Reading 02 STCW Learning and Assessment Canada

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T. Pelton, G. Reis, & K. Moore (Eds.), CONNECTIONS 07 (pp. 7175).

2007 Gholamreza Emad & Wolff-Michael Roth

Evaluating the competencies of seafarers: Chal-lenges in current practice

Gholamreza Emad and Wolff-Michael Roth

ABSTRACT: Maritime education and certification and its related assessment of officers

and engineers on-board ships are regulated by the international convention on Standard o f

Training, Certification and Watchkeeping of seafarers (STCW). According to the conven-tion, the relevant administrations have to ascertain that merchant navy ship officers are

highly competent for the job and evaluate them according to the Competency-Based

Training and assessment system (CBT) before they issue any certificate. The research on

marine accidents shows that this is not always the case. The present ethnographic case

study highlights and theorizes some of the challenges and contradictions present in the

current practice of maritime education and training system (MET) that adopts a recently

mandated competency-based training model. In our study, we draw on observations, in-

terviews, and document reviews to articulate some of the contradictions present in the

system and that prevent the assessment and further development of mariners authentic

competency. The assessment for certification is mainly carried out by a series of written

and oral examinations, where students are evaluated without being assessed for their abil-

ity to perform the task competently. Consequently, the current assessment system is pro-

moting a change in the objectives of the education and training practices: from learning

skills and developing knowledge required to safely work onboard ships to how to merelypass the written exams. This research identifies and bridges the gap in the literature and

research of competency-based training and assessment in maritime domain and provides

practical solution for improving this system.

KEYWORDS: Competency; maritime training; assessment; certification; International

Maritime Organization.

Introduction:

The international seafarers community created a certification system to insure

that the ships all around the world are manned by competent mariners. As a re-sult ship officers have to be issued certificates ofcompetency (IMO, 1996) to be

allowed to work onboard shipsmeaning that they are assessed for their compe-


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tencies. The assessment for and issuance of certificates is delegated to the mari-

time administration of each country. In Canada, these certificates are issued by

the maritime branch of Transport Canada (TC). TC is a governmental organiza-

tion that is responsible for regulating the requirements candidates have to fulfill

during their training, such as working on-board ships for a minimum period of

time, attending a series of safety and technical short-duration courses, and pass-

ing written and oral examinationsthe so called competency certification as-

sessment.In the present study, we analyze how, from the perspective of students and

lecturers, the way that the assessment system is set does not allow a legitimate

evaluation of the competency of the candidates. On the contrary, since students

are not tested for their skills and ability to do the job accordingly, there is no in-

dication that the people who have received the certificate of competency are ac-

tually able to perform the job as requiredrepresenting an important contradic-

tion within the competency-based learning model adopted in the current

maritime education and training (MET) system. Likewise, our analysis shows

that the assessment system needs to be redesigned in such a way that it reverts

the change of candidates objectivesfrom learning how to pass the test to

learning what is considered necessary for a good start in the profession. Ulti-

mately, results imply that written exams may have to be replaced by a compe-

tency-based assessment, in which candidates are evaluated at work as they per-form their jobs realistically.

Method

This research is based on an ethnographic case study conducted in a Canadian

maritime training institute. Our database was collected during a course presented

for mariners applying for second-level watchkeeping certificate of competency.

These mariners have acquired the first-level certificate earlier and worked for

some time onboard ships in an officer function and then enrolled to upgrade

their certificate for working in some higher position onboard ships. The partici-

pants (students) have extensive backgrounds as mariners and are from different

marine industries including: commercial fishing, passenger ferries, towboat, and

coast guard. We attended and videotaped the classes and did interviews withstudents and the course lecturer. The database includes field notes, videotaped

sessions in the classroom and interviews, students manual, teaching syllabus,

sample tests and certification procedures, rules and regulations.

Current practice of maritime education and training

The current maritime training system is not considered successful by many in

the field as it cannot attain its primary objectives: i.e., to reduce the contribution

of human element in accidents through competency training. Our study reveals

that the mariners trained in this system are generally dissatisfied with the educa-

tion that they receive and perceived that is not of much benefit to them. Thus,

one mariner stated the issue in a rather typical way: It is an education designed

to screw you up, not education designed to help you in a working world. An-

other participant, a certified mariner, expressed his experience of the system and

considering himself as b eing only minimally qualified although he was success-


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Evaluating th e competencies of seafarers 73

ful in competency exams stated: Now I am qualified (air quoting) but really I

didnt learn very much, learned a little bit. These comments from experienced

mariners attending a prerequisite course for a second level maritime certificate

of competency are not uncommon. Thus our research question is: How has the

current practice in maritime education, training and certification resulted in

these apparent contradictions between the intentions of the curriculum and the

experience of the students?

Each candidate should be able to demonstrate the minimum requirements ofstandard competency prescribed in the convention. These competencies are to be

achieved through a combination of education and training plus practical experi-

ence onboard ship (IMO, 1996). The maritime administrator assess the students

for their competencies before issuing the certificate

Assessment for certification

Although the current Standard of Training, Certification of Watchkeeping Con-

vention (STCW) stipulates maritime certification to be based on assessing com-

petencies, our study reveals an emphasis on knowledge assessment by means of

written and oral examinations. This leads to an inner contradiction whereby

some aspects of the system become impediments to achieving the goal of the

CBT as a whole i.e. competent performance. It changes the way that the mari-ners approach learning and shifts their objective from acquiring competencies to

memorizing what is required to pass examinations.

