exploring the links
Cathy Down1, Elaine Martin1, Paul Hager2 and Louise Bricknell1 EPI Group, RMIT1 and RCVET, University of Technology, Sydney2
Graduate attributes within higher education, the Key Competencies within vocational education and training and the making of sound judgments in our professional and personal lives are often viewed as quite disparate concepts. This paper argues that this is not the case; that they serve similar functions, are interdependent and mutually reinforcing and that teaching and learning must be inclusive of their conscious, systematic and creative development.
This paper uses a simple conceptual model to argue the synergy between these three qualities and the implications this has for our teaching and learning practice. The basis for this is an exploration of the clustered, developmental, contextually sensitive and process nature of graduate attributes, the Key Competencies and the capacity to make sound judgments.
Introduction
In the light of an increasing, although not uncontested, trend to describe educational programs in terms of their expected outcomes, the link between graduate attributes, the set of Key Competencies which form part of the policy framework of both the VET and school sectors and the capacity to form sound judgements is an increasingly important one. It is also important if the trend to seamlessness between educational sectors is to have a pedagogical as well as an administrative dimension, that we explore and delineate the similarities and differences between practice within different educational sectors.
This paper explores the links between the parallel developments of the theory and practice of graduate attributes and the Key Competencies. The ability to make sound judgments will be used as the synergising link between these concepts.
This will be achieved by providing a theoretical framework within which the role of judgment in establishing linkages and parallels between graduate attributes and a vocational education and training (VET) sector perspective of the Key Competencies is explored.
A simple model will be used to explore the similarities and relationships between the Key Competencies and graduate attributes. This model is represented in Figure 1. This diagram is a conceptual representation of the function of both graduate attributes (in a higher educational setting) and the Key Competencies (within vocational education and training) in enabling and enhancing the application of what has been learned to our professional, personal and social lives. Thus, both the Key Competencies and graduate attributes are seen as having a transformational role.
Figure 1
In looking at the similarity of the two diagrams, it should be noted that one of the premises of this paper is that the different semantics used in different educational sectors bestows an apparent disparity to very similar concepts. Similarly, the same set of words can be used to describe very different concepts or approaches. For example, within the higher education sector, the term "competencies" can often be interpreted in a much more behavioural sense than that attributed to them by many VET practitioners. The process depicted in Figure 1 is reflexive. That is, graduate attributes and the Key Competencies enable us to transform what we know and can do to enhance and manage our performance outside of formal learning situations. At the same time, they play a role in the reverse process, that is, in enabling us to learn and profit from our experience and to reshape what we know and can do as a result of this experience.
Hager (1998) argues that the Key Competencies are fundamental to the process of humans making judgements and that the development of the Key Competencies is linked to the capacity to form sound judgements. This paper extends Hager's argument to graduate attributes in order that some similarities and differences between both the role and the nature of graduate attributes and the Key Competencies can be explored. Background
Over the past decade, there has been an increasing focus on the generic attributes and orientations towards work and learning of the graduates of higher education (HE) courses. At the same time, there has been a parallel acknowledgment of the role of the Key Competencies within vocational education and training (VET) and school programs. These developments have corresponded with a movement towards the definition of educational curriculum in terms of the outcomes it seeks to achieve. This reorientation has been a contested one and, although initially driven by political and ideological processes, has been accompanied by an evolving acceptance that these outcomes must include not only knowledge and skill, but also the attributes, attitudes and orientations which enable graduates to reshape, apply and enhance their learning in response to social, community and vocational needs.
Associated with these trends has been a focus on the development of higher-order cognitive skills and the role that such skills play in enabling the reshaping and application of knowledge and skill, developed as a result of both formal and informal learning situation. This includes judgement, which Lipman (1991) sees as central to the
life and professional work
graduate attributes knowledge workplaceperformance Key Competencies specific competencies
process of effective thinking. The position taken by the authors of this paper is that the ability to make sound judgements both shapes and is shaped by the sort of attributes currently being defined as graduate attributes and, also, by generic competencies such as the set of Key Competencies which form part of VET policy.
