Towards a Framework for Professional/vocational qualifications

1
Towards a Framework for Professional/vocational
qualifications

• Not an attempt at qualification reform.
• But we do need to know how qualifications stand
  in relation to others.
• A transparency tool can heighten our awareness
  of the decisions that we make.

2
Aim of a Transparency Tool

•  
• need for a comprehensive descriptive
  framework for VQs.
• can be used as a indicative template by
  curriculum designers.
• Can be used as a means of comparison between
  qualifications and between qualification
  frameworks.

3
Desired Characteristics

• Needs to set out the conceptual framework for
  qualification design.
• Should include aims of the qualification.
• Although comprehensive it needs to be simple
  enough to be of practical use. Need to tread a
  narrow ground here.

4
Why do it?

• International comparisons of VQs make it clear
  that the conceptual field of vocational knowledge
  and ability is carved up in different ways in
  different countries.
• The aims of VQs often differ from country to
  country.
• High level templates need to be made specific if
  they are to be used in labour and educational
  markets.

5
What are the Consequences?

• As you drill down to the occupational level, it
  is inevitable that you get involved in specifying
  content.
• JS Mill thought that you could specify assessment
  without content, but the assessment specification
  inevitably prescribes the content that is to be
  covered.

6
Learning Outcomes

• The above considerations mean that it is
  difficult to stick to an input free learning
  outcomes model in designing such a tool.
• In Europe there has been a shift from thinking of
  learning outcomes in a dogmatic manner as the
  implications of filling in sectoral and
  occupational frameworks have sunk in.

7
Areas that Need to be Covered

• Aims
• Knowledge
• Practical ability
• Personal characteristics

8
Aims

• A VQ can have multiple aims and emphasise some
  more than others. These include
• Vocational (obviously)
• Civic (the worker as citizen)
• Liberal (continuation of general education and
  development of personality)

9
Practical Ability

• Acquisition of technique
• Skill
• Transversal abilities
• Project management
• Occupational capacity
• Attribution of intelligence concepts

10
Technique

• Can mean
• An account of the procedure for carrying out a
  task. The technique for.... meaning a way of
  doing something.
• A property of an agent. He could apply the
  technique of ....

11
Technique 2

• Practising a technique is invariably a necessary
  condition for exercising a skill.
• It is not always sufficient, as the agent may not
  be able to apply the technique in a contextually
  appropriate manner (Stanley and Williamson 2001)

12
Skill 1.

• Involves the application of technique.
• Know-how applied to a task.
• Is intentional and should involve understanding.
• Is subject to appraisal (skilful is a
  placeholder term).
• Can involve the virtues determination, attention
  to detail, care etc. and experience.

13
Skill 2

• Core usage of skill in terms of ability to
  perform tasks physical, intellectual even
  social. But social skills are only an element
  of social ability.
• Beware the reductive tendency to reduce all
  know-how to skill.
• Skill should have its proper (but determinate)
  place in a taxonomy of know-how in professional
  curricula.

14
Transversal Abilities 1

• Relevant examples include planning,
  communicating, co-ordinating, controlling,
  evaluating.
• Exercising a planning skill is not the same
  thing as being able to plan (which may be carried
  out in different ways).
• German VE curricula distinguish between
  Faehigkeiten and Fertigkeiten.

15
Transversal Abilities 2

• They involve the use of skills but are not
  reducible to them.
• They may make use of different skills in
  different contexts.
• Different actions may represent the same
  transversal ability.
• They are essential attributes of independent
  professional action.

16
Project Management 1

• A project is a long term and complex matter.
• Building a house rather than laying bricks.
• Healing a patient rather than dressing a wound.
• Teaching a class for a year rather than managing
  a lesson.
• A years farming cycle rather than planting
  turnips.

17
Project Management 2

• It typically involves transversal abilities as
  well as skills.
• Planning and evaluation typically open and close
  the cycle.
• It usually involves co-ordination with other
  workers.
• It is associated with flatter management
  hierarchies.

18
Occupational Capacity

• Desired outcome of German dual system programmes.
• Involves project management ability, but also the
  ability to understand and manage occupational
  interfaces and the range and implications of
  practice of the occupation.
• Involves ability to keep abreast of the
  development of the occupation.

