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Raising standards: a creative look at competence and assessment and implications for mainstreaming in university adult education

Paul Armstrong, Birkbeck College, University of London

From critique to creativity

The critique of a competence-based approach to education and training has been well rehearsed not only in Britain but elsewhere in the world. And it is hard to resist. Recent conference papers and publications have systematically sought to undermine the approach[1]. Hyland[2] told us at last year’s SCUTREA conference that competence-based education is

seriously flawed and ill-equipped to deal with education and training beyond the level of basic skills and, moreover, (is) largely irrelevant to teaching and learning in adult education contexts.

And is a

narrow technicist approach to education which defines useful knowledge in the light of bureaucratic and corporate needs.

This critique has been sustained, particularly in higher education. Recent publications by Barnett[3], and again by Hyland[4] put together a substantial attack on the idea of a competence-based approach to teaching and learning. From a broadly liberal humanistic perspective, Hyland believes that the whole basis of the new system is so flawed that its influence on training and education for future generations will not only be inappropriate but actively damaging. He asserts that the competence-based system combines a highly instrumental philosophy with a narrow and uncritical behaviourist psychology, to produce a mechanistic individualism combined with neglect of learning, knowledge and understanding, so that the new qualifications are intrinsically unreliable as indicators of all but the most elementary skills and abilities.

In summary, previous critiques of see competence-based approaches as:

  • reductionist
  • behaviourist
  • static
  • atomistic
  • based on a never-ending specification
  • too detailed and burdensome
  • based on assessment regimes too complex and costly

A very comprehensive demolition job. Yet, I am still not convinced that the approach has absolutely nothing to offer, and is in fact so potentially damaging. The critique has not succeeded in undermining or subverting competence-based learning in the United Kingdom. This may be due to the fact that the critique has come from without and has mostly stopped short of suggesting alternatives or even strategies for resistance or subversion, often neglecting to recognise that those forms of assessment which existed prior to the development of a competence-based approach were equally subject to accusations of subjectivity, unreliability and invalidity. Hyland does at least go on to propose a large-scale alternative in the form of a broad, coherent curriculum for all 14-19 year olds, which might include a programme of vocational preparation for all. However, this in itself does not inevitably imply an alternative approach; nor does it propose an alternative for adults learning.

The sustained critique is that competence is based on behaviourism, and implicitly this provides the starting and often end point of the critique. I would not wish to challenge the fact that both ‘in its design and implementation, competence ‘is based on and informed by behaviourist learning theory’. Although we might not value or subscribe to behaviourist theories and their implicit ideologies, we have to accept that they have been and continue to be valid theoretical perspectives within the scientific discipline of psychology. That we do not believe in the theories is one thing; to argue that competence is damaging and destructive because it has behaviourist connotations is quite another matter.

It is not my intention to defend behaviourism. However, the critique has taken on board the fact that competence no longer is confined to the behavioural, since the discourse has brought knowledge back in, and more recently values and their relationship to learning have been investigated in quite a rigorous way[5]. The closed mind approach can still dismiss all this as pure behaviourism.

The (over) reaction to the competence-based approach is due to the fact that it is seen as a threat to professionalism. This is a current debate that appears to polarise the two aspects of professional competence[6]. The notion of professional competence has returned the issue back to the forefront of intellectual debate. Is it merely a matter of taking sides? Do we have to decide between a competence-based approach for ‘lower’ level craft and technician skills training or learning or that of the reflective practice for professional education and development? In looking at initial training for teachers of adults, Last and Chown[7] report on the Further Education Unit's attempt to produce a competence-based qualification framework for the sector. According to Jarvis,

While they are not very happy with the approach, they report that they are currently preparing their own curriculum for the training of adult educators that is much more oriented to the current competence based approach. They suggest that it is in accord with some of the best practices in adult education, such as reflective learning, in a manner espoused by Schön[8].

Certainly, the introduction of a competence-based approach in the United Kingdom is no historical accident, and it is supported by the political ideology of the new right. But just being critical of it will not make it go away, and even if it does, is what we will be left with necessarily that so much better? We could take an oppositional stance which paradoxically ends up as a more traditional, conservative position than those on the ‘radical right’.

I need to substantiate this, and to show how a more creative, less critical perspective on competence-based learning, can assist us to take a progressive view, rather than retreating back to the old liberal humanism. I shall focus here only on the issue of assessment.

Mainstreaming assessment

Those that would wish to be critical of new forms of assessment appeal to tradition. New forms of assessment do not show any advantages over traditional methods, and that they lack reliability and validity. I could not defend competence-based assessment on the grounds that it is any more valid or reliable than what previously existed. However, the ferocity of the attack on competence-based assessment would convince us that it was replacing a tradition that is undoubtedly better. We all know the difficulties of keeping subjectivity out of assessment of course work and essays, and we would be foolish to attempt to defend the tradition on academic grounds. I do not intend to spend too long labouring the point about the problems of reliability in marking assignments and examinations. The shift from norm-referenced to criterion-referenced assessment has been fairly recent in higher education, and is itself indicative of the lack of objectivity in the process. A Further Education Unit report draws our attention to:

The purpose behind criterion-referenced assessment has been to underpin the validity and reliability of assessment. With clearly stated criteria on which to base judgements, the process of assessment has been said to be transparent, ensuring reliability. However, practitioners have experienced difficulty in interpreting criteria and agreeing on what is valid and sufficient evidence[9].

