MULTIDISCIPLINARY REGIONAL FACULTY OF CARAZO

Department of Educational Sciences and Humanities

Career: English

Topic: Curriculum design by competence / Objectives

Group name: Art Work.

Authors:

▪ Karen Vanessa Vega Cruz / ID: 21900218

▪ Luciela Franchesca Martínez García / ID: 21903420
▪ Henry Jafet Garcia Fernandez / ID:08091685
▪ Ilda Beatriz Campos Mora / ID:21906477
▪ Jeyling Lineth Canales Araya / ID:21904123
▪ Yulissa Guadalupe Medrano Castillo / ID:21908480.

Teacher: MSc. Giselle Ortiz.

Date: October 21, 2022.

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OUTLINE

I. Definition
II. Introduction
II.1. Curricular design.
II.2. Curriculum design by competence.
II.3. Competence.
III. Characteristics of Curriculum Design.
IV. Types of Curricular Designs.
V. Curriculum design by competence.
5.1 Objectives
5.2 What is the Curriculum Design by Competence?
5.3 Characteristics of the curricular design by competence.
5.4 Elements.
5.5 Importance.
VI. Evaluation methods in competency-based training.
SAW.
VI. Reflection.

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2. Objectives
2.1. General objective.
To analyze the incidence of the curricular model based on competence that poses
the person as a subject of learning, allowing spaces for reflection that promote
pedagogical mediation in high school students from the Sandino Institute of
Academic Excellence.

2.2. Specific objectives.

 To define the concept of curriculum design by competence
 To Explain the types of curriculum designs
 To Synthesize the elements that structure the curricular design by
competencies.
 To Describe the characteristics and elements of the curricular design by
competence.
 To Identify the importance of curricular design by competence.
 To Analyze the different evaluation methods that allow evidence of the
performance and knowledge of the students.

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*
I. DEFINITION
Curriculum design by competencies and quality in education is a topic of great
importance today, as it also implies great challenges for higher education, this challenge
implies working in contact with the world of work, therefore the participation of employers
is necessary, and graduates in the curriculum design process. The objective of the present
work was to analyze the curricular design by competencies and its influence on the quality
of education, it constituted a non-experimental, descriptive, and documentary research,
based on the inductive-deductive, analytical and synthetic methods. Among the main
findings is the fact that when designing a competency-based curriculum the quality of
education is put into play, since it includes organization and planning of programs that are
under the requirements of the productive and social sector of the population, leaving See
that it is very important because it depends on the graduates showing the capabilities of the
position for which they are hired by the employing organizations.

II. INTRODUCTION
Quality education recognizes the requirements of a specific environment that considers the
requests of society and the interests of the student; articulating educational practices,
relating pedagogical theory, and acquiring meaning. Therefore, quality depends, in large
part, on the relationships between managers, teachers, students, and parents. It also depends
on the ability of these actors to relate to knowledge, politics, and the community, and that
together with their pedagogical training and their competence, they generate retention and
foundation of knowledge in the classroom, and extend it to the social environment.
The importance of the topic lies in the challenge that higher education institutions have in
terms of regulations on the evaluation of learning that give way to the graduation capacities
of students and their labor incursion. Based on this criterion, the following question was
formulated: how does the competency-based curriculum design influence the quality of
education? and to be able to scrutinize issues related to curricular design, skills
development, and quality in education.
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the curricular design by competencies and the
quality of education, to determine the need to improve educational quality.
The scope of this analysis is to describe the curricular design by competencies from the
dimension of the curriculum, which evidences the methodology, actions, and results of the
diagnosis, modeling, structuring, and organization of quality curricular projects, which
must meet the requirements from a quality assurance perspective.
2.1Curriculum design by competencies
Curricular design is a process that allows the planning and organization of a study plan for
the development of educational activities, which allows the development of a significant
learning-teaching process to be carried out to correlate theory with pedagogical and
methodological practice between teachers and students.
The curricular design establishes a dimension of the curriculum which evidences the
methodology, the actions, and the result of the diagnosis, modeling, structuring, and

