The Integrated View on Competence
This chapter begins with an outline of the main features of an integrated understanding of competence and how this understanding differs from some other common approaches to competence. Inspired by behaviourism, much competency-based training (CBT) views
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The Integrated View on Competence Paul Hager
10.1
Introduction
This chapter begins with an outline of the main features of an integrated understanding of competence and how this understanding differs from some other common approaches to competence. This is followed by a detailed consideration of an integrated understanding of competence. Beginning with a discussion of the basic logic of the concept of competence, the underpinning principles of the integrated approach are elaborated, as well as its applications in a variety of occupations and for a diversity of purposes and its advantages and limitations. This discussion serves to further distinguish an integrated understanding from rival approaches to competence. Finally, it is argued that the integrated approach accords very well with recent theoretical developments in related topic areas, such as the nature of skills, practice theory and complexity theory.
10.2
How an Integrated Understanding of Competence Differs from Rival Understandings
Behaviourism is a theory of learning whose explanatory focus is overt behaviour and the conditions for shaping it, whilst avoiding any reference to putative ‘inner’ entities, such as mental states (see, e.g. the chapter of Barrick in this volume, as well as Kalantzis and Cope 2009; Phillips and Soltis 2009). A widely held, but simplistic, view is that training is a form of learning centred on development of motor skills with
P. Hager (*) Learning Cultures & Practices Group, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © 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_10
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minimal cognitive demands (see, e.g. Winch 1998, 2010). Not surprisingly, these two familiar ideas have coalesced to shape how competence has been thought of in relation to the trades and other occupations with a significant manual component. Competency-based training (CBT), as commonly understood, views competence as a series of specific tasks or the behaviours involved in the completion of these tasks (see, e.g. Arguelles and Gonczi 2000). To many, this approach appears to reflect ‘common sense’. Since competency-based assessment tests performance, and since performance is commonly thought to be the completion of a series of tasks, it seems obvious that competency standards should be a series of discrete task descriptions. However, major limitations of this approach to competence soon become evident. It quickly becomes too atomistic. More and more minute work tasks can be specified, yet being ‘ticked off’ against each of a myriad of tasks does not always equate to workplace competence. Competent performance involves much more than the mere sum of numerous minute task behaviours. What this ‘sum of the tasks’ approach overlooks is that competent performance requires a further capacity to put all the parts together t
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