The AVIVA model (E-Book): A competence-oriented approach to teaching and learning

1 Introduction

1.1 Competencies and resources

Today, curricula and teaching models tend to be oriented towards competencies that learners are expected to acquire during the course of their training or period of study. These include not just professional competencies but also competencies that applied beyond the professional sphere, including specific personal and social competencies.

Competencies usually apply to actual situations in both professional life and personal, day-to-day experiences. Competent behaviour is only possible in these situations if certain resources are available to the practitioner – specific knowledge sets, skills and attitudes. These resources – some of which are acquired prior to training, but most of which are developed through formal education and training programmes – constitute the basic tools required to master challenging situations.

An example can best illustrate how to imagine the interplay of resources: Consider a hairdresser advising a customer who is wondering whether to have her hair dyed or not:

First, attitude plays a role. It is essential that the hairdresser is interested in providing the customer with the best possible advice and meeting their wishes. At the same time, she also has to develop sound business acumen and be interested in selling services. But, let’s stay first with the advising: the hairdresser needs a degree of empathy and intuition; she must feel whether the customer wants to dye her hair fully or whether she wants to leave a few strands of hair white. She must thus put aside her own preferences in favour of those of the customer. She must take responsibility and inform the customer honestly about the consequences of changing her hair colour chemically.

In the end, her responsibilities also include choosing the right means for executing the task and carrying it out correctly and carefully. Thus, her knowledge and skills come into play.

The hairdresser must first know the most varied materials and procedures for colour changes; she must show the customer the possibilities and limits and choose the right material based on their wishes (knowledge).

In order to be able to correctly use the product, the hairdresser must understand the application procedure. She must know the consequences of not adhering to the recommended exposure time but must likewise understand that there are different application techniques for different situations. Therefore, she must consider the actual situation.

Once the hairdresser has decided on an application technique and a product, her skills come into play. When mixing the colour, she considers the exact instructions for use and follows them carefully and correctly. In the end, again, attitudes play a core role when she assumes responsibility for careful execution and adheres to the application time.

1.1.1 Our understanding of competency

Just as in the example above, in this book we use the term competency to refer to a given capacity to activate certain resources – that is, knowledge, skills and attitudes – with respect to a particular practice and to combine these resources with one another in a creative and functional way in order to master concrete situations (cf. Figure 1 and Ghisla, Bausch, & Boldrini, 2008, p. 441). We concentrate in particular here on the domain of schools, but note that what is transmitted and learned in school is just one part of the broader process of developing competencies. Conversely, it is very important that the knowledge, skills and attitudes that learners acquire outside school are embedded, used and reflected upon in the classroom. Teaching should always be linked to the experiences of the learners in the best, most productive sense.

Figure 1 The competencies-resources model

1.1.2 Knowledge, skills, attitudes

A few general notes on the three types of resources

Knowledge: Knowledge can take different forms (cf. e.g. Brühwiler, Hollenstein, Affolter, Biedermann, & Oser, 2017, p. 211). One form can usually be conveyed in statements and is therefore referred to as declarative knowledge. Learners must, for example, know technical terms, understand their meaning and be able to comprehend and name relationships between them. This type of knowledge, however, is not limited to factual contents. Declarative knowledge is also important in techniques for working and learning: learners gain knowledge about possible procedures and workflows. But even that, of course, is not enough. They also need the know-how to carry out that action using specific techniques, which we call procedural knowledge (cf. Euler & Hahn, 2007, p. 109). And furthermore, they need to know when and under what conditions they can use certain working and learning techniques to gain an advantage. Such expert knowledge, adapted to a concrete situation, is referred to as conditional knowledge. Finally, there is also what we call meta-knowledge: this includes the knowledge that a learner has about themselves (e.g. learning habits, personal repertoire of learning strategies), about the learning situation (Metzger, 2001, p. 43) and about specific tasks and various types of tasks (Büchel & Büchel, 2010, pp. 33–38).

Skills: Secondly, learners need to be able to apply their knowledge in certain situations. For this they need specific skills, i.e. an observable ability to perform a learned psychomotor action, which, in many cases, is specifically developed through repetitive training (in the form of learning and working techniques), such that over time it becomes second nature.

Attitudes: Thirdly, the values and norms a person holds are important, as they substantially influence behaviours. Responsibility, empathy, tolerance and interest in the environment are important attitudes of a competent practitioner.

Based on these definitions of resources, we propose the following principles for our book:

1.If a competent practitioner requires the ability to mobilise resources, then these resources must already be to hand, and the function of the school is to develop and systematise them.

2.Competence is always situational – and every situation is different. However, situations can also be typified and simulated, which is a central assumption of school education.

1.2 Core elements of the AVIVA model

The design of the lesson has a substantial influence on the way in which learning goes on in schools. If the teacher always controls every single activity in the classroom, learners will never be allowed to manage their own learning. Equally, if the teacher entrusts learners with the responsibility of defining the contents and methods of their own learning process,