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"Vocational education"

The idea of competence has different meanings in ordinary, academic, and vocational education and training-practice. These meanings also have historical dimensions. That is, what is meant by competence has evolved over time, and has been constituted differently in different areas of practice. For instance, in contemporary discussions in education and training, competing notions of competence have been the subject of debate, somewhat reminiscent of recurring debates in education over the last century or more. This paper examines the possible reasons why different meanings are associated with the term competence by examining the nature of the ends that are sought in constructions of competence in dijferent areas of practice. The paper relates advocacy for dijferent constructions of competence to the normative views that underpin them, and to periods in history when they gained their greatest sway. The genesis of the position of the cognitive psychological construction of competence and that of the competency-based training movement are examined against these normative positions. It is suggested that, for any convergence of meaning to occur, the construction of competence needs to have features that enable transactions across areas of practice. The cyclical movements in constructions are likened to an incomplete metamorphosis, continually thwarted by a failure to address the normative aspects of constructions of competence. © 1996, Taylor and Francis Inc. All rights reserved.

This paper raises questions about the training debate today in Australia through its examination of the factors, among them the roles of government and professional associations, that influenced the development of engineering technician training and education in New South Wales in the 1950s and 1960s. Technical educators grasped the need for courses that provided for a new range of workplace classifications which tended to fall outside the province or sphere of concern of tradesmen or the professional engineer. One of the major factors stimulating the interest in, and growth of, the provision of such courses was the strength of demand by the youths themselves. To what extent did the technical education authorities exercise power over training for industry? A contrast between apprenticeship and technician training in the metal industry is used here to answer this question. With respect to apprenticeship training, technical educators were essentially marginalised by the power struggles that centred around the recruitment of apprentices, and by the increasingly complicated framework of industrial legislation. In the area of technician training the technical education sector took a leadership role in the development of such training and faced little opposition in doing so. The reasons for the contrast are explored in the paper. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

In 1990, Australian Federal and State Ministers responsible for vocational education and training (VET) established a framework for the implementation of competency-based training (CBT) in Australia. A target of substantial implementation by the end of 1993 was set. Charles Sturt University's Group for Research in Employment and Training was subsequently commissioned by the Department of Employment, education and Training to assess the penetration of CBT in TAFE and non-TAFE settings in 1994. It was found that the implementation was slower than anticipated and that this was particularly true in the TAFE (government-funded technical college) sector. The data suggested, however, that CBT was becoming more common, and that the gap between TAFE and non-TAFE providers was closing. There was considerable disagreement among providers about what constituted CBT practice. Certain features often seen as elements of CBT, including workplace assessment and the availability of assessment on demand, were scarcely used at all. To describe the implementation of CBT, a model of ‘essential’ and ‘associated’ elements of CBT is proposed, which adapts Elam's (1971) model of ‘essential’ and ‘implied’ elements. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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1996 marks the 10th anniversary of the National Council for vocational Qualifications, the body responsible for a national framework of competency-based education and training in the United Kingdom. Concurrently, the qualifications are being highlighted as they are developed at professional levels 4 and 5.The anniversary was preceded by a plethora of reports. Beaumont flagged up issues of validity, reliability and quality control in relation to the organisational structure of the framework. The Institute of Employment Studies noted that there had only been a marginal increase in the number of employers implementing the qualifications and the Higher education Quality Council began the process of persuading the higher education sector by noting the positive contributions that competency-based assessment processes could make. However, there remain very real issues to debate. Whether knowledge and understanding can be ‘inferred’ from performance. Whether the qualifications are suitable for the complexities of professional performance. Above all, whether policy-making over the last decade has been thinking along the right lines. This paper explores those issues. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

A Staff Development Forum for the post-16 sector has recently been established. It will examine the need for a more coherent approach to staff training and professional development, including the introduction of ‘national standards’ in the form of National vocational Qualifications (NVQs). This paper argues that there is, indeed, an urgent need to consider the case for some form of consensus about what constitutes best practice in teaching. But a proper consideration must begin from a conceptualisation of teaching as professional practice. Three typical characteristics of professional practice are examined for their relevance to teaching: ethical values, autonomous pragmatism and the pursuit of expertise, together with the question of whether current NVQs can provide an account of these characteristics. The conclusion drawn is that methodological inadequacies of a conceptual, psychological and epistemological nature prevent them from doing so, and that these inadequacies derive from the role of competence-based qualifications in New Right social and educational policy. The potential effect of devising qualifications using the current competence-based approach is a reconceptualisation of teaching and learning as technical procedures, and of teachers as technicians. Unless resisted, this will achieve the ideological intention of subordinating the practice of teachers to direct political and managerial control, thus rendering teachers and learners less independent and autonomous, more impotent. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.