9. Challenges for future assessments

There are several aspects of key competencies that will pose important challenges in any effort to assess and measure them. For instance, the notion that key competencies function as constellations raises questions about current usage of assessments for benchmarking based on single measures. As assessments are developed in the future, it will be particularly important to recognize that key competencies do function together as constellations and to identify the strength and direction of any dependencies that exist. In practical terms this implies assessment designs that explicitly allow one to estimate the inter-skill covariance matrix.

As pointed out earlier, developing measures of complexity and criticality are important to reflect critical features of key competencies. In particular, further research and development work is needed to explore conceptually and empirically the assumed linkages between key competencies and desired outcomes at the micro and macro level. The relation of competence constellations to specific social, economic, and political contexts could provide an innovative track for the interpretation of international assessment results.

To do justice to the demand- and context-oriented nature of key competencies and to measure them validly and reliably necessitates a very open approach to assessment methodologies (e.g. Oates, 2003) and the exploration of more adaptive and interactive assessment techniques.

To further advance assessment of education and learning outcomes at the international level, sustained and coordinated research and development work is critical. The international and interdisciplinary collaboration in this domain over several years was beneficial, and should be maintained. As the process continues, the theory-based framework defined in DeSeCo will need to be revisited and refined through confrontation with empirical data and continued interdisciplinary research.

It is important to build future assessment on existing studies, expertise and knowledge, thus not to reinvent the wheel. At the same time, many of the challenges related to education and learning outcomes and their assessment call for new creative and proactive approaches. DeSeCo and ALL have established networks of researchers that can contribute — from different perspectives - to continued research on key competencies and the educational, social, and economic factors that contribute to improve the education and training and to enhanced returns on investments in competencies in terms of personal, economic, and social well-being.