Pack Rachael, Lingard Lorelei, Watling Christopher, Cristancho Sayra
Centre for Education Research and Innovation, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Med Educ. 2020 Jun;54(6):517-527. doi: 10.1111/medu.14072. Epub 2020 Apr 1.
Although competence committees (CCs) are most often conceptualised as group decision-making bodies, policy documents forward a more ambitious vision and outline several additional roles for CCs that support the continuous quality improvement of education programmes and promote formative feedback. However, whether these functions are encompassed in the everyday work of CCs is currently unknown.
This constructivist grounded theory study elaborates the range of roles taken up by CCs and illuminates the processes through which these roles are actualised. Two investigators observed 27 CC meetings (>80 hours) across seven diverse postgraduate programmes at a single Canadian institution. Following each observation, a semi-structured interview was conducted with one CC member. Data collection and analysis unfolded iteratively.
In this study, CCs did much more than make summative decisions about progression and entrustment; they identified a variety of problems that arose at the levels of both the individual learner and the programme, and leveraged their knowledge of assessment data to develop solutions. The problem-solving work of CCs was enabled by the in-depth data review, synthesis and analysis work that occurred before scheduled meetings, outside protected academic or administrative time. Although this work often appeared invisible to those outside the committee, the insights gleaned from data review provided committee members with essential information about how their programme of assessment was unfolding in practice.
Competence committees may be an untapped resource that can support assessment for learning, local evaluation of competency-based medical education (CBME) implementation and continuous quality improvement for programmes of assessment. However, the ability of CCs to engage in this work is fragile and is currently sustained by the willingness of faculty members to devote their time and energy to it. The resourcing of CCs may have profound implications for translation of the theory of programmatic assessment and CBME into practice.
尽管能力委员会（CCs）通常被视为集体决策机构，但政策文件提出了更宏大的愿景，并概述了CCs的其他几个角色，这些角色有助于教育项目的持续质量改进并促进形成性反馈。然而，目前尚不清楚这些职能是否包含在CCs的日常工作中。
这项建构主义扎根理论研究阐述了CCs所承担的角色范围，并阐明了这些角色得以实现的过程。两名研究人员观察了加拿大一所机构七个不同研究生项目中的27次CC会议（超过80小时）。每次观察后，与一名CC成员进行了半结构化访谈。数据收集和分析迭代进行。
在本研究中，CCs的工作远不止对学业进展和委托做出总结性决策；它们识别了个体学习者和项目层面出现的各种问题，并利用其对评估数据的了解来制定解决方案。CCs的问题解决工作是通过在预定会议之前、在受保护的学术或行政时间之外进行的深入数据审查、综合和分析工作来实现的。尽管这项工作对委员会之外的人来说往往是无形的，但从数据审查中获得的见解为委员会成员提供了关于他们的评估项目在实践中如何展开的重要信息。
能力委员会可能是一种未被充分利用的资源，可以支持学习性评估、基于能力的医学教育（CBME）实施的本地评估以及评估项目的持续质量改进。然而，CCs从事这项工作的能力很脆弱，目前是由教师愿意投入时间和精力来维持的。CCs的资源配置可能对将项目评估理论和CBME转化为实践具有深远影响。