Establishing the nexus between sets of graduate attributes, the Key Competencies and the ability to form sound judgements provides a dimension to the current push for seamlessness between educational sectors. Most of the activity in this area has been directed towards determining the necessary infrastructure that needs to be put in place to enhance access to multi-directional educational pathways. However, it is important that the development of infrastructure which allows students to effectively articulate between different sectors and disciplines is supported by a corresponding attention to the pedagogical issues which facilitate or impede movement across and within educational sectors.
Definitions
The Key Competencies are a set of generic competencies foreshadowed in the Finn report (AECRC 1991) and formalised by the Mayer Committee in Putting Education to Work: The Key Competencies report (Mayer 1992). The seven Key Competencies endorsed by the Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) are:
1. Collecting, analysing and organising information 2. Communicating ideas and information
3. Planning and organising activities 4. Working with others and in teams
5. Using mathematical ideas and techniques 6. Solving problems
7. Using technology.
An eighth Key Competency, 'Using cultural understandings' was recommended for inclusion in the set of Key Competencies by the Mayer Committee. However, after further investigation by various groups, this was rejected by MCEETYA on the grounds that it was implicit in and integral to each of the other Key Competencies.
The Key Competencies were described by the Mayer Committee as representing the set of competencies which enable people to transfer and apply knowledge and skills developed in classrooms and other learning situations to the workplace. As such, they represent a crystallisation of "an agenda for an emphasis on higher order competencies in the process of general education and the development of more adaptable, productive and autonomous workers, persons and citizens" (MCEETYA Schools' Taskforce 1996, p. 9).
Graduate attributes describe a desired set of generic capabilities which the institution wishes its graduates to have. For example, RMIT University has nominated seven attributes which it wishes its graduates to have so as to be equipped for professional practice in a global technology. The Teaching and Learning Strategy 1998 - 2000 specifies that learning programs must be designed and implemented so as to attract and develop graduates who are knowledgeable, critical creative, responsible, employable,
committed to lifelong learning and demonstrated leadership in their chosen professional sphere.
Such attributes are underpinned by generic capabilities which enable students to transform their learning into practice. Such capabilities are shaped by the educational experience of students and the expectations placed on them. It is, therefore, not sufficient, for higher educational institutions to value graduate attribute. The educational programs must be such that teaching programs, consciously and specifically, seek to develop such capabilities and that assessment processes measure and report on, in appropriate formats, student attainment with respect to such capabilities.
Bowden and Masters (1993, p. 156) described such capabilities as being intrinsic to and embedded within professional competence. Such generic capabilities underpinned, and had no meaning except in connection, with observable practice. They foreshadowed the need of universities to focus more attention in such generic capabilities (p. 157).
Dall'Alba and Sandberg (1996, p. 415) maintain that such competence should not be viewed simply in terms of the attributes of individuals and/or tasks to be performed as this decontextualises the observable practice and reduces it to a body of knowledge, skills and personal attributes. Rather, as in Figure 1 (p. 2), these generic capabilities or generic attributes mediate between what is known and what is done. As such they add a transformational dimension to learning.
Judgement involves deciding what to believe or do by taking into account a range of relevant factors and acting accordingly (Hager 1998, p. 7). The making of judgements involves identifying and valuing relationships between factors and the context within which the judgement is made. The Key Competencies provide the cognitive tools for establishing and applying such relationships whilst graduate attribute define the desired characteristics if the action resulting from such judgements.
Sound judgements take into account the particular circumstances in which they are made. That is, they are contextually sensitive. This contextual basis is reflected in the emphasis placed within workplaces on experience, commonsense and nous (Down 1997, p. 102). Sound judgements require the ability to differentiate the nuances of meaning which exist within particular workplaces, to express ideas and information in communicative forms compatible with such workplaces, to collect, analyse and organise workplace data and information and to recognise the social, cultural and political organisations and structures which impact on work situations.
Lipman (1991) sees judgement as central to effective thinking. He argues that, if inquiry is the process through which thinking is learnt, then the product of effective inquiry is judgement. He defines "thinking as a process of finding or making connections and disjunctions" (p. 159). Such connections and disjunctions are the relationships which are the objects of judgement.
Exploring the synergy
In order to establish the links between sets of graduate attributes and the Key Competences, it is necessary to identify the commonalities. In this respect it is helpful to both explore the relationship between attributes and generic competencies and to conceptualise the role that these qualities are presumed to have in both higher education and VET.
