In this scientific article we address the problem of the concept of competition, so vaunted today in the university and work arena.
From our logical positions, we think that the aforementioned concept, even though it is well maintained by most contexts of professional performance, assists it with little probability to characterize or explain such performance, due to its psychological, pedagogical and philosophical inconsistencies with which it must count to configure the categorical body of science.
The fact of flagrantly violating the logical law of identity, conditions the fearsome amphibology of the terms used by the social sciences, constituting those on suitable ground to notice the epistemological gap in the elaboration of the constructs that as concepts it uses. Hence the need for rigorous and extreme examination of this term, given its relevant implication in sustaining the conceptual platform of these sciences.
The ideas reflected here can serve as a reference for the theoretical and methodological research carried out in the fields of university professional training and job performance.
Keywords: competence, professional performance, professional training and research
Development
We consider it appropriate to address the problem of the concept of competition, so vaunted today in the university and labor arena. From our logical positions, we think that the aforementioned concept, even though it is well maintained by most contexts of professional performance, assists it with little probability to characterize or explain what it seeks, namely, the problem of integration of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values as a valid and effective solution in terms of professional actions. This is given, in our opinion, due to its philosophical, logical, psychological and pedagogical inconsistency, knowledge that such problems must have to configure the categorical body of science. The flagrant violation of the logical law of identity,conditions the fearsome amphibology of the terms used by the social sciences, constituting those in suitable soil to notice the epistemological gap in the elaboration of the constructs that as concepts it uses. Hence the need for rigorous and extreme examination of this term, given its relevant implication in sustaining the conceptual platform of these sciences.
The peremptory ideas that have to be placed in the evaluative arena of this heading must revolve around the following working hypotheses:
First. The formation of the concept, and predominantly of the scientific concept, is an ineluctably current and current problem.
Second. The formation of the scientific concept is the first reason for university or third level education.
Third. The concept of competence lacks structural and functional novelty and, methodologically, it is juxtaposed with multiple concepts that are used by the social sciences, such as those of ability, capacity, method, procedure, process, behavior, behavior, habit, integral performance, etc..
Fourth. The classification criteria adopted to structure the types of competences lack scientific rigor in their methodological treatment.
Conclusive idea. The concept of competition is unlikely to shape the categorical body of science, given its philosophical, logical, psychological and pedagogical inconsistency.
Concept formation is an inescapably current problem
The formation of constructs (concepts) and, especially, of scientific constructs, becomes a current methodological problem, not only because science rests inexorably on the forefront of concepts, but, and above all, because the formation of the scientific concept is in fact a problem inherent in the third level training of specialized education. University education is inescapably based on the formation of the concept, a fact that has always become the object of study of multiple investigations, within which the scientific experience of the Russian researchers Vigotsky-Sakharov in the psychological sciences stands out.
No less important, in this same sense, from the historical cultural approach, is the theory of planned and phased formation of mental actions and the concepts of the also Russian researcher P.Ya.Galperin and the theory of the formation of the empirical and theoretical generalizations of the also Russian treatise writer ANLeontiev, in relation to the relationship between teaching and psychic development. And it is not possible to forget the Geneva psychologist Jean Piaget, who, when periodizing the child's intellectual development, set the logical-formal period as one of his periods, after approximately 12-15 years of age. What is the genetic epistemology of this science man talking about, if not the probability of the formation of the scientific concept with the arrival of adolescence?
As it can be noticed, a lot of methodological-investigative path has been traveled, serious, strict, rigorous, as far as variable control is concerned, without counting on the investigations carried out in the context of logic, whose first laws were formulated by the well-known Greek thinker Aristotle, laws subtracted from the dynamics of expression of correct thinking. How could scientific thought cope without the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded third and the law of sufficient reason, the latter formulated simultaneously by the French methodologist Renato Descartes and the German Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, 17th century German philosopher and mathematician, in solving the problems that humanity is concerned about ?. However, we think, why do we turn our backs on the results obtained by these investigations, forgetting the history and logic of science, which is nothing other than the history and logic of concepts? Ambivalence, disaggregation, dilution, confusion and lack of scientific rigor are the only things that remain, predominantly in the social sciences and, particularly, in the educational sciences.
It is regrettable that the international scientific community does not consider a question of extreme rigor: do the social sciences, because they are, have to abide by Leibniz's maxim, according to which he dictates that “… if the Geometry was opposed to our passions and interests as well as morality, we would not stop violating and challenging it, despite all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes, which would be considered as fantasies full of paralogisms… "?
Science is essence and essence is relatively stable. If in the object –phenomenon, fact or situation–, as well as in the subject, the essence of their behavior– and the levels at which it expresses itself– tends to be stable, where does the opportunity for the facts to prosper, at least in the social sciences, are they represented by concepts so dissimilar that, in the worst case, they are arranged in accordance with the very people who brought them to light? How is it possible that there are so many definitions of the same concept that make up the cognitive body of a social science, such as pedagogy, psychology, didactics and methodology? How is it possible that, on the research arena in the field of social sciences, obviously, concepts such as mindfacts, multifacts,cognitive funnel, conceptual bridges, conceptual cartography, semantic networks, concept maps, cognitive maps, rubber maps, transfer, inbreeding categorial, supracategory, heuristic EVU, metaattention, metamemory, metacomprehension, ecodisciplinary method? And to this we could well add the fact, prevailing as a sad fashion, of giving any concept a strategic nature, eg, strategic management, strategic objectives, strategic planning, strategic marketing, strategic thinking, strategic tools, strategic prospects, etc., with the poorly achieved purpose, in our opinion, to explain what concerns the formation and mastery of a certain concept.categorial inbreeding, supracategory, heuristic vee, meta-attention, meta-memory, meta-understanding, eco-disciplinary method? And to this we could well add the fact, prevailing as a sad fashion, of giving any concept a strategic nature, eg, strategic management, strategic objectives, strategic planning, strategic marketing, strategic thinking, strategic tools, strategic prospects, etc., with the poorly achieved purpose, in our opinion, to explain what concerns the formation and mastery of a certain concept.categorial inbreeding, supracategory, heuristic vee, meta-attention, meta-memory, meta-understanding, eco-disciplinary method? And to this we could well add the fact, prevailing as a sad fashion, of giving any concept a strategic nature, eg, strategic management, strategic objectives, strategic planning, strategic marketing, strategic thinking, strategic tools, strategic prospects, etc., with the poorly achieved purpose, in our opinion, to explain what concerns the formation and mastery of a certain concept.strategic planning, strategic marketing, strategic thinking, strategic tools, strategic prospects, etc., with the poorly achieved purpose, in our opinion, of explaining what concerns the formation and mastery of a given concept.strategic planning, strategic marketing, strategic thinking, strategic tools, strategic prospects, etc., with the poorly achieved purpose, in our opinion, of explaining what concerns the formation and mastery of a given concept.
