Transnational Competence: Empowering Curriculums for Horizon-Rising Challenges by Peter H. Koehn & James N. Rosenau

Author:Peter H. Koehn & James N. Rosenau [Koehn, Peter H. & Rosenau, James N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317250173
Google: qgXvCgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 27890623
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

These authors also propose, as a TC functional-learning expectation for engineering programs, that students display the ability “to treat co-workers from other countries as people who have both knowledge and value” and are “likely to bring these different perspectives to bear in processes of problem definition and problem solution” along with the ability to “accommodate their own perspectives to those of other engineering problem solvers.”48 In short, functionally skilled graduating professionals are able to demonstrate ability “to work with people who define problems differently than they do.”49

As part of the assessment process, educators across the curriculum design transboundary challenges that fall within the technical, interpersonal, and advocacy capacities of a graduating professional. In TC professional programs, it is critical that students manifest multidimensional skills through their interactions in multiple socio-culturally diverse situations. Individual programs and professional accrediting bodies will determine levels of desired proficiency,50 leaving room for future skill development, lifelong learning, and long-term follow-up assessments.51

Since in-class exercises and off-campus learning situations challenge students to demonstrate acquired skill-proficiency levels, such performance opportunities will play a major part in TC assessments. Overseas student teaching, for instance, offers the chance to assess “competence and potential for growth as a teacher.”52 Students’ ability to apply TC skills also can be noninvasively observed via in-class and teamwork exercises that mirror plausible real-life professional challenges and through practice demonstrations, performance, and presentations in out-of-class experiential-learning situations.53 Two illustrative TC-skill-demonstration tasks for teacher-education programs are: (1) “choose an important current controversial international issue; identify primary sources that portray at least three different perspectives on that issue. Design, teach, and reflect upon a lesson plan in which fifth-grade students will use the materials you have compiled to better understand and evaluate these perspectives. (2) Create and teach a 1- to 3-day lesson [for secondary-school students] that uses a simulation to teach the concept of global interdependence.”54 Student portfolios that describe transnational issue-oriented work, incorporate policy analysis, and demonstrate the application of each TC-skill expectation in diverse contexts over time provide another performance-assessment format.55

In programs designed to prepare transnationally competent professionals, “assessment is used diagnostically to discover the [variable] strengths and weaknesses of students and to provide appropriate support to improve student performance.”56 Whenever possible, pretraining and post-training demonstrations should be documented by video for purposes of assessing skill gains, determining levels of goal atta- in ment and transnational task effectiveness, and analyzing and addressing weaknesses through performance repetitions. Multisource feedback57 promotes comprehensive skill assessment and enables the graduating professional to grasp “both his or her personal strengths and areas in need of development.”58 In all cases, evaluators emphasize recognizing learners who demonstrate specific TC skills and supporting those who need to improve.59 TC educators also refer to skill gaps revealed by critical assessments when determining new competencies that need to be developed in a particular professional program.60

In TC assessments, the linked technical and interpersonal performance of graduating practitioners should be evaluated from multiple perspectives by socio-culturally diverse observers and participants.61 In addition, TC programs themselves are exposed to periodic review.

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