The implications of outsourcing seafarer employees globally: The possible impact of authentic assessment

The Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping (STCW) Code was introduced by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to globally regulate the standards for competence assessment and certification of seafarers. However, flexibility and vagueness in the Code has led to a lack of uniformity in the adopted assessment methods and the resulting competence standards of the graduating students worldwide. Variability and inconsistencies in employee competence on board ships may have profound ramifications on seafarer employers that intend to outsource employees from the global labour market as a benefit of globalisation. Such employers are increasingly demanding evidence of achievement of the STCW standards or more from maritime education and training (MET) institutes. Due to impracticality, the solution may not lie in increasing global regulation of training but exploring innovative assessment practices that may be implemented nationally to improve the certification and resulting evidence of competence of seafarers. This paper provides theoretical justification to support authentic assessment as a possible alternative to current assessment practices. Based on a review of literature in the area of authentic assessment, the paper argues that student performances in a real-world context captured through rubrics provide contextual evidence of competence to perform on-board tasks. Such contextual evidence can then be used to gauge the standards of training and improve on them by stakeholders such as educators, employers, and national regulators.