How is Mastery Defined in Postsecondary Competency-Based Education?

The central tenet of competency-based education (CBE) is that a learner’s advancement in a program is based solely on their mastery of competencies, not the amount of time spent on the material. That assurance of mastery is what makes CBE programs different: employers can be confident that graduates have actually demonstrated everything expected of them, and done so to an appropriate behavioral level.

But that key aspect—mastery of the competencies—is one of the more misunderstood aspects of CBE. There is no uniform definition of mastery at the postsecondary level.

In this article, I will dive into the concept of mastery in postsecondary competency-based education programs and explore a few key aspects of defining mastery. This is the first part of a two-part article (you can access part 2 here).

C’s Don’t Get CBE Degrees: Why Average Performance is not Enough

Ask yourself: Would you rather have a phlebotomist who has successfully mastered the ability to draw blood as part of their education, or one who was “passed” through having only performed at an average level and as a result graduated with known skill deficiencies? What about an accountant? A lawyer? A car mechanic? A welder? An architect? A city administrator?

Our employers and employees, patients and patrons, clients and customers all expect consistent, accurate, and complete performance from us. So why is our entire educational system built on the premise that we award degrees to individuals who have failed to successfully demonstrate the full range of competencies taught in their program? When we graduate students based on “passing” or meeting average level performance, instead demonstrating they can actually do each of the competencies expected of them, it’s no wonder you can’t open a news site without hearing about employers decrying a skills gap in college graduates.

CBE Programs are Differently Structured

CBE programs have different expectations of learners – namely that they must master every competency in the credential. In CBE programs, C’s do not get degrees.

The concept of mastery in CBE comes from the mastery learning movement, which is the ideological predecessor to modern postsecondary CBE. Block and Burns (1976) note that, “this philosophy asserts that under appropriate instructional conditions virtually all students can learn well, that is, can “master,” most of what they are taught. Moreover, it proposes that teachers can teach so that all students do learn well” (p. 4).

CBE programs are entirely focused on competencies, which are statements that describe what a learner knows and can do in an applied context. Mastering a competency means that a learner has successfully performed the competency in its entirety, and demonstrated that performance via authentic assessments. Authentic assessments are those that ask the learner to act under a set of conditions that replicate a setting of performance from outside academia—such as from the workplace or community involvement.

Context Matters: Defining Performance Expectations Clarifies what Mastery Means

Every competency in a CBE program has a set of performance indicators that explicitly describe the observable, behavioral criteria that indicate when someone has mastered the competency.

For instance, let’s imagine a competency in an automotive program titled “Tire Repair.” To showcase mastery of that competency, a learner must demonstrate all the performance indicators of safely removing a tire from a vehicle, diagnosing the problem, performing the repair, and reinstalling that tire. And remember, a competency does not just include tactile skills; it also contains the underlying knowledge, behaviors, and enduring skills (like problem-solving and critical thinking) necessary for successful performance.

I would not expect to see a CBE program designate a learner as having mastered this competency by changing just one tire. Instead, I would expect to see that the learner has successfully repaired numerous tires reflecting multiple different underlying problems and vehicle types. This does not mean that the learner is a master auto-repair technician; however, it does mean that the learner has mastered the competency of “Tire Repair.”

How Setting Informs Performance Expectations

Crucially this is where the context matters. Remember those performance indicators? These are essential to make it clear to all stakeholders the level of mastery that the learner has.

An automotive service technician and a Formula 1 (F1) pit crew member both may be able to master “Tire Repair,” but they each will have a different level and range of behaviors associated with their competency. The context of performance matters and informs specific types of behaviors necessary to show competence. Our automotive service technician must be able to repair just about every type of tire on every type of car, whereas our F1 pit crew member only needs to know one type of tire but has to be able to do it in a few seconds.

In CBE, the word “mastery” is used to describe when someone has demonstrated full command of the competency’s predetermined behavioral indicators. When building a CBE program, faculty work collaboratively with employer partners to define those performance indicators.