In simplistic terms, an attribute may be defined as a characteristic quality and a competency as the capacity to do something. However, graduate attributes describe a potential for action and generic competencies imply that the capacity for action is over a wide set of circumstances and environments. Thus, initially perceived differences are ameliorated when the two sets of qualities are considered in terms of their roles and functions.
Figure 1 (p. 2) showed that the role of the graduate attributes in enabling graduates to effectively use their learned knowledge, skill and attitudes to enhance their capacity for life and work mirrors the envisaged role of the Key Competencies in enabling school and VET graduates to put their learning to work.
This parallel arises because both the Key Competencies and sets of graduate attributes contribute to the formation of sound judgement. It is through the making of judgements that we apply what we know and can do to the wider world outside educational institutions (real, distributed or virtual). The Key Competencies were defined by Meyer (1992, p. 5) as providing the individual with the necessary capacities to adapt what they know and can do to particular problems, task and issues whilst recognising and taking into account the contextual factors which impact on the judgements they make. Similarly, graduate attributes describe the desired characteristics of the decisions made by our graduates.
The Key Competencies and sets of graduate attributes act as a medium which shape the judgements made and are, in turn, continually developed, modified and reconfigured by the process of making judgements, especially those of a mediating and/or culminating nature. Figure 2 attempts to represent this by showing that it is through the making of judgements that we are able to apply what we know and do to our everyday lives through the media of both graduate attributes and the Key Competencies.
Figure 2
Graduate attributes, like the Key Competencies, describe a capacity for action and 'can be learnt and should be taught' (Lilly et al. 1997). This implies that graduate attributes have, implicitly embedded within them, relevant generic capabilities such as the Key Competencies. Thus the Key Competencies are integral to the development of graduate attributes and underpin their development. This relationship is, however, both symbiotic and reflexive. The development of graduate attributes will enhance the development and application of the Key Competencies to "put education to work" (Mayer 1992). Thus, the two sides of Figure 1 could be superimposed to better reflect the symbiotic nature of the relationship between graduate attributes and the Key Competencies. This is shown in Figure 3.
life and professional work
graduate attributes
knowledge
judgement
judgement judgement judgement workplaceperformance
Key Competencies specific competencies
Figure 3
It is the set of Key Competencies and graduate attributes possessed by an individual which will directly affect and impact upon their capacity to make sound judgements. In any given situation and context, an appropriate balance of these qualities is required. This balance reflects the critical and creative components of higher order thinking (Lipman 1991, p. 21). Graduate attributes, the Key Competencies and the capacity for making judgements are all developed and enhanced through their usage in systematic, varied and creative ways.
Establishing the nexus
Hager (1998) notes that research has identified four major characteristics of the Key Competencies which also apply to the construction of judgements. It is argued that these characteristics also apply to graduate attributes, that is, they:
1. cluster in actual learning and work situations 2. are highly sensitive to contextual factors
3. can be thought of as a process as well as an outcome 4. are developmental.
Clustering
All the major DEETYA-funded research projects on the implementation of the Key Competencies within the VET sector argued against the prevailing myth which viewed the Key Competencies as discrete entities which could be described and taught in isolation and then transferred to new situations. Hager (1998, p. 3) maintains that for many, the assumption that the Key Competencies were discrete independent skills each to be taught and assessed singly has been fostered by the psychological literature on transfer with its emphasis on minimising and controlling variables.
However, research findings such as those of Gonczi et al. (1995), Lilly et al. (1996) and Down et al. (1997) suggest that when any significant unit of work is considered, the Key Competencies occur in complex clusters along with other more specific competencies. Analyses of significant work activities indicate that they typically feature both specific work skills and Key Competencies (usually more than one) as well as aspects of the particular work context. Thus, work contexts integrate specific skills and
life and professional work
graduate attributes knowledge judgement judgement workplaceperformance Key Competencies specific competencies
Key Competencies. The Key Competencies provide a framework for holistically describing and conceptualising work as a basis for training.
