Competency-based approach and S2 assessment training outcomes

Helsinki Adult Education Centre organised a 5-credit national staff training course for Finnish language teachers and trainers from autumn 2024 to spring 2025. The training was funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and was aimed specifically at teachers of liberal arts education. Teachers and trainers from a total of nine different regions participated. The aim was not only to increase teachers' knowledge of competence-based teaching, but also to strengthen their continuous assessment skills.

Based on the feedback received, the training was very rewarding and more similar content would be needed. However, this type of funding is not expected, at least not at this time, so we want to share the lecture material for all Finnish teachers – and of course other languages ​​as well. On this page, you can find the lectures from all five training evenings as condensed videos that you can watch for free. You can sit down, take notes and sip a hot cup of coffee. We hope you enjoy them and get tools for your own work too!

Trainers and topics of training evenings

1. Competence-based approach, Marja Juhola, M.A.

2. Assessing comprehension skills, Jussi Visti, M.Sc.

3. Continuous assessment in support of teaching and learning, Jutta Kosola, M.Sc.

4. Assessment of speaking and interaction, Jutta Kosola, M.A.

5. From the basics of writing skills to independent writing, PhD Irene Wichmann

Deepening the understanding of competency-based learning and language proficiency assessment

During the training, we delved into the preparation of competency-based course descriptions, both theoretically and practically: how to describe competence unambiguously and concisely, and on the other hand, on what basis to assess different levels of competence? What kinds of courses are useful to organize competency-based, and what kinds of courses are so-called ospet less suitable for?

Continuous assessment was seen in education as a set of practices and methods that guide students and support learning. Assessment always goes hand in hand with teaching, its planning and objectives. In addition to general assessment-related themes, we looked more closely at the development of comprehension, i.e. listening and reading skills, and how to assess comprehension. It is worth testing your own comprehension tasks with colleagues before using them for real assessment purposes: What is so-called world knowledge or general knowledge that does not require linguistic competence? Or what kind of words should be avoided in multiple-choice or true-false tasks?

There are also many details involved in the preparation of production tasks that can help or hinder understanding of the task and therefore also the output generated from it. The assessment of interaction, mediation and speaking is diverse both in class work and in test situations. Personality traits can also be ignored: some talk a lot without core content, others stick strictly to the core theme and, for example, do not use important phraseology or minimal feedback in interaction. The teacher must teach and therefore also assess situational variation in both oral and written production.

Writing skills were also studied specifically from the perspective of the development of reading and writing skills: a person can be quite skilled and competent in a language, both orally and in writing, but reading and writing Latin letters does not immediately progress to a level where one can take meeting notes or apply for a job, even as an adult.

The training sparked a lot of discussion both during the lectures and on the online platform. The participants created a learning task based on the theme of each of the five training evenings, which was commented on by both the trainers and other participants. These online discussions were felt to be meaningful both through these comments and through the material bank created based on them. All participants received the materials of the learning tasks for their own use with the right to edit them to support teaching, testing and assessment.