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The rhetoric on competences

A rhetoric on competences has developed for the past decade, calling for young researchers to be "highly skilled professionals"; it is not new - but louder and louder. Numerous reports have been produced by many European and North American associations and also within the Bologna process

(http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/educ/bologna/bologna_en.html),

and the list of skills which are called "core", "key", "soft" or "transferable" is impressive :

i. Critical analysis
ii. Ability to conceptualize and to see the "big picture". Is forward-looking. Understands the implications of his/her work in broader institute and industry perspectives
iii. Capacity to organize own and others' work well
iv. Knowledge development/Sharing
v. Strong commitment to quality
vi. Capacity to identify key issues and to disaggregate them into sub-issues that can be tackled separately
vii. Searching for creative ideas, thinkiing "out of the box".
viii. Ability to stand up for people and his/her ideas/beliefs
ix. Capacity to understand and respect other individuals and cultures
x. . Listening actively and responding constructively to others' ideas, and considering others' perspectives and inputs

Acquiring skills in the lab

Although we defend the idea that training through research can provide the young trainee with the skills required not only to conduct research but to apply for a job in industry, reality often points to a different situation: the structure of power and the relentless competition inside the lab and between disciplines is a major obstacle to the development of core skills like creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking and communication; it is time researchers consider the problem and include training young researchers into their duties - I mean of course training young researchers to be professionals - that is devote time, reflect on the pedagogical issues, the methods to be used etc. The future of research is at stake.

Indeed, the implications of the rhetoric on competences are very serious: we must indeed be conscious that when speaking of young researchers as young professionals, we refer to the same category, but from a different viewpoint: if our aim is indeed to train highly skilled professionals, and again, if we don't want it to be just another terminological hype, we have to address the following questions considering the present situation:

1. How can we ensure that skills/competences are acknowledged by students and supervisors, and that they are assessed by and within the scientific community using proper assessment schemes and criteria?

2. How can we bring evidence that the training itself, is assessed in terms of quality, with rigorous criteria, tools and procedures - and not only on the basis of publications and peer committees as is common within the scientific community?

3. How can we certify that the achievements of people who have been trained are of high quality, that they are not limited to academic achievements (i.e. number of papers published and thesis presentation) and also include achievements outside academia?

The issue is clearly to change the academic culture. Universities and laboratories must design and implement organized mentoring programmes. There are already examples of good practice: organized mentoring means quality of design, of implementation, a system of evaluation and improvement; it means standards, indicators, sources of evidence and of course evaluation of mentors/supervisors.

Written pieces reveal competences; writing develops and enhances skills and competences

Researchers devote a lot of their time to writing ( Latour, B., La vie de laboratoire, 1988). The pressure to publish (" Publish or perish ! ") is such that PhD students and their supervisors tend to produce at least one or two papers and yet, they easily acknowledge the fact that they don't spend enough time on the activity of writing. Practices vary according to laboratories, but many times PhD students will provide their supervisors with accounts and data from experiments, the supervisors putting the paper together in order to gain time or just because "the student doesn't master the English language well enough".
Such practices are negative for two main reasons: first, they may lead to misconduct - fraud, problems of intellectual property, etc - ; second they do not favour the development of skills and competences in the young apprentice.

We defend the idea that training through research can provide the young researcher with the skills and competences required by many employers only if he/she can provide evidence that he /she has received excellent training.

PhD students have many opportunities of developing strong communication skills: going to conferences (writing abstracts for papers or posters, full papers, preparing oral presentations), publishing their research in journals, producing reports for various stakeholders and PhD committee members. But communication skills are not only technical - mastering a language, its grammar and style. They are mostly of a cognitive nature: it is therefore crucial that supervisors spend time and develop a pedagogical approach to ensure that their students master their subjects, that the research strategy and methodology are of high quality and that the research is presented clearly and precisely.

We have seen that (see Scientific Communication, definition) that the communication of science included and revealed the activity of conception. No wonder then that the table below includes many competences developed at the conception and writing stages of research.

Type of compétence	Situation	Site of expression	Characteristics
Capacity to formulate a problem	Project design and writing activity	Introduction (of an article, of a dissertation , of a report, etc)	Well structured introduction with clearly identified problem ; not a catalogue / list of observations or literature references with no clear links
Capacity to set oneself a project	Project design and writing activity	Title, introduction, abstract	The piece of writing delivers a clear message ; the author's intentions are visible
Capacity to translate	Project design and writing activity	Introduction	- Formulation of issues, analysis of problems (societal, scientific as formulated by other disciplines), translation into a research problem
Capacity to situate oneself	Project design and writing activity	Introduction, discussion	- Enoncé d'une question spécifique de recherche par rapport à une question générale et à un problème - Formulation des enjeux de la recherche (cognitifs, sociétaux, technologiques, institutionnels) - Utilisation du je/ nous/ on / impersonnel
Capacity to develop arguments	Project design and writing activity	Introduction, discussion	- Well structured paragraphs - Use of subheadings
Critical thinking	Writing activity	Discussion	- Comparisons - Set of arguments - Use of paragraphs
Reading capacity	Writing activity	Introduction and discussion	- Citing sources : selection, quality, relevance, accuracy
Capacity to manage a project	Writing activity	Reporting : Project management reports, meeting reports, abstracts, etc	Reporting is an essential tool for managing and evaluating a project and organizing communication. Reports are deliverables, produced at milestones
			*M.C Roland, December 2004*

Note two key points :
1) The introduction and the discussion are essential whatever the type of writing- whether in research or business-; they will reveal the author's key competences; this is where the evaluator will look for the qualities and skills expected from the author/candidate.

2) Communication skills are not only technical : they include all the other skills mentioned in the table.

The Réflexives® seminars are places where most of the skills and competences in the table
can be developed , plus :
- Interpersonal communication skills through dialogue, questioning, active listening
- Intercultural communication through dialogue among disciplines, between different scientific cultures