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organization of quality curricular projects, which must comply with requirements from the
perspective of quality assurance. According to (Interuniversity Development Center -
CINDA, 2010), the following requirements must be met:
"Consistency between the graduation profile and the social objectives of the career,
consistency between the curriculum and the achievement of the graduation profile, having
the economic and administrative means to teach, by competencies, and having pre-
established forms of curricular evaluation for verifying the achievement of competencies»
From these perspectives, Higher Education institutions are currently guiding the curricular
design by competencies as an instrument to improve the Quality of Higher Education at the
global, regional, and local levels. Vocational training based on the contents currently no
longer responds to the demands of problem-solving that society demands. For this reason, it
has become essential that higher education be developed based on skills development.
According to González, Herrera, and Zurita (2010), it states that «Competence-based
training could become the bridge between the traditional paradigm that depends on credits
expressed in hours that measure the achievement of content retention and the revolution in
learning that measures their results” (p. 16).
The curricular design with a focus on learning outcomes is promoting interest in
competencies and the measurement of specific learning and is being implemented globally
in all educational institutions.
The application of this approach is being carried out in the United States, Australia, and
New Zealand, this strategy allows speaking a common language at a global level in all
educational institutions about the results of learning and competencies, to avoid confusion,
it has adopted the competency approach. According to González, Herrera, and Zurita
(2010), competencies are defined as: "a combination of skills, abilities, and knowledge
necessary to perform a specific task" (p. 19).
Training by competencies establishes the strategy as a teaching and learning process that is
aimed at people so that they can develop the skills, knowledge, and attitudes for efficient
job performance. Consequently, competency-based training processes establish the
acquisition of new knowledge to improve professional performance.
a competency is an approach to training, which allows orientation towards practice or
performance, for which the reference is the professional profile, which focuses on
knowledge, to establish a pragmatic approach to professional practice.
The competency-based training model according to González, Herrera, and Zurita (2010)
establishes the:
«Combination of abilities, skills, and knowledge necessary to perform a specific task, a
competence includes both means and an end. The means are the knowledge, skills, and
abilities and the end is to effectively perform the activities or tasks or meet the standards of
a given occupation. Without an end, the term competence loses its true meaning" (p. 23).
(Zúñiga, Poblete , & Vega , 2010)

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From this approach, the competency-based curriculum design ensures that beginning
professionals demonstrate their learned abilities, once they have obtained the knowledge,
skills, and abilities. For these reasons, the competency-based curriculum is called
performance-based training.
2.1.1.Conceptions of Competences
The definitions of competence, according to Zúñiga, Poblete, and Vega (2010) define as:
"the ability to mobilize and correctly apply in a given work environment, own resources
(skills, knowledge, and attitudes) and resources of the environment to produce a defined
result" (p.38). In this regard, (Wattíez & Quiñonez, 2007)define competencies as:
«Abilities that every human needs to resolve effectively and autonomously in life
situations. It is based on a profound being, not only knowing what and knowing how, but
also knowing how to be a person in a complex, changing, and the competitive world" (p.
39).
The competencies in the curriculum allow for responding to the needs of professional
training and allowing adaptation to changes in the context in which society lives, since
professional competencies associate knowledge, abilities, skills, attitudes, and values. In
this context, according to Zúñiga, Poblete, and Vega (2010), state
“Competence-based education is an educational orientation that aims to provide answers to
the knowledge or information society. It originates from labor requirements, which is why
it demands an approach to the world of work from educational institutions». (p.30).
Therefore, the competency model includes compliance as cognitive and affective processes,
adjusting in the learning results, identified as knowing how to do is the main focus of
competency, in this context the other knowledge is related: identified as knowing, thinking,
being, coexist, feel, share.
Quality assurance in education establishes the quality of teaching - learning and knowledge,
skills, and abilities, in this context (González & Arciniegas, 2016) defines quality as: «the
degree to which a set of inherent characteristics meets certain requirements»
From the approach of the knowledge society that education is immersed in, the
competencies according to (Almerich, Suárez, Díaz, & Orellana, 2020)are made up of high-
skill competencies (superior thinking skills and teamwork competencies) and ICT
competencies ( technological, pedagogical and ethical). According to (Machado & Montes,
2020), training by competencies is one of the pillars to advance in the fulfillment of the
objectives of any process that involves the training of professionals to face the present and
future challenges of the society they will face through the work.
According to (Aldana & Ruiz, 2010)"competence is an implicit and genetically determined
mental structure, which is activated in the specific action" (p. 14).
According to (Mederos, 2016)the formation of skills for life is the result of a quality
education that prepares students to take on the challenges of a rapidly advancing world,

