Professional Competence And Higher Education: The ASSET Programm

Vocational higher education - the education of professional practitioners - is currently caught up in an intense debate concerning the proposed relationship between ?training? in relation to centrally established ?competences? and the values, practices and traditions of universities and professional bodies. In general terms, the debate concerns the nature of objectives for professional education: - their proper format and degree of specificity. - how they are derived, assessed an integrated. - whether (or not), assessed and integrated. - the relationship between theoretical understanding and practical ability. - the relationship between education for general qualities and training for skills required by employers. The ASSET Programme, wich is at the centre of these issues and debates, was an innovative national pilot project funded for four by the former Department of Employment to develop a competence-based model of curriculum and assessment. This book present lessons learned from the programme including its theoretical retionale, the research findings which underpin the curriculum, procedural details, and example of students? work. This book will make an important contribution to current debates about an acceptable form for competence-based curricula in higher education and about the relationship between academic knowledge, practical skills and higher education in general. 360 gr.…