Straight A’s are Table Stakes: Trust in Competency-based Approaches Depends on Mastery Meaning Mastery

Learners must master every competency in a CBE program. But there is considerable variation in how programs interpret and report the precise threshold that constitutes mastery.

The seven regional accreditors in the U.S. of postsecondary programs came together in 2015 to agree to a set of guiding principles of CBE. They wrote that for a learner to advance in CBE, “the quality of demonstration of the competence is judged to be at or near the ‘excellent’ range for each competency” (C-RAC, 2015, p. 4).

While the field generally has consensus that performance below a traditional “B” equivalent is not truly mastery, there is wide variation on what constitutes the right threshold above that. The most common threshold set for mastery is at B-level (80%+).

That said, the performance gap between 80% and 100% is substantial. We often ask faculty, “What 20% of a competency are you okay with them not knowing despite you certifying them as having mastered a competency with a B?” Such a gap can erode the trust we are trying to build with employers when we say, “CBE is different,” but they hire graduates who still have performance gaps.

What’s more, any percentile-based grade implies a learner’s final mark reflects their average performance across a competency’s activities. This is a false assumption. In a true CBE model, there is no grade averaging, as it is not permissible for strong performance on one part of an assessment to compensate for underperformance in another part of the competency. All learners must fully master all aspects of a competency, and a traditional letter grade is not necessarily an effective means to communicate that.

Raising the bar doesn’t mean it’s out of reach: Aligning expectations in the classroom with the workplace

Increasingly, a trend in the CBE field is to set the mastery threshold at 100%. In the workplace, our performance expectations are exactly that. A pilot must land the plane 100% of the time, not 80% of the time. A teacher must teach 100% of their pupils, not 80%. An accountant must balance 100% of their ledgers, not 80%. An HVAC mechanic must repair 100% of the furnaces on their daily call sheet, not 80%.

Yes, people err in the workplace, but that doesn’t mean the expectations of performance are lowered. As one example in performance standards in healthcare, the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention “believes there is no acceptable incidence rate for medication errors.” Our employers expect consistent, accurate, and complete performance on all competencies, so why should our academic programs expect anything less?

Balancing Theory and Practice

This proposition, however, has long been controversial in academe. Writing in On Competence: A Critical Analysis of Competency-Based Reforms in Higher Education (1979), Gerald Grant and Wendy Kohli noted, “this is easier said than done… if you require all the competencies and all the components, no one will get a certificate” (p. 147). They go on to express worry that learners who are “close enough” to that high threshold still end up being awarded grades of mastery by faculty to avoid the extra logistics of having that learner re-attempt.

Requiring complete mastery of a competency assumes that the assessment instruments are effectively designed to measure, assert, and validate full mastery of the competency. Most postsecondary assessments as currently designed are inadequate measurement constructs, and we need assessment reform to back up such a claim of mastery. If you’re still using a term paper or exam as your summative assessment, then we’re probably still operating within an assessment gap.

CBE programs are different in both principle and in practice. Instead of lowering our performance standards to match that which has always been true in traditional educational programs, CBE programs should raise the bar. When you raise the bar, learners rise to meet it, which ultimately fosters a more effective educational system.

Up Next in Part Two: Reflecting Mastery on a Spectrum, Learner Agency, and the Nature of Time & Learning.

The U.S. accreditors agree on the core philosophy of CBE that performance must be “at or near excellent” – but your institution needs to practically set the bar where you think is best. There’s nothing wrong with setting that at a B level, but I challenge you to consider what it looks like beyond that.

In the second part of this post, to be published next month, I’ll be exploring how mastery is best reflected on a record. I’ll also be diving deeper into the question of how the key ingredients to facilitate mastery achievement are learner agency and separating learning from time.

Editor’s Note: Read Part Two here!

Send me a note with your thoughts! ryan@c-ben.org