Graduate attributes, also, cannot be thought of as discrete from each other. Rather, they form an overlapping set of attributes which mutually reinforce each other and are used in concert. Bowden and Masters (1993, p. 156) constructed a model of professional competence which showed that generic capabilties were only given meaning from the exercise of discipline based capabilities and observable practice.
Similarly judgments tend to be nested within and dependent upon other judgments. For example, larger judgments are constructed from and contingent upon one or more smaller judgments. Judgements also typically require nested sets of enabling judgements of different orders. That is:
Generic judgements
Such judgements are the most abstract and include judgements of similarity, difference and identity
Mediating judgements
These are less abstract and include judgements of causation, value, fact and relevance Culminating judgements
These are the least abstract and apply directly to life situations. These include ethical, social, scientific, technological, professional and aesthetic judgements.
Lipman's view is that the first two orders of judgement underpin culminating judgements, something that he claims has not been widely recognised. Hence the reflective model of educational practice should cultivate the making of all three orders of judgements, since neglect of generic and mediating judgements commonly results in poor or mistaken culminating judgements.
Thus, in an enquiry– or problem-based learning situation, the learner will apply a number of the Key Competencies. The learning will involve the construction of and reflection on a number of judgements and the quality of both the process and the outcome will depend on the exercise by each individual of a unique set of generic capabilities or graduate attributes.
Contextual sensitivity
Recognition of the contextual nature and sensitivity of workplace competence has been institutionalised within the VET sector in the acceptance of enterprise specific competency standards (e.g. McDonalds Family Restaurants, Chubb Security) and the contextualisation of industry standards within specific enterprises or sectors of an industry (e.g. Parks Victoria, Ford Motor Company). Given the clustering of the Key Competencies with other more specific competencies discussed above, it follows that the context in which they are developed and applied will strongly affect the nature and applications of the Key Competencies. That is, the role of Key Competencies is strongly sensitive to changes in work context. The different forms that the Key Competencies take in different workplace contexts has now been confirmed by both Australian (Gonczi et al. 1995, Hager et al. 1996, Stevenson 1996, Down et al. 1997) and overseas (Stasz et al. 1996) research. Stasz et al. concluded that:
...whereas generic skills and dispositions are identifiable in all jobs, their specific characteristics and importance vary among jobs. The characteristics of problem solving, teamwork, communication, and disposition are related to job demands, which in turn depend on the purpose of the work, the tasks that constitute the job, the organisation of the work, and other aspects of the work context.
(p. 102)
The Australian research also found that different combinations of the Key Competencies are required in different industries and occupations. It has been found also that the Key Competencies are major features of work in workplaces that focus on high performance or high quality products (Field & Mawer 1996, Gonczi et al. 1995). Boud (1998) notes that workplace-based education requires that students’ learning programs become an integral part of their personal and work-based development. Thus the development of generic capabilities within individual learners is determined and shaped by the context in which they are developed. ‘Generic competencies are domain specific: skills cannot be divorced from context’ (Pennington 1993, p. 10 cited by Candy et al. 1994 p. 62).
Hager notes that ‘judgments are sensitive to context’ (1998, p. 7) and that they take into account the circumstances in which they are made. Thus the synergic role of graduate attributes, the Key Competencies and the capacity to make sound judgments is grounded within the context of learning and action.
Noting the contextual sensitivity of the Key Competencies in classroom and workplace situations, the pilot projects on the implementation of the Key Competencies within the school and VET sectors concluded that teaching and learning methods that appear to work well include critical incident scenarios, problem-based learning, and trainer and trainee assessment tools which integrate the Key Competencies. Mapping activities and the development of contextualised descriptors were also useful in relating the Key Competencies to workplace training activities and in identifying areas in which the Key Competencies could be used to improve current practices.
Such strategies are also appropriate to the development of graduate attributes and demand the learners to engage in the construction of judgments within the framework of explicit and implicit criteria. Participation in and reflection on the process of learning enables individual learners to unpack the assumptions and criteria which govern their decision making. They encourage both procedural and substantive thinking and allow for both self-correcting and self-transcending cognitive behaviours. That is, they form a balance between critical and creative thinking which allows the making of sound judgments (Lipman 1991, p.25).
