37. What are the challenges posed by labour competencies to vocational training?

Unlike the traditionally academicist(1) orientation that many training programmes may have, competency-based training programmes should have the following characteristics:

Approach labour performance and not course contents.
Improve the importance of what is learnt.
Avoid traditional division of academicist programmes.
Facilitate the integration of contents applicable to work.
Generate learning applicable to complex situations.
Foster individuals’ autonomy.
Change teachers’ role into a learning facilitator mode.

Mertens(2) mentioned some of the characteristics proposed for competency-based training programmes:

Carefully identified, verified and well-known competencies.
Training oriented to the development of each competency and an individual assessment for each competency.
Assessment considers the knowledge, attitudes and performance as main sources of evidence.
Students progress at their own pace along the programme.
Training is as individualised as possible.
There is a strong emphasis on results.
It requires workers’ participation in the elaboration of learning strategies.
Learning experiences are oriented by continuous feedback.

For instance, SENAI believes that there is a need to change from the qualification approach, which implies orderly and systematically imparting skills, manual abilities and applied knowledge for the performance of prescribed tasks at specific job positions, to a broader approach which promotes competency and favours versatility.

In Chile,(3) within the framework of the Chile Califica Programme a team from the Ministry of Education elaborated a guide for the design of schedules within the scope of technical secondary education. Here, the vocational profile, the information which exemplifies employment dynamics as well as the productive development trends of each sector are considered as inputs of curriculum design. The methodology is modular in order to facilitate the integration of different components of competency (knowledge, skills and attitudes) and to foster the curricular articulation with other training levels and methods.

The final objective of curriculum design is to reach a particular exit profile understood as the set of abilities that a graduate should hold when completing a plan of studies that may allow him to obtain a degree (of middle or superior level) identified by means of required competencies.

In short, the generation of competencies by training programmes demands changing their educational strategies, their curricular approaches and the traditional role given to the teacher and the student; it implies the use of a great variety of learning materials combined with the orientation of learning towards problem solving rather than to the repetition of contents.

Traditional means of educational management, based on a group as a unit and as the grounds for the planning of actions and courses, are being challenged so that they allow an individual management of the advances accomplished by students and their easy re-entrance into programmes that should be modular and open.

Competency-based training implies that the orientation of programmes aims at the development of abilities which may be applicable to a wide range of labour situations involved in the environment of an occupation. The modular aspect of this kind of training gives the chance to manage it with a greater flexibility, it allows for the recognition of experience and the training in modules of immediate application at work which, since they are interconnected, may facilitate the progress of a worker in completing a training pathway.

 

 

 

 

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1 It refers to the orientation that focuses on contents of theory or technical subjects without articulating these and without considering its application in the labour world.
2 Mertens, Leonard, Competencia Laboral: Sistemas, surgimiento y modelos, Montevideo, Cinterfor/ILO, 1997.
3 Chile Califica, Diseño de itinerarios de formación técnica. Documento de Trabajo, Santiago, 2004.

 

 

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