Developing Domains of Occupational Competence: Workplaces and Learner Agency
This chapter proposes occupational competence as being cast within three domains of knowledge. These are, firstly, the canonical knowledge of the occupation (i.e. what all occupational practitioners need to know, can do and value). This comprises the doma
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Developing Domains of Occupational Competence: Workplaces and Learner Agency Stephen Billett
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Introduction
Competence is usually aligned with specific domains of activities which can be demonstrated through individuals’ performances (Mulder 2014). The idea that human competence is related to particular domains of activities was emphasised and also strongly supported across three decades of research within cognitive psychology to understand what comprises human expertise and expert performance in fields such as work (Ericsson 2006; Stevenson 1994). In essence, what was found was that human performance whilst having some levels of generalisability (i.e. cleverness or ability to manipulate knowledge) is associated with abilities for performing effectively within particular domains of activities (Chi et al. 1982; Ericsson and Smith 1991; Glaser 1984; Lajoie 2009). For instance, the particular domain-specific skills, heuristics, organisation of knowledge and solution strategies were identified as being essential by expert chess players (Charness 1989). However, when, experimentally, the rules of chess were changed, expert chess players performed no better than novices (Wagner and Sternberg 1986). So, although games like chess are often associated with general capacities (i.e. ability to plan, think and act logically), performance was found to be related to the specific practices of chess playing, not general cleverness (i.e. the ability to manipulate what is known). However, an emphasis on domains of activity is not restricted to cognitive psychological accounts of expertise. The socio-culturalist (Scribner 1984) refers to work activities as being sets of cultural practices ‘involving socially organised domains of knowledge and technologies, including symbol systems’ (p.13). Rogoff (1990), another social-culturalist, also refers to apprenticeship learning as being associated with particular domains of knowledge. Indeed, those concerned with S. Billett (*) Griffith University, Queensland, Australia e-mail: s.billett@griffith.edu.au © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 M. Mulder (ed.), Competence-based Vocational and Professional Education, Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 23, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41713-4_2
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developing specific capacities also refer to particular domains, such as when considering the learning within and for particular circumstances of practice (Brown et al. 1989), the learning of problem-solving skills in mathematics (Renkle 2002; Sweller 1989) and literacy (Sticht 1987). The same goes for those concerned with promoting effective learning through cognitive apprenticeships (Collins et al. 1989; Lajoie 2009), reciprocal teaching and learning (Palinscar and Brown 1984), worked examples (Renkle 2002) and other instructional processes (Schmidt and Rikers 2007; Sutherland 2002). More specifically, those who have focused on the development of occupational capacities similarly refer to learning domain-specific knowledge (e.g. Gott 19
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