It was clear from the beginning of the course that the students previous ex-

periences with this type of the certification examination were mediating their

current approach to learning. Students were concerned about specific issues

concerning the exams. For example, they doubted the validity of the exam ques-

tions, considering the questions to be outdated and not to have practical implica-

tions for their onboard work. Thus, one of the students mentioned: a lot of the

stuff on the exams was like, out dated information, completely irrelevant to what

is in practice and even in theory today. The instructor appeared to be in agree-

ment: Quite often the examinations are reflecting history, and have not been

up-dated. For example, my student may go down and write an examination for a

topic, examination was put together in 1976.Even the conventional assessment system is not achieving its objectivei.e.

to assess the knowledge an officer needs onboard ship, as opposed to skills and

competencies. Because examination questions are drawn from a question bank,

they may appear identically across different examinations: Yes they were all

the same. They havent changed in thirty years, forty years, you know, they had

converted them from imperial to metric. They are that old (Rick13).

Our findings are consistent with those of other studies that revealed the se-

verely compromised nature of examinations that reused the same questions year

after year (Stutman, 1997). Students perceptions about assessment significantly

influence their approaches to learning and studying (Struyven et al., 2005). This

affects the whole education and training system as the students aim to pass the

exams knowing that all they have to do is get ready for the set of largely known

13 Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper to preserve p articipants anonymity


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74 EMAD & ROTH

questions: Ian or Peter or any other instructor have to teach you to pass the ex-

ams, right . . . they have to teach you the kind of trickery to get you trough the

exams as well, which is the waste of his time, our time and the industrys time

(Dave). Answering these questions became the primary objective of teaching

and learning, leading the instructor to muse, So what I am having to do is try-

ing to figure out what TC (transport Canada) may want and what I am end up to

do is wasting lot of students learning time teaching history instead of teaching

today. He also oriented toward teaching outdated knowledge, because he wantsthe students to be successful in the certification examinations, rather than focus-

ing on teaching useful, present-day knowledge.

Students demands resulted in final sessions of the course to be assigned for

reviewing the sample questions from the available previous competency exami-

nations question banks. When the students are under pressures for achieving a

high score they have to give up or beat the system (Ebel & Frisbie, 1991), teach-

ing the test questions and corresponding answers is one response (Muirhead,

1997). The administrator knew about this flaw in the system but attempted to es-

chew it by creating a new set of questions. This was a temporary solution as one

of the students mentioned: Now I understand they are coming up with ques-

tions but twenty years down the road everyone is going to have those questions.

As the students noticed the solution presented by the administration may not

solve the problem but at best it may postpone it. Inappropriate assessment pro-cedures encourage superficial learning and varying the examination questions

may not be enough to evoke deep approaches to learning (Ramsden, 1997). It

seems that it might not change the perception of students about the examination

and as a result may not affects the way that they approach learning.

Discussion and conclusion

Our study reveals considerable contradictions inside a system designed to im-

prove the education and training of mariners. The structure of the competency

certification system exercised an influence on students learning process. The

competency examinations are important mediators in that they provide a motive

for the teaching practice as well as the students learning objectives. Assessment

serves to define the objective of the whole learning activity. Our study showsthat the way that the assessment system is set today does not require the candi-

date to be competent in the task. As a result, students in this education and train-

ing system are not assisted for performing in a way that makes them more com-

petent in doing the tasks required onboard ships. Our suggestion for removing

the contradiction and as a result improving the output of the system is to apply

the authentic principal of the competency-based assessment system. It requires

the candidates to be assessed on the job or job-like environment while they are

performing the task. As a result the mariners do not just learn how to be success-

ful in the examinations but they learn to be authentically competent and perform

better on the job.

Our study implies that the IMO and the examination administrators have to

do more than just preparing guidelines regarding CBT but they have to arrange a

proper transition process to this training concept. The certification system has to

be modified as it has a direct effect on the way that the maritime institutions and

work places provide opportunities and the students obtain skills and knowledge


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Evaluating th e competencies of seafarers 75

require to be a competent seafarer. As a result the mariners would learn more

than how to be successful in the examinations: they would learn to be competent

and perform better on the job. The implication of the competency based training

in its right format will help the students to attain the required competency and

maybe to reduce the number of accidents.

References

Bobb, J. (2000). Using assessments to measure performance. Marine Safety

Council Proceedings, 58(4), p. 6-8.

Ebel, R. L. and Frisbie, D. A. (1991). Essentials of educational measurement.

Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall,

IMO, (1996). International convention on Standards of Training, Certification

and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (1978, as amended in 1995) (STCW Con-

vention). London: International Maritime Organization.

Muirhead, P. (1997). An introduction to norm-referenced and criterion-

referenced assessment, marking and grading. In Holder L. (Ed.), Maritime

education and training: a practical guide (pp. 173179). London: Nautical

Institute.

Ramsden, P. (1997). The context of learning in academic departments. In: Mar-

ton, F. Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N. (Eds), The experience of learning:Implication for teaching and studying in higher education (pp. 198217).

Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.

Struyven, K; Dochy, F; Janssens, S. (2005). Students perceptions about evalua-

tion and assessment in higher education: a review. Assessment & Evalua-

tion in Higher Education, 30(4), p. 325-341.

Stutman, P. A. (1997). The development and evaluation of examination systems

based upon multiple choice criteria. In Holder L. (Ed.), Maritime education

and training: a practical guide (pp. 207220). London: Nautical Institute.

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Reading 02 STCW Learning and Assessment Canada