What our study reveals is that the vast majority of our participants have not reached this competency benchmark.
Although the dramatic increase of explicitly scientific ideas, and the decrease in the frequency of mixed models and explicitly naïve models provide support for the effectiveness of the PD program, several teachers failed to meet a minimum competency benchmark (i.e., being able to explain evolutionary change free of alternative conceptions).
It is hoped that countries will use these competencies as benchmarking for agreeing who meets the definition of a skilled attendant.
While reasoning about evolutionary change is diverse and complex, expert novice reasoning patterns, and associated benchmarks of competency, may be simplified and modeled along a continuum based on existing research (see Table 2).
Valid assessment tools evaluating technical performance are required to establish objective parameters in arthroscopic training to generate standardized benchmarks of competency and ultimately improve technical proficiency.
Since such high quality online educational resources are expensive to produce and maintain, well designed educational programs that are shared across multiple institutions allow the sharing of expenses, while meeting diverse learner and institutional needs and generating benchmarks of competency in medical education and evaluation [ 12, 16].
This large study of UK endoscopy trainees will allow future trainees to benchmark their competency progression against a UK national average.
Quantifying students' use of necessary and sufficient scientific elements (key concepts) as a benchmark for competency, as we have done, captures only one facet of short-answer scientific explanations (cf. Braaten and Windschitl [ 2011]).
Previous reports indicate that experienced endoscopists consistently achieve cecal intubation in more than 90% of their procedures, and rates above 90% have generally been the benchmark for competency [ 16, 17].
In the United States, successful completion of these exams enables psychiatrists to become board certified, meaning they have met the national benchmark criteria of competency required for the practice of psychiatry.
