Some thoughts on competency, books and wikis
11-August-2006
I got an email form Jacqueline Hall earlier this week.
"Dear Graham", she said, "I am currently undertaking a piece of research examining the supply and demand side of competency (frameworks, mapping, assessment services and associated technology platforms.)
"It struck me that you mentioned this German word 'beruf ' at the Steering group, which was more a synthesis between knowledge and skills, rather than the UK perspective, where we make a clear division, evidenced within for example our NVQ frameworks and other vocational qualifications. I am aiming to try to provide a definition of competency and how it might be interpreted differently across countries such as France, Netherlands, Ireland, UK, Germany, Scandinavia and wonder if you have any links/information/papers which might make useful reading and attempt to provide some clarity. My colleague in the US is attempting to do the same for the States but are further behind us in terms of using competency frameworks or aligning them to business strategy."
What a good question. And there has been very limited work in this area. It would seem that the European Commission, in their obsession with producing common qualification frameworks, have, like national research organisations, failed to consider the different cultural ways in which we view skills and qualification.
there has been some limited work on the subject. I wrote a paper a few years ago on the cultural meaning of VET. I think it was published by the Portuguese curriculum research organisation but has no doubt long time subsided into obscurity. Over the week-end I will try to produce a couple of excerpts for this blog.
My great friend Pekka Kamarienen has produced some excellent work on the subject which was published in a book entitled "Transformation of learning in education and training Key qualifications revisited", which, along with Pekka and Alan Brown, I edited. Whilst this still appears to be available for purchase (25 Euros) from Cedefop.
Sadly Cedefop have not chosen to make the book available for download. I have a copy on my computer of course and if you would like to read any of it (you can find a list of the contents here) email me and I will send you the chapters as a file attachment (hope that doesn't upset Cedefop too much - knowledge being freely available- whatever next?).
By coincidence, Pekka pointed me today to a new wiki launched by the Institut Technik und Bildung at the University of Bremen.
The aim of the wiki is " to create a support-space for intercultural understanding of terms and concepts of technical and vocational education and training (TVET)."
The main page goes on to say: "In international co-operation - when using different languages - it is often hard to communicate concepts, which are specific to certain countries. Those concepts were developed using the individual country's language, and the development also affected the language by either creating new terms or assigning new meanings to existing terms. Thus it is usually hard to find equivalent terms in a language, which was not the native language of the concept.
This wiki intends to develop translations of such terms of TVET. In order to tackle the problem of environment- and development-related meanings of terms complex cross-cultural and inter-lingual webs will have to be created, comprising explanations of and references to the backgrounds and their processes that led to the existance of the terms.
Everybody with knowledge on TVET is invited to contribute to the development of this encyclopaedia of TVET terms. "
Sadly the front page appears to be locked at the moment but I am hopeful such teething problems are sorted out soon. Looks a good initiative and at least it is in the public domain. I
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