New Publication: Assessing Competences for Democratic Culture

Together with an international team, Prof Martyn Barret (Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey, UK) has published a new Council of Europe book which takes a further step in the use of the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC). The new publication deals with assessing democratic competences and thus supports the possibility of identifying how successful the implementation is. It has been produced for use by education practitioners and policy makers to assist them in making decisions about how to assess learners’ competences for democratic culture. The book is intended for use together with the RFCDC. To remind interested readers: the RFCDC, which was published in 2018, offers a comprehensive integrated description of the competences that citizens require for participating effectively in democratic culture and intercultural dialogue. The Assessment Working Group (AWG) began its activities by conducting a survey of the assessment practices that are already used in the member states for assessing learners’ competences in the fields of education for democratic citizenship, human rights, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue, broadly construed. The information received in the survey was discussed, analysed and evaluated at AWG meetings that took place in June and October 2018. In total, 35 assessment methods were identified, which were classified according to 10 categories. In the course of these discussions, it became apparent that some of the methods could serve as very useful practical examples of what can be done to assess learners’ democratic and intercultural competences in reliable and valid ways. This compendium can be used as a resource by both education practitioners and policy makers to aid their decisions about how to assess learners’ competences within their own educational contexts. The document can be downloaded by clicking on the link below:

https://rm.coe.int/prems-005521-assessing-competences-for-democratic-culture/1680a3bd41