Competency Loss as a Barrier to Professional Development

Abstract

The paper discusses the problem of competency loss of students and graduates, which unavoidably reduces their future career opportunities. The importance of this problem is determined by the fact, that the level of competency development is considered as the main education outcome. The paper describes general reasons for competency loss, among them elimination from person’s life those activities, which used to activate a certain competency, deprivation of its relevance and mutual pejorative influence of competencies, when one of them suppresses another. Factors, which can assure the stability of a competency, are type, structure and competency development level, as well as the frequency of its appearing in person’s life. Methods, which allow to slow down the speed of competency loss and provide its stability, are technologies of activity-based education, particularly project-based learning, which let to combine several academic disciplines, to increase students’ motivation to future profession and to use this method for organizing the students individual work. The paper discusses the demands for effective project-based learning. To reduce the speed of competency loss it is suggested to use the spaced repetition method, which is based on specific nature of the memory and is contained in spacing out the repeated information in time.