If we are convinced that the laws of correct thinking "… cannot be repealed, nor substituted by others, they have a universal human character: they are the same for individuals of all races, nations, classes and professions"So how is it possible that contemporary social science thinking has become risky wicked and ignominious in relation to the severity and rigor that should prevail in it? Is it possible that the concepts coined in the field of social sciences can be considered perishable, temporary? Aren't existing concepts representative enough of the realities they reflect? We well know that concepts are subject to historical evolution, but the very fact of reflecting levels of essence indicates that the changes in their definitions are not as abrupt or sudden as one might think. Only the phenomenal in the object can be characterized by those properties.
The problem of the concept, of its formation in the university student, is something simply irrefutable in any professional teaching performance. It constitutes itself, whether you like it or not, in the sine qua non of the preparation of every professional, now in research, now in teaching, without forgetting that the conceptual fact itself is subject to self-investigation. In other words, neither the concepts are configured as innate ideas, as defended by the Prussian thinker Immanuel Kant, dedicated to the investigation of the structure of reason, nor do they appear as a "fourth person of the Holy Trinity", constituting, yes, the "Holy Grail" of the human sciences, the alpha and omega of all of them, sciences that, by all accounts, do not have an unquestionably defined gap in their general conception either.Such is the case of the social sciences, that is, of the human sciences, of behavior, of conduct, of education, in the case of pedagogy, psychology, didactics, methodology. But it is this same conception of the social sciences that endorses its almost infinite multiplicity: philosophy, logic, methodology, ontology, law, economics, anthropology, axiology, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, epistemology, politics, history, pedagogy, psychology, didactics, etc.logic, methodology, ontology, law, economics, anthropology, axiology, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, epistemology, politics, history, pedagogy, psychology, didactics, etc.logic, methodology, ontology, law, economics, anthropology, axiology, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, epistemology, politics, history, pedagogy, psychology, didactics, etc.
The turning point of the social sciences, we believe, has not been for good, but rather to flood the conceptual platform of the latter with unthinkable empiricism. At this point, the fact should not disappear from the horizon of reasoning so firm and rigorous that as an idea it is extraordinarily plausible in the Algerian philosophy, according to which the prominent scholar warns: “… where it is about concepts, dialectical thought arrives, at least, as far as mathematical calculation. "
And, indeed, the brilliant thinker is not only alluding to the dialectic of concepts, which par excellence has to become the ineluctable pivot of any methodologically strict investigation, but, and above all, to the problematic of the concepts themselves. Try to inquire about the concept of essence, just to give an example, and it will hit you when you notice the number of definitions that are given to it. It is not idle to point out, as we show in the table below, the ideas that the students surveyed had about the concept of essence first.
A simple study of students from different universities suggests the unquestionable similarity of the answers given to the question asked. But the most worrying aspect was latent in thinking that the teachers themselves had the same ideas, for which a new investigation would have to be designed, and that no longer corresponds to the objective of this appendix.
| Higher frequency responses
of university students |
|
| Students of the 2nd. semester of the Agrarian University of Havana | Students of the 1st semester (common module) of the Metropolitan University of Ecuador - Matriz Guayaquil |
| What is the essence? | |
| Empirical concept : | Empirical concept : |
|
o What cannot be missing, or what makes it one thing and not another, or the purest, or what does not change, or the result of a study, or most importantly, or the basis of any study, or the transcendental, or the substantial, or the most abstract, or the core, or the fundamental thing, or the main thing, or nuclear, or what characterizes a phenomenon, or the intrinsic to a phenomenon, or the innermost part of the phenomenon. |
o What cannot be missing, or the purest, or what does not change, or the result of a study, or most importantly, or the basis of any study, or the transcendental, or the substantial, or the most abstract, or the core, or the fundamental thing, or the main thing, or nuclear, or what characterizes a phenomenon, or what is not seen with the eyes. |
Table No.1.- “Concept of essence, according to student opinion”
Source: self made.
As can be inferred from the elaborated table, the concept of essence has been defined under its empirical aegis. And it is not that the definition is wrong, but that it is infallibly unfinished. Both groups, from different latitudes, have considered the same.
The scientific definition of the concept itself as a theoretical generalization, places us before one of the most important problems for the teaching and learning processes, since not only the formulations of the theoretical conceptions that underlie the process itself depend on it, but the methodological activity of the person who teaches or learns.
The investigations carried out in this sense, within the pedagogical and psychological sciences, highlight the empirical and theoretical generalizations, by virtue of which the empirical and theoretical concepts are configured, respectively. Supported by the results of these investigations, it could seem that this problem has been sufficiently addressed. But face to face we only ask the rigorous question: what to understand by essence? How to penetrate it, how to discover it, after the multiple phenomenal manifestations of the object of study, within which the appearance also overlaps it?
