Competency Based Education and Training

Competence and standards 29
to do with system management and coordination, the management of uncertainty and
change and the interactions with the wider environment are almost impossible to pick up
with routine task analysis.
As the standards development programme moved away from foundation level jobs and
work roles, so the inadequacy of the task model became clear. This is not to suggest that
task analysis is appropriate for ‘lower level’ work roles however. There are fundamental
reasons why a task approach is not adequate for any standards analysis.
Task analysis was derived primarily to support work measurement systems which
were designed to remove the unpredictable and unfamiliar aspects of job and tasks for the
purpose of being able to exert greater external (management) control over the work
process. Often tied in with payment systems, work measurement through task analysis
allowed work study engineers and production system designers to ‘design out’ of the
work process the ‘process skills’, which are now so valued by employers as the economy
goes through radical changes which have fundamentally changed work structures and
processes.
Task analysis is appropriate for its purpose—it can measure and atomise work
activities for work measurement and specific skills training. For deriving standards—
which are work role expectations—it is not an appropriate approach. Other analysis
approaches are in the process of development which look directly at expectations and job
‘purposes’ related to broad work role functions. The most prominent method is called
‘functional analysis’, which should not be confused with the functional job analysis
approach used by Fine 8 , nor the descriptions of ‘job functions’ used widely in American
literature.
Assessment methods
Assessment methods used in current VET are centred around skill tests (which tend to be
routinized) and tests of routine knowledge. HCTB is a notable exception with a work
based assessment format (of tasks). HCTB contains some interesting references to work
role characteristics in the module descriptions—but these are not assessed, although they
are an assessment criterion. Less ‘official’ assessment methods, like work based
accreditation, have been strongly supported and encouraged in YTS, yet these are often
little more than task descriptions with a checklist box against them and can be extremely
reliable.
Identifying knowledge elements is sometimes thought of as being the way in which
additional work role characteristics like dealing with the unexpected, and responding
creatively to contingencies can be accommodated. There is no such guarantee. Most
knowledge testing is as proceduralized as skill testing. Knowledge testing is a complex
and ‘political’ issue, often bound up with status claims and professionalism 9 .
Recent debates with the VET research community suggest that knowledge is being
increasingly seen as an assessment issue—with knowledge testing acting as a ‘fall back’
position when performance assessment or evidence is not available. 10 Yet employers who
appraise and assess staff performance tend to concentrate on work role characteristics like
making creative contributions, contributing to the improvement of systems and
management of complex work roles. Many of these systems are crude and technically