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where equity and equal opportunities must constitute premises of education; training them
is a challenge that teachers take on (p. 129).
According to (Cejas, Rueda, Cayo, & Villa, 2019) Training by competencies is a teaching
and learning process that is oriented to people acquiring skills, knowledge, and attitudes for
ideal performance. (p.94).
In conclusion, according to (Alamillo, 2015) we can say: talking about educational quality
is a topic that covers many aspects from the organization of the educational system, the
management administration, teaching planning, students, parents, and school context
among others. In addition, it has to do with a system of values, exercised by the main
actors: students and teachers, parents and society itself. Similarly, he mentions that
educational quality is linked to learning skills to be able to adapt, but above all to anticipate
change.
2.1.2.Training by competencies
In the last decade, competency-based training in higher education in Ecuador has been
established as a requirement for a professional qualification, so it has become a requirement
of curricular reforms in Ecuadorian Higher Education Institutions. Paraphrasing (Sala,
2005)states that: the competency approach is a very important reason to rethink higher
education and states that it is necessary to take into account the curricular, didactic, and
evaluative implications.
The curricular implications: they allow the revision of the formation purposes of the
curriculum; because it constitutes the input required to rethink the organization of the
contents of the study plan. The curriculum by competencies must be elaborated on
problematic nuclei to which several disciplines are integrated, and the development is
carried out based on processes and not on content.
Didactic implications: they lead to changing the traditional methodologies used by teachers
to active collaborative methodologies oriented towards the student and the teaching-
learning process to have methodological mastery and be able to work on structural concepts
based on cognitive domains so that teaching strategies are applied. that converge in the
multidisciplinarity of the subject.
Implications in the evaluation: in competency-based training, evaluation is a very complex
factor, given that it leads to reforms to the educational system of the universities. In this
regard, González and Zurita (2010) state that: «The specific purpose of using competencies
in curricular design for the development of employability conditions is to increase the
possibility of transforming learning experiences into organizational results based on
performance» (p. 2. 3). In conclusion, the implementation of competency-based training
leads to a radical transformation in higher education, as well as changes in the way of
teaching, for which new methodologies are required to transfer knowledge to students.
2.2.Quality in education
The purpose of quality in education, according to Zúñiga, Poblete, and Vega (2010) is:

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It is to generate in an educational institution a clear leadership and teamwork that manages
learning with quality, based on an institutional educational project shared by the entire
educational community, with impact strategies that promote the comprehensive training of
students (purpose), and within this, the development and strengthening of the ethical project
of life, the commitment to the challenges of humanity, the research vocation and
professional suitability through generic and specific skills» (p. 34).
Quality education allows training professionals with skills to handle conflict resolution in
institutions, under the scenarios: social, economic, technological, and political.
From the quality education approach, Zúñiga, Poblete, and Vega (2010) describe that:
«institutions must decide to build and agree on a concept of quality. This construction
needs to be adopted and shared and go through the work of the essential functions, in this
case, teaching, research, management and linking» (p. 33).
According to González and Arciniegas (2016), Quality Assurance is defined as:
Set of planned and systematic activities implemented within the Quality System, and
demonstrated as required to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will meet
the requirements for quality, and satisfies given requirements for quality, which must be
supported by the satisfaction of customer expectations (pp. 35).
Consequently, quality assurance in education provides confidence, and security of
compliance with educational standards and contributes to guaranteeing the transfer of
knowledge to train competitive professionals, which contributes to improving greater
productivity in organizations. According to Zúñiga, Poblete, and Vega (2010), quality
management «involves reforming academic processes in universities so that training offers
to respond to changes and social, technological and professional advances (...) the purpose
of training capable people to face challenges posed by today's society» (p. 34).
2.2.1.Employment-oriented curriculum design and quality assurance
The curricular design oriented to employability and quality assurance, according to
(Letelier & Sandoval, 2010)requires the following elements:
Employability Orientation: a model where the design and implementation of the curriculum
are oriented to meet the needs of the external environment, which response to professional
challenges within the framework of the country's socioeconomic situation.
Training by competencies: it is conceived as one that is oriented to effectively train skills of
labor relevance in students when the conditions of the institution or the career/program
Quality assurance: obliges higher education institutions to be as pertinent as possible in the
development of university activities. If the competency-based approach is more relevant for
the training of students, it will be necessary to opt for it; Otherwise, another approach that
is relevant and follows the training needs of each university must be sought, analyzed, and
selected. This response to the fact that universities, as institutions dedicated to the training
of comprehensive professionals, must decide how they will approach the training of their
students in the context of the demands of the external world, what types of learning they