As it can be observed, not because it is about the essence or it is presupposed that it is a concept that concerns science, since, par excellence, we are dealing with a scientific concept. It is not the case.
The essence is a theoretical construct and therefore does not exist in the phenomenon. It is implicit in the object, but it will never be explicit, since scientific thought is the only one capable of constructing it. The essence is not in the object itself but, at the same time, it is in it. This is because the essence is a theoretical generalization, subtracted from the object by scientific thought, and only by it.
The reflection of objective and / or subjective reality can be configured by the acting person in a predominantly descriptive knowledge about that (his) reality as an object of knowledge or in a predominantly explanatory knowledge. In both cases, the subject must, based on obtaining her knowledge, structure the relevant relationships between the constituent parts of the object that addresses or establishes the relationships between said object and others that are necessarily related to it. Thus, the resulting knowledge (concept) can be characterized by the reflection or not of the essence of the object.
Knowledge, as an infinite and eternal approximation of thought to the object, is subject to ascension towards new abstractions, given the new levels of understanding of the world, given the new methods of investigation of reality that arise. When one of the students replies that the essence is what cannot be missing so that an object is him and not another, or what determines it in any instance, you can ask him, without a doubt: what is it that it cannot be lacking for it to be him and not someone else; what determines it as essence?
After that question, a conceptual vacuum arises that cannot be filled by the forced exercise of the empirical. And that's when university studies perform their essential function, their primary function: the teaching of essences. Although the student arrives at the house of high studies with the lens of the empirical, the university takes on its ineluctable importance in theoretical knowledge, in its scientific preparation. Although the student has reached the university doors brandishing and clinging to empirical knowledge as the non plus ultra of human wisdom, the university has an inherent obligation to dismiss it from such concepts; first, taking advantage of them as the unquestionable basis of the new theoretical cognitive structure that will be formed in it and, second,replacing them with the new scientific concepts that have to reflect the dynamics of the relations of essence that, among the objects of study, man has discovered. Ascension to the essences of knowledge must be the guiding objective of teaching at the third level.
Finally, let's not discard the concept of the third level. Although the previous levels fixed the learning of reality –objective or subjective- in terms of empirical concepts, now this level, like the fourth, will necessarily have to transcend the daily experience, the preconception or unfinished knowledge, to travel, on the theoretical concept, faster than light. Scientific thinking gets there, not only where man himself could not physically do it, but where his vulnerable hypotheses anticipate. By ascending hypotheses by deduction, scientific knowledge becomes thesis by demonstration. No doubt. Thus, the formation of the scientific concept becomes the first reason for university or third-level education, which must shape it,in addition to the determining properties of the object of study, the laws of its behavior, the causes that give rise to it, the inherent contradictions and the trends of its ontogenic development.
And all this happens equally when the concept of competition is involved.
The concept of competition lacks structural and functional validity to defend itself from a methodological point of view
We defend the working hypothesis that impels us to research according to the idea that the concept of competition lacks construct and content validity, which makes it theoretically vulnerable and methodologically invalid from the instrumental point of view to be used as identity to the professional preparation of the student.
First, how to understand that the concept of competence is juxtaposed with multiple concepts used by the social sciences, such as those of ability, capacity, method, procedure and process?
Second, what kind of reason is there to admit the ambiguity manifested in the classification criteria used in its defense?
Source: self made.
The interpretation that the results project is not difficult.
While the definition of the concept of pneumonia made by the generality of the participants was limited to the same indicator-concepts, namely, disease or lung infection, that of ability was vilified in any epistemological direction. But the most surprising thing about this was not the definition of the concept of ability itself, but the terms-concepts that made up the definition itself. Given the fact that they questioned the participants about some of the terms used by them, let's say, such as aptitude to identify the ability, they also failed to refer to what they meant or to which field of science they belonged. Why do we use the concept of skill? Because, clearly, the ability was going to be proclaimed competition; there would be no split between them.That was also one of our working hypotheses. The one and the other would be one and the same thing. Could the social sciences tolerate these lax intellectual behaviors? Therefore, we were forced to share fully with F. Engels that:
… to liquidate a philosophy, it is not enough, purely and simply, to proclaim that it is false ","… "to suppress it" in the sense that it uses, that is, to critically destroy its form…
And this is exactly what should happen with the concept of competition. Let us dwell on the content of this concept.
The term competition, from the Greek agony and agoniestes, means competition and, in Latin, is indicated as competere, which means to be qualified. According to Stegmann et al. (2001), this concept was first defined by David Mc Clelland of Harvard University in 1973, and was first applied at the United States Information Agency. In 1978, Gilbert linked the concept of competition with that of performance, using the formula W = A / B, where W defined competition as the function of valuable performance, this being a function of valuable achievement (A) with respect to a expensive behavior (B). Already in the early years of the second half of the 90s, Lévy-Leboyer (1996) revealed the various semantic meanings that the concept of competition had been assigned, namely authority,professional capacity, competition, qualification, incumbency and sufficiency, although he himself considered it as a repertoire of behaviors that integrated aptitudes, personality traits and knowledge.
