Exploring the Dangers and Benefits of the UK’s Permissive Competence-Based Approach: The Use of Vocational Qualifications as Learning Artefacts and Tools for Measurement in the Automotive Sector
posted on 2009-12-14, 16:35authored byLorna Unwin, Alison Fuller, Daniel Bishop, Alan Felstead, Nick Jewson, Konstantinos Kakavelakis
This paper presents evidence to show how vocational qualifications act as
boundary objects in the stimulation of learning at work and how they, in
turn, become the catalyst for the creation of artefacts that have a purpose
and existence beyond the life cycle of an accreditation process. The
context for the paper is the UK’s automotive manufacturing industry, a
sector that has undergone considerable change over the past thirty or so
years and has been under intense pressure to improve standards. The paper
presents evidence from case studies of two companies that produce parts
for global car manufacturers. These companies have introduced
competence-based approaches in order to audit and assess the skills of
their workforces in response to demands from the companies they supply
that they can prove their employees are working to the required
international quality standards. The competence-based approach, which is
contested in the academic literature, has enabled employees to gain
National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), which, in turn, are still
controversial some twenty years after they were first introduced. The
paper argues that a competence-based approach can be beneficial to both
organisations and individuals, but the ambiguities inherent in the NVQ
model of competence create tensions and opportunities for restrictive as
well as expansive forms implementation.
History
Citation
Learning as Work: Teaching and Learning Processes in Contemporary Work Organisations, Research Paper, No. 15
Published in
Learning as Work: Teaching and Learning Processes in Contemporary Work Organisations
Publisher
Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University
Available date
2009-12-14
Publisher version
http://learningaswork.cf.ac.uk/outputs.html
Notes
This working paper is Research Paper No. 15 of a series produced for Learning as Work: Teaching and Learning Processes in the Contemporary Work Organisation, an ESRC Teaching and Learning Programme (TLRP) Phase III funded project (2003 - 2008). It is available from http://learningaswork.cf.ac.uk/outputs.html