Nevertheless, criterion-referenced forms of assessment seem to offer a higher degree of reliability. Whatever the advantages of, say, formal examinations in terms of reliability, they fall down on the issue of validity - the results tell us only how competent a student is at doing examinations. Similarly with course work, project work and other conventional modes of assessment. In an accredited programme that I am responsible for, leading to an academic qualification in quality management, I have to ensure that the students not only demonstrate that they are competent quality managers in the workplace, but that they are competent students if they are to gain the accreditation.

Take a classic contradiction: I used to contribute to a postgraduate course on teaching, learning and assessment in adult and continuing education. Naturally, we would review ways of assessing our students. Then, at the end of the course they would have an examination in which they would be asked to evaluate the examination as a reliable and valid method of assessment. Invariably, most students would recognise the fundamental issues inherent in the examination system, but not once in the eight years I asked the question, did any of the students demonstrate a belief in the critique they were presenting by walking out of the examination room. What was important to the students was not the learning, or its underlying values and principles for practice, but the understandable need to pass the examination and get the qualification.

The issue is compounded by a further aspect. We all know that in higher education, identifying who set and who is to mark the examination is vital information in demonstrating what we know. Again, an example from experience. Another postgraduate programme I contributed to covered the history and ideology of adult education. The three parts of the programme were taught by two adult educators, who in many ways had quite distinct ideologies. To be fair to the students in the examination, the paper was divided into two parts, and students were required to answer at least one question from each section. The only person who saw the answers to all three questions was the programme's external examiner. At the examiners' meeting he asked us what kinds of students were we producing, that they were supportive of the WEA in question 1, but critical of it in question 4?

Competence-based assessment has drawn our attention to an important dimension of assessment practice - its relevance for the student. Typically, forms of assessment we use are only relevant for the student in terms of demonstrating their competence as students. Competence, being largely work-based, introduces us to the idea that assessment can be made to be relevant, and to be based on 'real' and lived experience, whether in the workplace, or through hobbies, leisure activities, familial roles, and so on. Of course, there are a whole host of issues to consider, and we can be critical of the idea if only because using such relevant forms of assessment, may mean that some people who demonstrate their competence, are merely demonstrating their competence at recording appropriate evidence of their competence, in the form of a portfolio. This is quite possible, but it is preferable to investigate this possibility rather than reject it out of hand because it must be based on so-called behaviourism and by implication has to be reductionist.

The issue of relevance leads into a consideration of values and, indeed, the purpose of education itself. Liberal ideologies would have us believe that the role of the adult educator falls short of attempting to change attitudes of students. They would merely provide an opportunity to review a range of views and perspectives, and it would be left to the students themselves to reach their own conclusions, reaffirming or realigning their values and attitudes[10]. Attitudes and values are most resistant to change; feelings and action are somewhat easier[11]. The radical right have no qualms about changing values, and we all recognise how that has happened, in the new or appropriated language we use, the changing organisations we work in or for, our relationship with students (customers? clients?), funding arrangements, accountability and outcomes.

This brings me to the final point. There are two dimensions of a competence-based approach to learning and assessment that have not been thoroughly explored as part of the rehearsed critique. They are: (a) the reaction against time-serving; and (b) the separation of learning and assessment. Time-serving is an interesting phenomenon, being the basis of the old apprenticeship system that was one of the scapegoats for the failure of British industry over the past century. Certainly, there was much wrong with the old apprenticeship schemes, particularly in terms of equal opportunity issues. National Vocational Qualifications in Britain have separated off the delivery of learning from its assessment. There are no requirements for how learning takes place, only its assessment. In theory this means that people can take as much time as they need to learn and develop, being more flexible and negotiable, and therefore more likely to deliver equal opportunities. But in practice it does not work that way - employers are not happy about an open-ended commitment to training and assessment; education and training organisations, however flexible they have become, have difficulties in managing the implementation of individual learning action plans; and there would appear to be a contradiction insofar as the parallel development of accrediting prior learning has time limits imposed on it. These issues are beginning to be recognised, and the door is open to re-examine the relationship between learning, experience and time.

Similarly, with the separation of learning and assessment, supposedly a radical departure from traditional provision. Not so. Consider those nationally set and assessed examination systems like GCE A Levels in Britain. Most A Level teachers will feel that the assessment is as much of their teaching as the students' understanding. An argument could be proposed for those who believe that mainstreaming is creating a large amount of work for tutors, whether full or part-time, that assessment, particularly using set criteria, is a job for the professional assessor, in the same way that NVQs are assessed by supposedly competent assessors.

A counter-argument might promote the idea that learning is an integrated activity, and to separate out assessment makes its relationship to accountability obvious. But then is accountability a 'bad' thing? Even before the advent of quality assurance in higher education, many adult educators and other lecturers wanted to know that they were achieving their purposes, and raising standards. Feedback from students, often in the form of written or documented evidence, was a natural part of the process. The issue of getting students to do assessed work in extra-mural programmes is by no means a new challenge to extra-mural tutors. Again, what competence-based assessment has done is to raise, but not resolve, the issues. To reject those issues as behavioural would be a blinkered reaction, for what the debate offers is a creative potential for opening up and exploring issues that might otherwise remain contradictions that teachers of adults, operating within the liberal tradition, would be tempted to avoid rather than confront.

From here to there

This paper has attempted to provide an argument and some limited evidence to suggest that new standards and criteria, and new forms of assessment go beyond the myths and misconceptions commonly portrayed in the myopic critique of what is believed to be an idea of the new right, and therefore to be discarded without further critical or creative consideration. If we have learned anything from the past 25 years, it is that we must engage with and transform from within, to confront not avoid those paradoxes and contradictions that are inherent not only in the system, but in our own practice, or - as we used to say before the new right ideology changed our values and attitudes and took away our purpose - praxis.

[1] This includes my own critical contributions, including (1989) Learning to be competent: con