.

Abstract

The history of psychology's development as a licensed profession is traced over the past 60 years through the evolution of the profession's quality control practices in education and credentialing. These two essential features of a profession began at about the same time, but evolved quite independent of one another for the first 30 years. Shaped by events of the 1970s and 1980s, however, there has been a gradual convergence of focus by those responsible for professional education and credentialing on how best to assess the quality of professional education programs and their graduates who apply for licensure. Although at first this focus was predominantly on the content of curriculum taught and the knowledge examined, increasingly over the past decade there has been a shift of emphasis to the broader, more complex construct of competence to practice for which examination of knowledge is a necessary but insufficient assessment. The article describes the events and structures that led to this outcome and concludes with comments about the future.

Psychotherapy Supervision in the New Millennium: Competency-Based, Evidence-Based, Particularized, and Energized

“…While in one way or another those three matters (competence, evidence, accountability) have always been of concern to supervisors, they are being far more explicitly, specifically, and comprehensively addressed now than at any other time in the history of supervision. Competency initiatives within the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) provide us with excellent examples of that Falender and Shafranske 2004, 2007, 2008Roth and Pilling 2008;Turpin and Wheeler 2011). The beauty of a competency-based approach is that it ''… provides an explicit framework and method to initiate, develop, implement, and evaluate the processes and outcomes of supervision'' (Falender and Shafranske 2004, p. 20).…”

“…As Falender and Shafranske (2012) have nicely described, a highly substantive cultural shift has been occurring and continues to occur in conceptualizing how education can best be delivered and assessed in the helping professions (cf. Nelson 2007;Roberts et al 2005).…”

Clinical Psychology Students’ Experiences of a Pilot Objective Structured Clinical Examination

“…There is general agreement among clinical psychology educators on the importance of developing and evaluating core competencies in clinical psychology training (Borden & McIlvried, 2010;Ducheny, 2010;Nelson, 2007;Pachana, Sofronoff, Scott, & Helmes, 2011). This emphasis on a competency-based model enables training programs to provide systematic assurance that their graduates are fit to practice.…”

Brief Online Training with Standardised Vignettes Reduces Inflated Supervisor Ratings of Trainee Practitioner Competencies

“…These benchmarks indicate the minimal level of practitioner knowledge, skills, and conduct required for a trainee to be considered an entry‐level graduate psychologist. Accurate competence assessment is critical as it ensures that trainees have attained the standards expected by their training institutions, their employers, and relevant regulatory bodies, and as expected by clients and the public more broadly (Nelson, 2007; Tweed, Graber, & Wang, 2010). …”