Initiatives, such as the Context Curriculum program within RMIT, aim to 'develop the students' ability to examine interdisciplinary issues, communicate across disciplines, question inherited assumptions, challenge existing knowledge and increase understanding of areas outside their particular field of study' (Candy et al. 1994, p. 115). This, in turn, provides an opportunity to help students to recognise the contribution made to the development of competence by contextual factors and the contribution made by generic competence acquired across different contexts.
Both processes and outcomes
Field testing has demonstrated that it is helpful to view the Key Competencies as both processes and outcomes. It was found that
.... they all share a common process, where the common features of the key competencies are: establishing a sense of purpose; selecting appropriate strategies; implementing strategies; and evaluation of both the process and the product.
(Ryan 1997, p. 15)
Such a finding fits well with the holistic (or integrated) approach to competence which has, in theory, been adopted within VET in Australia. According to this approach, competence is conceptualised in terms of knowledge, abilities, skills and attitudes displayed in the context of a carefully chosen set of realistic occupational tasks which are of an appropriate level of generality. This approach to competence seeks to link general attributes to the context in which these attributes will be employed.
A feature of this integrated approach is that it avoids the problem of fragmentation by selecting key tasks or elements that are central to the practice of the occupation. The main attributes that are required for the competent performance of these key tasks or elements are then identified. When both of these are integrated to produce competency standards, the results capture the holistic richness of the practice of an occupation, including such things as professional judgement. This approach also allows for there being more than one appropriate response in a given situation, as well as for the framing of unique responses to changing contexts.
To focus on the deployment of the attributes (knowledge, attitudes, and skills) to the completion of tasks in contextually sensitive ways, is to focus on the process aspects of competence and what underpins it. Typically, clusters of the Key Competencies feature in these attributes. Alternatively, a focus on the broad range of general and specific tasks that comprise an occupation points to the kinds of outcomes expected of courses that prepare candidates for the occupation.
A similar argument has been mounted, for example by Dall'Alba and Sandberg (1996) and by Bowden and Marton (1998) for the process nature of the generic capabilities which are encapsulated within graduate attributes. Such attributes equip students for 'professional practice in a global, technological society' (RMIT 1998, p. 4) because they describe an orientation and approach which will inform. enrich and reshape their workplace performance.
Lipman further argues that making judgements is not simply a function - something we do - but a developmental and transformational process. That is, making judgements is both a process and the outcome of that process.
....judgments, unlike skills, are minuscule versions of the persons who perform them. This is so in the sense that each and every judgment expresses the person who makes the judgment and at the same time appraises the situation or world about which the judgment is made. We are our judgments and they are us. This is why the strengthening of my judgment results in the growth and strengthening of myself as a person.
(Lipman 1991, p. 171)
This process as well as outcome nature of the graduate attributes, the Key Competencies and the capacity to make sound judgments has implications for the learning experiences and contexts through which our students learn and on the ways in which we report upon
this learning. For example, at RMIT, students are expected to develop a portfolio which documents their development with respect to the graduate attributes. This portfolio contains evidence drawn from learning experiences and reflection over the years of the course and illustrates the specific qualities which each student has to offer. Such a portfolio is, in effect, an outcome which attempts to document formative processes. It will only be valid if the students learning experience has been sufficiently deep, broad, reflective, contextually embedded and has given the student increasing autonomy over his or her learning.
The developmental character of the key competencies
It is important that the acquisition of proficiency in the Key Competencies needs to be seen as a developmental process stretching over a substantial part of the life span. The application of the Key Competencies within work and learning reshapes and transforms our experience and competence in using them. When trainees/apprentices start their employment with a firm, their participation is peripheral and they are seen as only partly legitimate members of that enterprise. The more that trainees/apprentices become full participants in the social and technical world of the enterprise, they apply the Key Competencies in more and different ways with an increasing level of complexity within their work performance.
Similarly from the early years of schooling, and even before, learners can be expected to be in situations in which they would be acquiring some basic proficiency in deploying at least some of the Key Competencies, e.g. using household microelectronic technology. One outcome of a sound education would be a growing capacity to deploy these competencies in an increasingly diverse range of situations and contexts. Since sound performance in very many of life's situations centres on successful deployment of suitable combinations of key competencies, the development of the Key Competencies should become gradually more integrated and holistic as young people move through schooling. Such a staged development of the Key Competencies would facilitate students' transition to work and other post-school activities.