Due to the multiplicity of definitions that exist of the word, we intend to consider them in the following table of contingencies, to facilitate comparison and our positions in this regard.
| Concepts wielded more frequently
to define the concept of competition |
||||
| Concepts that are subsumed | What is it? | For what? | Author | Year |
| Capacity | For performance: | |||
| No content (S / C) | · Efficient roles and tasks clearly defined, structured, observed and measured. | Gomez, VM | 2010 | |
| Human resources to take on the challenge of performance. | · Successful in the workplace. | Azuaje | 2008 | |
| (S / C) | · Successful teaching-educational process. | Salas, R. | 1999 | |
| It relies on knowledge, but is not limited to it. | · Effective in a certain type of situation. | Perrenoud | 1999 | |
| Timely evaluations of the concept:
In the history of psychology, as a science dedicated to the study of psychism –animal and human–, the concept of capacity –like those of character and temperament– was well part of the classical structure of personality, the last concept that, we consider, could become the integrating concept when studying the person. The festering epistemic positions in the subsequent investigations of psychological bias ruined this structure, promoting the rise of psychological knowledge to new levels of essence. Thus, in the theoretical configuration of this knowledge, the positions aim to consider psychic facts of a cognitive-instrumental nature instead of capacity (see Rodríguez Rebustillo, M. and R. Bermúdez Sarguera (2007). In other words,the content aspect of the personality may well be translated in terms of knowledge of reality and of oneself - perception, thought (empirical and theoretical) - and in terms of psychic instrumentation, thus focusing the operations, actions and abilities that configure the execution of the person. The specialized psychological literature did not attribute construct validity to the concept of capacity, but it did so in favor of the concepts of operation, action and ability. It is highly unlikely to deny the results obtained in terms of the instrumental psychic, investigations that have not only revolved around the validity of the construct of these concepts, but also the validity of the criteria, the operationalization agreed in the scientific arena of those terms.It is not difficult to see how the definitions of the concept of capacity are restricted to knowledge or human resources, both concepts that, by definition, belong to the epistemological and administrative sciences, respectively. In the worst case, the concept is not identified with any content or does so in the sense of the successful or effective performance of the person, thus escaping the validity of the relevant construct and criteria. |
||||
| Skill | Expertise, aptitude or suitability | · To do something or intervene in a certain matter. | Royal Spanish Academic | 2015 |
| (S / C) | · Increase the economic value of the effort that a person makes in the world of work. | Goleman, D. | 1993 | |
| (S / C) | · Take initiatives and act on their environment. | White, RW | 1959 | |
| . | ||||
| Timely evaluations of the concept:
Like the concept of habit, ability configures the instrumental body of the person, thanks to which it transforms reality and itself. The psychic instruments that we use to carry out an activity are noticed in the psychic operations and actions. We intentionally underline the qualification of such instruments as psychic to emphasize that they are a constitutive part of the personality. Although the motivational and affective aspects of the latter compel us to act, the performance itself is configured in operations and actions. Held on the planes of psychic regulation, namely the conscious and the unconscious, the psychic instruments must then respond to those same planes: operation as execution of an unconscious nature and action as the very form of execution,only expressed on a conscious level (see glossary). For its part, ability-habit-is not something different from psychic instrumentation, but only a level of mastery that characterizes its execution. In this way, the action can be executed at a low, medium or high level of mastery, and when said execution takes place at the highest level of mastery, then we call it skill. Thus, the ability is, according to Rodríguez Rebustillo, M. and R. Bermúdez Sarguera (2007), a dominated action. The same is true of habit, a term that identifies a dominated operation. In this way, we would have enough arguments to deny the identity of the concept of competence with that of skill and habit, by which, according to the expressions that appear in the literature, expertise,aptitude or fitness and personal trait, respectively. The most worrying thing about the case is that the researchers who have intervened in the definition of the concept of competence generally do not belong to the field of psychology, leaving an insurmountable gap just in science that must serve as a theoretical and methodological basis for carry out investigations of this nature. Unfortunately, and resorting to the same thing that we expressed above, the superimposition of terms without construct validity and criteria becomes fallible in the theoretical understanding of the concept of competition.leaving an insurmountable gap just in science that must serve as a theoretical and methodological basis to carry out research of this nature. Unfortunately, and resorting to the same thing that we expressed above, the superimposition of terms without construct validity and criteria becomes fallible in the theoretical understanding of the concept of competition.leaving an insurmountable gap just in science that must serve as a theoretical and methodological basis to carry out research of this nature. Unfortunately, and resorting to the same thing that we expressed above, the superimposition of terms without construct validity and criteria becomes fallible in the theoretical understanding of the concept of competition. |
||||
| Habit | Personal trait or set of habits. | For performance:
· Superior or more effective work. |
Goleman, D. | 1993 |
| Behavior | Related to the socio-affective, cognitive, sensory and motor aspects, | · Function in a function, activity or task. | Argudin | 2005 |
| They integrate skills, personality traits, and knowledge that some people master better than others. | · Carry out professional activities and, more specifically, the missions that are part of a job.
