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82 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

Competency-Based Education and Teacher Agency in

Assessment, an Analysis of its Implementation in a BA of ELT

in Mexico

Gloria Carolina Pallanez Dávila

University of Southampton/Universidad de Sonora

Key Words: assessment, competency-based education, teacher agency.

Due to neoliberal policies that have spread around the globe, the tendency towards a standardised
education continues to evolve. Such ideologies have been translated to international educational
policies searching to propitiate an exchange of human and economic capital. One of these policies
is the implementation of a Competency-based program (CBP) suggested to different instructional
levels, including higher education. In Mexico, the change has also landed to an English Language
Teaching B.A. in a north-eastern state; therefore, it is essential to organise a follow up of its imple-
mentation. Overall, this transformation would lie in teachers and in their way of adopting or not an
international policy. The present study consists of analysing teacher agency in the implementation of
a CBP to understand the impact on classroom practices. Therefore, teachers are now recognised
as agents in learning and teaching processes with the capability to operate within their environment
(Kalaja, Barcelos, Aro, & Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2015). Thus, “agency is not only concerned with what is
observable, but it also involves not visible behaviours, beliefs, thought and feelings; all of which must
be understood in relation to the various context and affordances from which they cannot be abstrac-
ted” (Mercer, 2012, p.42).

Statement of the Problem:

The Competency Based Education Model in the B.A. of English Language Teaching at a university
in the Northwest of Mexico entered into force eight years ago. Despite the training program that has
been carried out, the implementation of the model during this transition period is unknown. The ques-
tion that arises from this problem is:
What is the impact that CBE has on teacher agency while performing assessment in Higher educa-
tion in Mexico?