“Assessment of Competencies in Higher Education”

The assessment of competence development during the course of higher education presents a substantive and methodological challenge. The challenge is to define and model competence – as the latent cognitive and affective-motivational underpinning of domain-specific performance in varying situations – in a reliable and valid way given the inter- and intra-national diversity of higher education institutions, programs, and teaching processes. Moreover, the question arises as to which criteria may be appropriate to evaluate definitions and measures of competence. Finally, adding to the challenge is the fact that academic programs and labor markets change constantly.

In a globalized knowledge-based society in which demands toward the academic work force become ever more complex, study of higher education’s capacity to develop competencies is greatly needed. It is against this background that we invite papers to examine issues of the assessment of competencies, including methodological papers, and papers on the construct definition of competence, including an examination of the reliability, validity, and utility of such assessments in higher education.

The objective of this topical issue is to highlight competence assessment from a substantive and a methodological point of view. The examination of competence measurement structure (e.g., dimensionality or grading) is also of interest. Finally, we seek to cover competence assessment across a wide range of higher education programs and institutions. We welcome full original articles, research notes, and opinion papers. We invite scholars to submit their abstracts on potential papers electronically to the first guest editor and to copy the other guest editors:

• Sigrid Blömeke (mailto:sigrid.bloemeke@staff.hu-berlin.de)
• Jan-Eric Gustafsson (mailto:jan-eric.gustafsson@ped.gu.se)
• Richard Shavelson (mailto:richs@stanford.edu)

How to submit: Interested authors should submit a letter of intent including: (1) a working title for the manuscript, (2) names, affiliations, and contact information for all authors, and (3) an abstract of no more than 500 words describing the content of the proposed manuscript.

There is a two-stage submissions process. Initially, authors are requested to submit only abstracts of their proposed papers. Authors of the selected abstracts will then be invited to submit full papers, research notes, or opinion papers. All papers will undergo blind peer review.

• Deadline for submission of abstracts is November 15, 2013.
• Deadline for submission of full papers is March 31, 2014.

The journal seeks to maintain a short turnaround time, with the final version of the accepted papers being due by August 15, 2014. The topical issue will be published as issue 1 (2015). For additional information, please contact Sigrid Blömeke (mailto:sigrid.bloemeke@staff.hu-berlin.de).

General Information About the Journal

The Zeitschrift für Psychologie was founded in 1890 and is the second oldest psychology journal in the world. One of the founding editors was Herrmann Ebbinghaus. Since 2007, it is published in English and is devoted to publishing topical issues that provide state-of-the-art reviews of current research in psychology.

For detailed author guidelines, please see the journal’s website at www.hogrefe.com/journals/zfp/