|
Lévy-
Leboyer |
nineteen ninety six | |
| Conduct | Tasks or work situations, organized within a mental structure, with the characteristics of being relatively stable and mobile when necessary. | · Undertake projects and
· Develop creativity. |
Lévy-
Leboyer |
2003 |
| Timely evaluations of the concept:
The concept of behavior is a concept well-tended by the psychological sciences, to such an extent that it became a category for the psychology of behavior or behaviorism. Raised to the theoretical peak by the American psychologist JB Watson (1913), the behavior –external– represented the most bitter ideological-psychological opposition against the psychoanalysis of the Viennese S.Freud (1890). Impelled by the need to assign a scientific character to psychology, the research of the most renowned American behaviorists and followers of that –E. Thorndike, BF Skinner and others - ruined, we think, with the same thing that deep psychology studied: the unconscious. Thus, behavior is not a concept to vilify given the ignorance of the psychological sciences by those who try to address it.As we have emphasized on previous occasions, we dare to emphasize that the historical-logical method in the social sciences is erased from social scientific research, predominantly from psychology. What epistemic right assists those who promote and carry out these studies to designate tasks, work situations, aptitudes, personality traits or knowledge as competencies that some people master better than others? What validity to assign to these concepts, if the epistemology of the psychological sciences is not respected?What epistemic right assists those who promote and carry out these studies to designate tasks, work situations, aptitudes, personality traits or knowledge as competencies that some people master better than others? What validity to assign to these concepts, if the epistemology of the psychological sciences is not respected?What epistemic right assists those who promote and carry out these studies to designate tasks, work situations, aptitudes, personality traits or knowledge as competencies that some people master better than others? What validity to assign to these concepts, if the epistemology of the psychological sciences is not respected? |
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| Performance | Actions | · Express performance in interaction with sociocultural contexts and specific disciplines and
· Demonstrably and measurably demonstrate what the student knows or is capable of doing. |
Restrepo, B. | 2013 |
| Know how to act complex | · Mobilize and effectively use a variety of resources. | Tardif, J. | 2008 | |
| Comprehensive performance | · Innovate and address the challenges of the context, facing difficulties and problems, so that there is permanence of the project, according to the available resources and the social and economic conditions that characterize it. | Tobón, S. | 2008 | |
| Mental tools | · Know reality better and be more reasonable in front of it,
· Know when and how to act, · Extract meanings from life experience that mobilize individual development. |
Beltrán, S. | 2006 | |
| Action integrated by technical, method-logical, social and participatory competences. | Tejada | 1999 | ||
| Timely evaluations of the concept:
It is not difficult for the comparison to subtract the fact that in the authorial expressions pompous and fashionable words are used with which it is tried to emphasize the solemnity and the cult of science, but that do not leave more than a gap in the understanding and gibberish that only works as useless guts as far as the concept of competition is concerned. We are referring predominantly to the terms comprehensive and complex. There is no doubt that when integration is discussed, thought travels about the conception of the holistic approach in approaching an object of study. The same happens with the complex term, which seeks to confuse and confuse the already tangled skein that makes it difficult fully understanding at the level of the essences of knowledge. In a second order,the use of the word tool only translates the author's epistemic poverty, wanting to point out the presence of an instrumental psychic body when executing an action or an operation, terms that, by the way, are found in the methodological system of science. Is it so difficult to use the concept of method instead of the concept of tool? Of course, the little command of methodological science results in the use of terms that do not correspond to scientific-methodological knowledge. This derives in one of the main reasons why the third level of education must focus on the inescapable formation of the relevant scientific concepts. The mastery of the concept of method does not leave a gap to the use of other ripped from the vulgar, as is the case of the word tool.Today the body of knowledge of the sciences is not in the making, for which each area of knowledge has, if not a scientific cognitive system, at least with a plethora of concepts that configure it. It is unfortunate that these authors ignore and deny the epistemological contributions of the research done in this regard. Finally, it is not idle to notice how the example that closes the definitions of the term action is quite contradictory, since now it happens that it is the competences that integrate the action and not the other way around. The little command of language, of language, necessarily implies that the social sciences are treated, in most cases, without the slightest respect; hence its classification as a soft science.at least with a pleiad of concepts that configure it. It is unfortunate that these authors ignore and deny the epistemological contributions of the research done in this regard. Finally, it is not idle to notice how the example that closes the definitions of the term action is quite contradictory, since now it happens that it is the competences that integrate the action and not the other way around. The little command of language, of language, necessarily implies that the social sciences are treated, in most cases, without the slightest respect; hence its classification as a soft science.at least with a pleiad of concepts that configure it. It is unfortunate that these authors ignore and deny the epistemological contributions of the research done in this regard. Finally, it is not idle to notice how the example that closes the definitions of the term action is quite contradictory, since now it happens that it is the competences that integrate the action and not the other way around. The little command of language, of language, necessarily implies that the social sciences are treated, in most cases, without the slightest respect; hence its classification as a soft science.It is not idle to notice how the example that closes the definitions of the term action is quite contradictory, since now it happens that it is the competences that integrate the action and not the other way around. The little command of language, of language, necessarily implies that the social sciences are treated, in most cases, without the slightest respect; hence its classification as a soft science.It is not idle to notice how the example that closes the definitions of the term action is quite contradictory, since now it happens that it is the competences that integrate the action and not the other way around. The little command of language, of language, necessarily implies that the social sciences are treated, in most cases, without the slightest respect; hence its classification as a soft science. |
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| Significance for professions. | · Find an alternative that encourages the construction of a lifestyle in accordance with one's own and social interests. |
Ayala |
2006 |
|
| Dynamic combination of attributes in relation to knowledge, skills, attitudes and responsibilities. | · Describe the learning outcomes of an educational program or what students are able to demonstrate at the end of this process. | Bezanilla, M. | 2003 | |
| Definition approached from the classification of the areas and the authors who examine it, based on the historical stages that the concept has gone through. | Fernández, C. and Salinero, M. | 2006 | ||
| Timely evaluations of the concept:
These last ideas that we have grouped together, as can be seen, do not respond to any definition, using words that contribute nothing to the essence of this object of study, such as the case of dynamic combination of attributes. What is combined? What are the attributes of what? Why talk about the significance of this concept, if we are not referring to its assessment? How to define it on the basis of classification, if Are the two instruments, the classification and the evaluation, very different? |
Table No.3 "Definitions on the concept of competition".
Source: self made.