However, it is crucial that the Key Competencies should be thought of more broadly than in terms of just school and work. These competencies represent a basis for lifelong learning in all kinds of life situations. Rather than being viewed as discrete skills that people learn to transfer, the Key Competencies should be seen as learnt capacities to handle an increasing variety of diverse situations. Thus transfer can be seen as a growth in confidence and adaptability as learners experience increasing success in their deployment of the Key Competencies to a range of situations. The role of the Key Competencies within such transfer is enabling, transforming and developmental and is related to a growing understanding of how to deal with different contexts. In this way, non-work experiences can benefit workplace performance and vice versa.
The developmental nature of graduate attributes is also apparent and has similar developmental requirements to the Key Competencies. As such these qualities are not "add-on" at the level of higher education but should be built into all learning experiences from the cradle to the grave. Thus if universities are to place value on graduate attributes and the capacity to form sound judgments, they must build these things, not only in to their own educational practice, but must instil the value of such processes into the future educators (formal and informal) who are their current students.
Implications for practice
The identification of the synergy between graduate attributes, the Key Competencies and the capacity to form sound judgements is of importance for at least two reasons. Firstly, it provides a pedagogical dimension to the current move towards seamlessness between the differing educational sectors. Factors which impede or facilitate transitions across and within educational sectors include those which arise from pedagogical and linguistic factors and from personal preference to and orientation toward particular practices of teaching and learning. It is, therefore, important that efforts to reduce barriers to articulation include a focus on pedagogical frameworks and practices. The identification of similarity, parallel developments and enabling synergies is an important part of this. This is especially important when such identification is supported by strategies for action.
Research carried out in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia on the curricular, pedagogical, administrative and professional development implications of integrating the Key Competencies within VET teaching and learning provides a wealth of practical strategies and resources. The outcomes of this research are contained in the reports and manuals authored by Gonczi, Curtain, Hager, Hallard & Harrison (1995), Hager, McIntyre, Moy, Comyn, Stone, Schwenke & Gonczi (1996), Winchester (1996), Field & Mawer (1996), Jasinski (1996), Downs (1997), Lilly, Down, Younger, Rumsey & Cleary (1996), Down, Lilly & Fechner (1997) and Down, Fechner & Purcell (1998). This material provides a springboard for action and was designed to encourage VET practitioners to exercise their professional competence and judgement in order to enrich the quality of the teaching and learning they facilitate.
The second reason for highlighting the synergy between graduate attributes, the Key Competencies and the capacity to make sound judgements is the potential for enriching the learning experience of student's and providing greater cohesion within curriculum. As argued, such integration needs to be built into the total teaching and learning approach of the university and to shift the focus from knowledge and skill acquisition to a holistic, integrated and contextual experience which builds professional competence through enhancing the students ability to put their learning to work. Whilst discipline knowledge is an essential element to professional competence, it needs to be enriched through the development and generic capabilities and their integration onto transformative, observable practice.
A third reason lies in the increasing need to enable transition across educational sectors to meet the lifelong learning needs of individual students. Such transition needs structural, curriculum and pedagogical dimensions. The differences and the similarity between the educational sectors needs to be made clear and overt. This includes cultural, linguistic and pedagogical barriers which prevent the competence which students bring to their learning from being recognised and valued. It is only through making difference and similarity explicit that we can build effective bridges to develop and maintain professional competence and to meet the learning needs of our students. Conclusion
The nexus between making judgements provides us with an organising framework for ensuring that the development of the Key Competencies and desired graduate attributes is built into teaching and learning. Although the Key Competencies developed within
the context of transitions from schooling to work, their application is much broader than this and provide a basis for lifelong learning in all sorts of situations.
In addition, focusing attention on the holistic, integrated, contextual character of graduate attributes and the Key Competencies via their central role in human judgement has the effect of advantageously addressing a number of current educational issues. These include the need to:
§ enrich competency approaches in general;
§ give more substance to the notion of lifelong learning and seamlessness between educational sectors and institutions; and
§ develop effective ways to think about the development of professional competence and transformative workplace practice.
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