Using NVQs to promote Learning LO10340

pcapper@actrix.gen.nz
Sat, 5 Oct 1996 16:38:55 +1200 (NZST)

Replying to LO10319 --

Michael McMaster wrote:

" For some time, I've alienated the UK culture of NVQ's by insisting
that the measure which corporations would value is something like
"demonstration of competence on the job". If that is what you mean,
I am interested in extending this dialogue.

"I am a athelete (tennis player and other sports) and ex-coach. If
someone claims to know about tennis I put a racquet (or some similar
object) in their hands and ask for a demonstration. If someone ways
they are a coach, I give them a player and say, "Make an observable
improvement.

"Makes short work of qualification - and long benefit in results."

I agree wholeheartedly with Michael. New Zealand is in the middle of a
huge reform of its national vocational qualifications system towards a
competency based model. Despite the fact that it is in our part of the
world (actuallly mainly in Australia) that a lot of the really good
thinking about certificating competence on the basis of holistic
performance has gone on, operationally there appears to be an overwhelming
preisposition to break the things down into components and tasks.

The pressures that lead to this are those to do with 'validity' (for
portable qualifications) and for 'fairness' ( in assessment and in
determining pay levels in skills based pay systems). When there is a
national quals system, as here, the pressures for this are greater, but
DACUM type task analyses in common use in the US are part of the same sad
model.

It is significant that in flight crew training there is a gathering shift
( led by some pioneer airlines - notably United, British Airways and Aer
Lingus) towards rethinking the nature of competence based training. In
this needs based approach the starting point is to define the mission -
eg. "to complete a safe and comfortable flight at the maximum compatible
level of economic operation.", and then to work backwards through the
domains and tasks necessary to carry out that mission in order to define
the training (SORRY! LEARNING!!) needs.

Unfortunately the experience in English NVQ's, Scottish SVQ's, and New
Zealand's NQF, is that many industries go in precisely the opposite
direction, with appalling results for performance.

Even more distrurbing than mere effiecient performance, is the
implications of this in high safety risk environments. I have just read a
paper recently written by the training manager of a large electricity
generating enterprise, which demonstrates quite terrifying ignorance of
the relationships between performance, competence, learning and human
error. No wonder there are still so many industrial accidents!

I have another observation on this topic. I'll send it in a separate
message

Phillip Capper
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business
Wellington
New Zealand

-- 

pcapper@actrix.gen.nz

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