Even though this table is not the most representative of the approach that has been given to the concept of competence, it does denote the epistemological and methodological “calamity” with which it has been treated. It is clear that their definitions aim to identify it predominantly with other concepts, also of extreme complexity, if it is equally about defining them. Within these, the concepts of capacity, ability, habit, behaviors, tasks, behaviors, actions and work situations can be noted or, in the worst case, it has not been defined, superimposing it on certain objectives. In this sense, we fully share Lévy-Leboyer's positions on the multiplicity of definitions that represent the concept of competition. The rigorous question is obvious: is competition a capacity,A skill or an objective? Because what we can be sure of is that two concepts cannot reflect the same reality and, therefore, cannot logically define it under the same terms. Incidentally, here the term is logically not used under the meaning of reasonable, but by virtue of the laws that the science of logic imposes on correct thinking. In none of the cases analyzed are the definitions of the concepts that make up the concept of competition itself, from which it can be inferred that the authors take it for granted, which inexorably conditions the inconsistent expression, for the logic of the examination, of unconscious verbal strings.they cannot logically define it under the same terms. Incidentally, here the term is logically not used under the meaning of reasonable, but by virtue of the laws that the science of logic imposes on correct thinking. In none of the cases analyzed are the definitions of the concepts that make up the concept of competition itself, from which it can be inferred that the authors take it for granted, which inexorably conditions the inconsistent expression, for the logic of the examination, of unconscious verbal strings.they cannot logically define it under the same terms. Incidentally, here the term is logically not used under the meaning of reasonable, but by virtue of the laws that the science of logic imposes on correct thinking. In none of the cases analyzed are the definitions of the concepts that make up the concept of competition itself, from which it can be inferred that the authors take it for granted, which inexorably conditions the inconsistent expression, for the logic of the examination, of unconscious verbal strings.In none of the cases analyzed are the definitions of the concepts that make up the concept of competition itself, from which it can be inferred that the authors take it for granted, which inexorably conditions the inconsistent expression, for the logic of the examination, of unconscious verbal strings.In none of the cases analyzed are the definitions of the concepts that make up the concept of competition itself, from which it can be inferred that the authors take it for granted, which inexorably conditions the inconsistent expression, for the logic of the examination, of unconscious verbal strings.
As may well be noted, in the terms analyzed there are no operational definitions of these. What is the construct validity of this concept? What measurement test have the researchers used to evaluate the competences? Where was the validity of the criterion that identifies the measure of competence of a subject for one or another work or academic performance?
In the end, everything leads us to affirm that if there is no theory that supports a concept, neither can the presence or absence of this concept be identified in the performance, much less develop a test that really measures this construct. Hence the so-called construct validity, as mentioned above, which is nothing more than the operationalization of the variables included in a concept, as is the case of the concept of competition.
Psychologists such as S.Messick (1989) define construct validity "… as a comprehensive evaluative judgment of the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical foundations support the appropriateness and adequacy of inferences and actions based on test results…". key to construct validity are the theoretical ideas behind the trait in question, that is, theoretical ideas that, as concepts, define aspects of personality, intelligence, among other objects of study in the science of psychology.
Thus, the concept of competition is destined to mix with similar or identical abstractions to those of those concepts. The deadly rift appears in that the definitions of these last terms are not definitively clear and convincing either in the conceptual or operational arena for the sciences, specifically for the social ones. Thus, while abilities are identified with general and internal potentialities and that do not imply metacognition or suitability, constituting the basis for the development of competencies (Salas, R. 1999, Morales Gómez, 2008), abilities are considered elements of the competence and processes effectively developed from the capacities, to achieve certain objectives and that have an important cognitive component (Beltrán, S. 2006),while skills are admitted as concrete actions to put each skill into action (Morales Gómez, 2008). Lastly, competencies are limited to general complex processes of performance with suitability and ethics that articulate knowledge from the metacognitive process (Tobón, S. 2008). Where do "sizes" abstractions come from? Can concepts be defined according to the authority of the authors or their academic "prestige"? What arguments support this "epistemic procedure" of researchers in the social sciences? The generality of positions not only violates the laws of bivalent logic, laws of correct thinking, but these definitions have little or nothing to do with certain areas of scientific knowledge that are inescapably embedded in them. In consecuense,This lack of scientific rigor underlies the lack of mastery of its authors' philosophical, methodological, psychological and pedagogical knowledge. The person who focuses scientific research in the social sciences, we think, is obliged to master the epistemological bases in which each of those areas is sustained. Of that there is no doubt. In our opinion, the general examination of the concept of competence is extremely weak from any point of view of scientific knowledge. In stricter terms, the concept is not valid because it has no construct validity. It is not difficult to verify, after all, that there is no single strict conceptual axis around which the entire competition problem revolves and generates, with and from it,a consistent and coherent methodological system in academic and investigative praxis, predominantly in professional training. And, the most unfortunate of all this, is that today the fashion for the use of the concept of competence comes into play in almost all educational programs - school curricula, study plans and subject programs - since the generality of university degrees Being oriented towards the exit profiles, it is thought, it is absolutely essential for them to hold onto it. The evaluation problems involved in examinations in school curricula are obvious.is that today the fad of using the concept of competence comes into play in almost all educational programs - school curricula, study plans and subject programs - since the generality of university careers, being oriented towards exit profiles, it is thought, it is absolutely essential for them to hold onto it. The evaluation problems involved in examinations in school curricula are obvious.is that today the fad of using the concept of competence comes into play in almost all educational programs - school curricula, study plans and subject programs - since the generality of university careers, being oriented towards exit profiles, it is thought, it is absolutely essential for them to hold onto it. The evaluation problems involved in examinations in school curricula are obvious.
Paradoxical is the fact that, being so hackneyed today by the social sciences, it is weakly defended by them or the argument brandished for the sake of its conceptual or operational definition has been fatal and unhappy. Take, once again, as an example, the following ideas on the subject.
