Professional Development and Institutional Needs by Gillian Trorey Cedric Cullingford

Author:Gillian Trorey, Cedric Cullingford [Gillian Trorey, Cedric Cullingford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138263734
Google: rV3QtAEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-10-31T01:41:56+00:00

A New Qualifications Framework

The term ‘framework’, suggesting both structure, cohesion and boundaries, is a term that reoccurs in the discourse of successive governments seeking to impose overarching systems onto different aspects of educational life. A key example of this was the establishment of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) in 1986 with the task of rationalising the plethora of existing qualifications and providing a common framework which would offer a means of national comparability and transfer between different individual learning experiences. NCVQ was also responsible for the development and accreditation of national occupational standards, which would provide a benchmark for performance and achievement across all occupational sectors and form the basis of unitised National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). NVQs, and later, General National Qualifications (GNVQs) were to form a large part of the work of FE, led by the requirement to meet government targets for increasing skills and qualification levels. The use of national standards and performance measurement, characteristic of the business environment, was to feature more strongly over the next decade in the approach to staff development. A significant feature here was the greater involvement of employers both in standard setting and in the delivery of staff development. In the case of ITT, where the FE college was the employer, this meant much greater college involvement in teaching on ITT courses which trained their own staff. However, the emphasis on short programmes of skills development for staff, prevalent at this time, concentrated more on specific types of curriculum development, for example the design and delivery of open learning materials.

In the 1980s the growth of student-centred learning and the introduction of modularised, flexible curricula were accompanied by new systems of assessment and accreditation. Although systems using continuous assessment against criteria were already in use, as in the Technical Education Council and Business Education Council qualifications introduced in the late 1970s, these ideas had been taken further. Systems of assessment which involved a continuous monitoring of performance with a focus on an individual’s capacity to actually ‘do the job’ gained increased prominence in the latter part of the decade. The competency-based approach, prompted by NCVQ and articulated in practice through national occupational standards and NVQs, had been a source of controversy and debate within the field of education and training from its inception. However, many components of this approach have had a significant effect on staff development from the 1980s onwards, both in terms of development needs (FEU, 1986) and in terms of the methodology used. In particular, the use of national standards for teachers and trainers, to provide a framework for development and benchmarks for performance, has been a recurring theme in government policy since this time.

The idea that accreditation can occur based on experience, but without a formal course of study has other implications if linked to the use of standards. As they provide a means by which individual learning and achievement can be profiled against pre-determined competences, individual progression through different job roles increases the number and variety of competences which can be achieved.

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