19
Knowledge 1

• Contingent (task, job, firm-specific)
• Know-how as an account of procedures
• Systematic (underlying technical theory which
  could derive from a normative structure as well
  as being empirically derived, social as well as
  natural sciences)

20
Knowledge 2

• Occupational knowledge may be drawn from natural
  and social sciences.
• It involves an understanding of how to operate
  within a subject (eg to make inferences or to
  manipulate a formula).
• There are different degrees of engagement with
  the systematic underlying knowledge dependent on
  level of qualification technician,
  technologist, researcher.

21
Knowledge 3

• Need to avoid thinking of it as ability to
  recognise a proposition.
• An account of how a skill is performed is not an
  example of underpinning knowledge.
• Possession of underpinning knowledge should
  enable the agent to make independent judgments in
  workplace situations and to justify them.

22
Theory and Practice

• There is no mystery about applying theory to
  practice.
• But the ability to do so requires programmes that
  integrate classroom, workshop and workplace in
  appropriate ways.
• Those who claim that there is or that it is not
  appropriate (nice to know but not necessary to
  know) usually prefer a restrictive definition
  of the occupation.

23
Personal characteristics

• Self-related and socially focused
• Related to non-work as well as work situations
• Implicated at different levels of know-how
• The exercise of personal characteristics is an
  aspect of how an action is performed, not a
  distinct type of action.

24
Personal Characteristics 2
Self related Other related
Work contexts
Non work contexts
25
Personal Characteristics 3

• You need the bourgeois virtues to operate
  efficiently on your own.
• You need the civic virtues to operate with
  others and, crucially, to act as a citizen with
  respect to your occupation.

26
Intelligence Concepts

• We can apply evaluative vocabulary to know-how.
• A framework should allow for the fact that some
  qualifications require more than threshold
  performance but try to calibrate excellence.
• Evaluation can be technical, moral or aesthetic
  in character.

27
Technical issues 1.

• A Translation Tool should be neutral as to
  learning outcomes approaches.
• Should be able to deal with content.
• Levelling 1 getting the balance between
  practical and academic knowledge right.
• Levelling 2 establishing equivalences between
  academic and professional qualifications.

28
Establishing levels

• Poses particular problems when the aim is to
  compare academic and non-academic
  qualifications.
• Such equivalences must have integrity and command
  trust.

29
Technical issues 2

• Referencing the need for integrity of process
• Issues of detail can be difficult.
• Credit accumulation can input concepts be
  avoided?
• Accommodating APEL should be possible without
  an exclusively outcomes approach.
• Scope
• Procedures for using such a tool.

30
Modularity and Credit Accumulation

• A translation tool should be able to accommodate
  qualifications that rely on credit accumulation.
• It is doubtful whether a pure learning outcomes
  approach can be applied to the assessment of
  informal and non-formal learning.
• Measures of credit are usually proxies for effort
  (see ECVET example).

31
Credit accumulation under ECVET

• ECVET will enable the allocation of credit points
  through different approaches and instruments.
• ECVET credit points should be allocated on the
  basis of criteria such as
• - an estimation of the importance of the contents
  of each unit defined in terms of knowledge
  skills and competence reference to a real or
  notional average length of programme real or
  notional learner workload in a formal learning
  context
• - real or notional learner effort in an informal
  learning context 
• - combination of several criteria.

32
Scope

• Scope concerns the volume and variety of content
  that a qualification may guarantee.
• This may vary greatly between nominally similar
  qualifications.
• Hence there is a need to accurately specify the
  scope of a qualification.
• One problem with the EQF is that it does not do
  so and needs to be supplemented.

33
How a TT might be used.

• Classify epistemic categories to be used within
  the qualification within the TT, leaving blank
  those that cannot be filled in.
• Make sure that the scope element is adequately
  described for each qualification.
• Ensure that agreement is reached on levelling for
  each qualification or segment of a qualification
  (for the comparison of QFs there will need to be
  a distinct referencing exercise, which depends on
  satisfactory levelling).
• Enumerate the similarities and differences
  between the qualifications examined.
• Make a comparative judgment of equivalence or
  non-equivalence (if desired).

34
The end