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intend to achieve in their students, how learning is being evaluated and how it is taught,
among others.
To give clarity, logic, and coherence to these guidelines, it is necessary to describe what a
Model is: it is the specification and organization of minimum requirements to define a
curriculum based on the concept of Quality Assurance.
Quality assurance is a fundamental requirement that allows for consistency between the
purposes and goals established by the institution of higher education, and the expected
results and impacts focused on continuous improvement. In this line, the definition of
quality assurance mechanisms is essential to guarantee the existence of procedures and
regulations, and the monitoring and evaluation of the processes linked to teaching.
2.2.2.Curriculum design model by competencies with a process approach
The curricular design by competencies is established from the definition process
established by: comprehensive training that covers established knowledge such as cognitive
abilities, skills known as motor census capacity; skills: attitudes, and values.
The process of approach by theories: discovery learning, meaningful learning, socio-
constructivism, and constructivism.
The characteristics process is established by a modular structure, and integrates skills,
content, theory, practice, activities, and evaluation; It implies knowledge, attitudes, values,
skills, motivations, and abilities.
It is based on the process of the pillars of education: knowing (knowledge), knowing how
to do (methodologies); knowing how to be (interrelations; and, being (integrity.
It is administered through the planning process: specific skills, content, type of evaluation,
evaluation instruments, evidence, and comprehensive qualification.
2.2.3.Educational quality
The quality in education has been latent in recent decades because this quality is of great
use to society, this approach several authors state, according to (Cantu, 2011)defines:
«quality encompasses all the qualities that a service has to be of use to those who employ it.
(Vargas, Quiñones, & Aldana de Vega, 2007)defines it as «Quality and service accompany
man in all his work from the beginning of life»; According to Nava (2006) «Quality
constitutes an integral function of every institution». From the approach of these
definitions, paraphrasing (Bodero, 2014)educational quality derives the following facts:
Education is a complex reality in itself since it affects the entire human being, the mental
processes of learning are not evident,
The quality of Higher Education Institutions in the last decade is an attribute of the
education service as a comprehensive quality service, and therefore it is a reason for being
of the national accreditation system in Ecuador, according (to the Quality Assurance
Council of Higher Education, 2019)states that: «Accreditation contributes from external
evaluation to internal improvement processes promoted by the institutions themselves».
Quality is an attribute that allows the educational system to have a continuous default

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process, to know the Higher Education System to make adjustments to guarantee society
the quality conditions offered by universities to society.
Quality in education has led to defining different concepts, paraphrasing Cabrera (2005), in
Latin America it has been established:
Quality as excellence based on traditional education, which is equivalent to graduating
outstanding students, quality as a response to the requirements of the environment,
determined by relevance.
Quality is based on the purposes declared by the institution, this trend is sometimes not
sustainable over time.
The social relevance leads to finding new mechanisms to adapt university functions to the
new demands of students and the general public.
The concept of educational quality is currently very difficult to define because there is a lot
of literature on the matter, these conceptions lead to confusion about the quality of
education, according (Quintana, 2018) states that: "This lack of definition of educational
quality is perceived by different authors as a risk of confusion that manifests itself as an
obstacle in multiple aspects of school life» (p. 4). According to (Clavijo & Balaguera,
2020)they state that: "quality higher education is essential to reduce social differences and
the high margins of poverty, which affect developing countries" (p. 128).

a) The development of a competency-based curriculum design has given way to the best
expression of skills of graduates of educational institutions, which has allowed a transition
process between the end of professional training and incorporation into working life.
Likewise, this fact has given way to the improvement of skills and abilities with
professional practice, until reaching the standards of competencies required of an
experienced professional.
b)The quality of education is linked to processes of critical construction of the individual,
through the development of basic and specialized skills, which together with cultural
demands and economic production, has given way to growing demands for competent
human resources. Therefore, educational practices make possible the transformation of the
processes of socialization, construction, and social development, enhancing creativity and
favoring the collective construction of knowledge.
c)Currently, in higher education institutions, there is an immense concern to respond
effectively to the professionalization requirements of employer organizations, and of
society in general, for which a society of knowledge and restructuring of designs has been
promoted. traditional curricula and adjusting them to quality management. Hence,
competency-based training has given rise to more active learning, student-centered and
fundamentally oriented toward professional practice.
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