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Need for Achievement: Competency-Based Testing and Its Normative Premises 1970-2000



Author(s)

Andreas Gelhard University of Vienna, Austria

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DOI:10.17265/2159-550X/2017.01.003

Competency-based testing is part of a broader trend towards a psychologization of the pedagogical which is characteristic for the educational systems of the USA and Europe in the second halve of the 20th century. The article examines David C. McClelland’s pathbreaking paper Testing for Competence Rather Than for “Intelligence” (1973) as an important testimony of this trend. McClelland’s paper breaks down into two halves that rely on fundamentally different normative premises: on the one hand the political demand for social equality, on the other hand the economic demand for increased performance. Only the latter demand, which is formulated most forcefully in McClelland’s book The Achieving Society (1961), can be considered as a crucial factor in determining the course of the recent reforms of the educational systems of the German-speaking world. A clear example of this can be seen in Franz E. Weinert’s influential paper on Comparative Performance Measurement in Schools (2001).

psychology, pedagogy, competency, testing, achievement