But if the previous paragraph has not been conclusive, let us assess this other example: “ the competences, like the intelligences, are multiple: biopsychic, ecological, cognitive, socio-affective, communicative, ethical-evaluative, spiritual, aesthetic, labor, technical and technological ”. There should be no more doubts; now the balance is tilting in the fashion sense in psychology, in which the concept of multiple intelligences, incidentally, poorly coined and classified by the American psychologist Howard Gardner, from Harvard University, is taken to function as classification criteria in the development of a typology of competencies. Let us assess how a concept that precedes another in the history of social research, in this case of a pedagogical and psychological nature, weakens the rigor with which subsequent concepts must be treated. Here we should only point out that the intelligences, from our theoretical positions, obviously,there must be two: perceptual intelligence and conceptual intelligence. In them all the intelligences to which H. Gardner alludes can well be subsumed. Of course, there are intelligences, proposed by this author, that are only contemporary intellectual uses, in tune with the turn taken today by humanity's demands for its well-being and care for the planet, such as the spiritual and the ecological, respectively.
The classifications examined not only warn us of the instrumental-methodological incompetence of the authors in the execution of the investigation, but also of the limited mastery of the knowledge inherent in philosophy, logic, epistemology and psychology, as sciences that predominate- The mind deals with the problems that affect man from the point of view of his cognitive formation and development. This transcends and undoubtedly undermines the professional preparation of the third-level student and, in all probability, their job performance in the future job.
Finally, it would not be idle to add the disrespectful command of the Spanish language also suffered by these "author positions".
In summary, the concept of competence has been focused, at present, as a valid and effective solution when integrating professional actions. Those who assume competency-based teaching presuppose the possibility of solving the dilemma of the integration of knowledge, skills and attitudes, which has marked a notable pattern in educational research. Taking into account that a professional must know how to solve problems at the cognitive and behavioral levels, under the ethics of the profession, writers resort to this term in the hope of integrating, in most cases, what appears in the teaching itself visibly fragmented.
That is why, supported by behavioral psychology, these scholars aim to describe all those behaviors that make a person suitable for a job. Such behaviors are supported by a set of skills and habits that will be executed under the aegis of certain values or attitudes that support the performance of that professional.
From the holistic approach or integration of knowledge (standards), a list of knowledge and skills of various disciplines is made, with a view to establishing transdisciplinary relationships, based on a specific professional problem. Under this purported approach, they try to eliminate - or at least mitigate - the summation of skills by years and disciplines. But how can we reduce or eliminate this fact? It is not difficult to see that, to achieve this, they must start from the operationalization of a concept that, moreover, is imprecise: the concept of competition. What does competition mean? If competing is fighting, fighting, competing, fighting, then who do you have to do it for? What for? To identify who is more suitable for one job or another? Let's not fool ourselves.Today there are plenty of reasons to defend the idea according to which we know that, in the contemporary professional world, nothing is achieved by itself. The volume of the contributions of science is such that the investigations of pedagogical bias, for example, revolve abruptly around the search for highly effective teaching methods that achieve the learning of knowledge and the instrumental baggage available in less time or, at the less, under the same dosage of the time assigned for the current study plans. Transdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity is simply irrefutable in the prevailing pedagogical context. Whether you want it or not,Teamwork must become an axiomatic variable of the academic-investigative training of the future professional and the solution of the problems he faces, once he graduates from university.
On the other hand, if something cannot be ignored when it comes to competition, it is the problem of its evaluation. And the first question of rigor would be: how to evaluate the competences, if the concept has not been operationally defined? We well know that a concept not operationally defined has no opportunity to be evaluated. From Perogrullo is the idea that the vagueness, ambiguity and imprecision that the term of competition assists us today, conditions the high difficulty of identifying it or recognizing which are the indicators that signal its different gradients.
It is extremely contradictory that the aim is to describe all those behaviors that identify a person's suitability for a job, which uses the knowledge that behavioral psychology has left us with regard to behavior and, at the same time, try to move away from their contributions, losing the most relevant of their theoretical-methodological positions: the precision of external observation, the observation of each of the steps that make up a given behavioral act. It is unlikely to fully evaluate a given professional performance, if it has not been broken down to its minimum possible expression. This brings up the fact of defending, from our methodological positions,the proposal of the analytical-synthetic scales that we elaborate for each one of the actions that can be learned as inescapable executions of the instrumental psychic performance of the person who teaches, learns or investigates (see Rodríguez-Bermúdez, 2007).
Even when professional-type problems are appropriately elaborated by the employing entities and according to social needs, such typical and contextual situations do not, in themselves, reflect the concept of competition. The functions of a position or the requirements of a job do not express the competencies in themselves.
Let us take as an example the following definition, which is intended to express the integrative nature of the concept of competition. "The competences are - Vázquez Valerio (2010) points out - an articulated and dynamic set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that take an active part in the responsible and effective performance of daily activities in a given context".
By submitting it under the prism of analysis, this definition obliges us to bring up the way in which a concept is often defined, under the scientific appearance, in which the idea that nothing is missing prevails, so that the concept remains most "complete" possible. In effect, by separating each of the terms expressed in said definition, we find ourselves face to face with the fact that little or nothing is viable (achievable, practicable) in it. We return to point out the idea that a non-operationalized concept turns out to be a non-feasible term, not instrumentally valid to carry out the pertinent investigation. Consequently, to say that a competence is an “ articulated and dynamic set ” (of knowledge), (taking) an “ active part ”, (in the) “responsible and effective performance ”, are nothing more than empty, empty and empty sentences, which only prevent the correct relationship of the concepts. Consciously or unconsciously, the highly theoretical, scientific treatment of the term is simulated, when in fact there is nothing said about how they are articulated, how they are energized, or how they are activated, much less what it means that performance is responsible and effective, without stopping yet in the definition of other terms supposedly more pertinent to a certain science, such as those of ability and habit. Is not this the highest translation of the "magic bag" of the definitions, so that "nothing is missing"?
This is further complicated when referring to competencies to be and live together. Theoretical and methodological errors underlying the investigation of values and attitudes are well known. One of the unresolved aspects in educational research on this problem is precisely the definition and operationalization of the term "Being". Now the question is simple: what is being? In our opinion, this answer could be found in the psychological sciences, using concepts that necessarily reflect the unity of the conscious and the unconscious, as forms of regulation of the psychic, as well as the cognitive-instrumental and the affective-motivational, as functions in the one that the psychic expresses itself.
Even today, within the amalgam of existing concepts on the subject, distinctive attention is paid between the concepts of competition and performance. While the concept of competence gives us the possibility of doing something, that of performance is defined as the very act of doing it. It is not difficult to notice, after these ideas, that the concept of competition acquires the character of intention, of temporality. In other words, if the action has not been executed, the fact can still be considered as competence; If you have executed it, then it is a performance. How far will the writers go with all this pun? How far can people who research in the context of the social sciences go? How is it possible to complicate these facts in this way,When the concept of competition is embedded with a problem as relevant as the training of professionals?
In short, what you want to emphasize with this term is the learning that takes place through concrete situations, which must transcend the classroom; This is nothing other than problem-based teaching, based on professional situations. It is worth noting that currently the continuous nature of the competences is suggested, by which some authors, very “creative”, incidentally, espouse the idea that the competences should be learned from basic and secondary education. Others identify them with the much vaunted phrase today "learn to learn”, Which was part of the precepts of Delphi that, illuminating the pronaos of the temple of Apollo in Delphi, its walls, the lintel and even some of its surrounding columns, constitute the valuable legacy of knowledge that the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece left to future generations.
This problem, of a theoretical and methodological nature, affects not only educational research in higher education, but also the levels that precede it, and it is also not solved by happily adding terms that sound novel and pompous to teacher training.
Why add unnecessary concepts to the fields of pedagogical, psychological and didactic knowledge, when there is reasonable, operationalized and scientifically proven terminology? In other words, there is no sufficient reason to justify the convenience, theoretical value, and methodological utility of those terms.
Unfortunately, in most cases, investigations of a social, humanistic nature are not comprehensive. Indeed, when we use the term in its entirety, we do it with all intention, since psychologists generally do not dominate the contributions of pedagogy, as pedagogues do not do it in favor of philosophy, just as sociologists do not do it for the sake of logic etc. It would be absurd to think that a physicist does not dominate mathematics or that a biological one does not dominate chemistry. Alluding to the superior forms of movement of matter, whenever scientific knowledge is involved, presupposes mastery of its inferior forms.
The well-known German researcher A. Einstein had hypothesized that the light of the stars that travels to us bends, when passing near a solid body like the Sun, a fact that was verified on May 29, 1919, when a total eclipse occurred. "What if the photos hadn't proven his theory?" The prominent thinker was asked. To which he laconically replied: "I would have felt sorry for the good God, because my calculations were correct." His calculations were correct and even the event had not taken place, it had not been shown! Great! Necessarily scientific thought transcends the present and "travels" beyond the immediate empirical to reveal to us in laws, contradictions and trends what has not yet been expressed phenomenally. This is the sovereignty of theoretical thought,in the potentiality of anticipating the suggestive and fascinating or adverse and hostile event that will take place in the future. Therefore, where does the anticipatory empire of the social sciences rest, as the first function of every field of scientific knowledge? Why deny the contributions that, in epistemological matters, some sciences of social bias have made, such as psychology? With this we want to affirm that the scientific concepts contributed by the psychological sciences are sufficient to concede a solution to the problem in which the concept of competence is implicated. It is enough to stop at the analysis of psychological concepts, such as those of conscious and unconscious instrumentation, empirical and scientific knowledge, motives and intentions, objectives and tasks.They can become a conceptual-methodological platform that helps shape an exit profile, or graduate profile, from a coherent system that integrates, for years, objectives and actions, their different levels of dominance and subordination.
In short, it is not precisely the concept of competition that conditions such integration. It is the concept of personality that, as a concept of greater generality and applicability in this context under consideration, manages to integrate the conscious and the unconscious, the cognitive and the affective and, specifically, its manifest relationship with learning.
By way of conclusion of this appendix, we could well mean that the formation of the scientific concept is the first problem to be solved in university education, since the successful professional training of the graduate of the house of high studies depends on it. For this reason, the concept of competence, as it is addressed in specialized literature today, far from favoring the formative performance of the university student, could hinder it, given the ambivalence and amphibology of the term in its methodological treatment, while the concept of Competence may well be replaced by concepts that have already been coined by the psychological and educational sciences, such as that of personality and ability.
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Cfr.GWLeibniz. "New essays on human understanding". P. 100.
A.Guétmanova. " Logic ". P. 114.
F.Engels. " Dialectic of nature ". P. 64.
VILenin. Philosophical notebooks. Recovered from: https://elsudamericano.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/cuadernos-filosoficos.pdf. p.50.
F.Engels. (1971): "Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of German classical philosophy". In Marx and Engels. Works chosen in two volumes. T.II. Moscow: Editorial Progreso. P. 366.
Ibid. Op.cit. P. 366. (The underline is ours).
Messick, S. (1998). "Test validity: A matter of consequence". Social IndicatorsResearch. 45 (1-3): 35–44).
Morales Gómez, G. “Curriculum by competencies. With a holistic-systemic-process approach ”. Page 38. (The underline is ours).
"Any definition in law is dangerous." Lucio Giavoleno Prisco: eminent Roman jurist.
Morales Gómez, G.Op.c. Page: 47. (The underline is ours).
Vázquez Valerio, FJ (2010). Taken from: "The scope and importance of the role of competition s".. Accessed on January 15, 2014 at:
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