REFRAMING THE ABILITY-BASED CURRICULUM IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Len Holmes, University of North London (at time of presentation)

Presented at workshop of the Ability-Based Curriculum Network, Wolverhampton University, 1996

Many initiatives, little progress?

"The abilities most valued in industrial, commercial and professional life as well as in public and social administration are the transferable intellectual and social skills." (NAB/ UGC, 1984)

This quotation is from a joint statement by the two funding bodies for higher education in the UK, on how higher education relates to the 'needs of society'. What progress has been made in the twelve years since that joint statement? Over this period a large number of higher education institutions have engaged in initiatives which have in various ways attempted to develop the curriculum so that such 'abilities' are made explicit. Various terms are used in different initiatives (eg 'capabilities', 'personal competences', '(personal) transferable skills', 'core skills', 'enterprise skills'), but the underlying notion remains the same. More than 60 institutions have each received about 1 million funding for such work under the Enterprise in Higher Education initiative. The Higher Education for Capability movement has also involved a number of institutions in similar work. Various reports from various agencies have promoted similar ideas, including that published by AGR in 1995 which focussed on 'self-reliance' skills of graduates. The HEQC's Graduate Standards Programme has coined the term 'graduateness' which, whilst explicitly avoiding framing this in terms of 'transferable skills', is based on the notion of some identifiable 'attributes' common to all graduates. Yet there is little evidence that such initiatives have had significant impact at an institutional or at a sector level. Whilst those who are engaged in such developments may be convinced of their 'self-evident' value, it is clear that such a view is not widely shared.

There are a number of problems with the view of the 'transferable skills' which has dominated in these various initiatives. One obvious problem is that of the lack of agreement on terminology, not only of what term to use to refer to such 'abilities' but also of the terms used to classify them. Lists of 'abilities'/ 'skills' / 'capabilities'/ 'competences' abound, the most complex probably being that produced by an action research project at Sheffield University, with 108 skills organised into eight categories within four 'zones' (Allen, 1993). Some would no doubt argue that what is now required is the development of a common agreed framework. Others might assert that 'we all know what we mean' and attention should be placed on gaining agreement on changing the curriculum to one that is '(cap)ability-based'.

However, the problem lies deeper than that of terminology. The lists of supposed 'transferable skills' tend to consist of a varied mix of different sorts of things, including 'personal qualities', 'values', particular 'skills' as well as the ability to 'apply knowledge and understanding'. Quite how these differ from each other, and how they can, if different sorts of things, be linked together as similar (ie all 'transferable skills'), is not explained. Nor is explanation provided on how these 'transferable skills' give rise to (cause?) performance. Nor is there an explanatory theory of the contexts or domains, within which 'transfer' supposedly takes place (Bridges, 1992). There are, then, serious problems with current formulations.

I will attempt, in this paper, to argue that if the ideal of an ability-based curriculum is to be realised it must be reframed. The conventionally accepted concept of 'transferable skills' (or whatever cognate term is preferred) is irredeemably flawed, such that any attempt to use it to base major curriculum reform is bound to fail. Only by reframing the project can it stand a chance of success. I will present a way of undertaking such reframing, an alternative perspective on 'transferable skills'. In doing so, I would emphasise that I agree with the underlying ideal that higher education should prepare students for post-graduation life, that it should enable graduates to realise their aspirations (albeit that this should not be romanticised in terms of naive, unrealistic expectations). It is my commitment to such an ideal which leads me to reject the dominant approach, which I see as contrary to that ideal.

After higher education

Of course, any reference to 'post-graduation life' immediately involves us in discussions of graduate employment. Indeed, much of the discussion of the ability-based curriculum is concerned with the notion of 'employability'. Criticisms of higher education by employers (or at least by those claiming to speak on behalf of employers) have been framed in terms of claims that graduates lack the 'transferable skills' required and expected in the types of occupations which graduates typically enter. However, this emphasis on employment has a number of problems. It raises the spectre of vocationalism, thus evoking the resistance by those who espouse liberal-humanist values. This divide between vocationalism and liberal-humanism has dogged higher education over the past century and a half, and stands as an obstacle to widespread acceptance to any curriculum reform initiative. Gubbay (1994) provides a cogent demolition of the employment-related justification for transferable skills. Even if such skills were required by employers, it does not follow that universities should help students develop them nor assess students in respect of them, as if they were surrogate recruitment agencies. One major problem with simplistic attempts to deal with transferable skills in terms of 'employability' lies with its naive functionalist model of the graduate labour market (Lyon and Murray, 1993). The emphasis is on the supposed straightforward correspondence of the objective requirements for a single type of job and the objectively-measurable attributes of individuals, rather than the social processes by which different types of jobs are organised in a stratified manner and by which socially constructed attributes form the basis for recruitment to such jobs.

The emphasis on employment misses one crucial aspect of the way that the possession of a first degree relates to what an individual may do after graduation, and of the way that universities 'use' first degrees. This concerns postgraduate study, including and especially for research degrees. Having a first degree is normally a requirement for such postgraduate study, so any attempt to review the undergraduate curriculum must take account of this. To cast 'transferable skills' primarily in employment terms fails to do so. Nor is it enough to assert that the same 'skills' or 'capabilities' are used in such postgraduate study, particularly for research degrees. The contexts of graduate employment and of graduate study are not on the face of it sufficiently similar that no theory of contexts or domains (Bridges, 1993) is required to explain how 'transfer' between undergraduate study and both graduate employment and postgraduate study can take place, as the conventional 'skills' approach postulates.

Education, assessment, selection

Underlying the claims made for the dominant approach to the ability-based curriculum is a model of the links between education, assessment, and selection for employment (and postgraduate study). At the heart of the dominant approach is the assumption that a generalised attribution ('the capable graduate', etc) can be rendered into a description in terms of disaggregated elements ('capabilities', 'transferable skills', etc).These are treated as amenable to identification, both within the graduate population and in specific individuals. In the latter case, they become the objects of assessment processes. In simple terms, this model regards education as a process through which the student acquires or develops, as an individual, certain characteristics (such as knowledge, understanding, skills, competences, capabilities). Assessment is the process for judging or measuring the extent to which the individual has acquired or developed these; the judgement/ measurement is then inscribed in the form of a grade or mark if the programme of education is incomplete, or if it is completed, certificated in form of an award, possibly with some rating, eg degree classification. Selection is the process of using these measures or judgements, along with other relevant information about the individual, in the decision whether or not to employ them. If the selection process is undertaken properly, the graduate recruit will then perform as required (given that other factors are right). In principle, it is assumed, it is possible to ensure that all stages in this education-assessment-selection process are set up and operated in such a way that the links between the educational process and competent work performance is one of smooth and effective transition. Because in practice this is not happening, then repair is deemed necessary, hence the various initiatives in respect of graduate 'employability'.

This model of assessment is widely albeit implicitly held, and is not a special feature of the ability-based curriculum or capability approach.

"... assessment in education can be thought of as occurring whenever one person, in some kind of interaction, direct or indirect, with another, is conscious of obtaining and interpreting information about the knowledge and understanding, or abilities and attitudes of that other person." (Rowntree, 1977, p.4, emphasis added)

"No matter who controls examinations, and for what purposes, the immediate object of an examination is to assess some attributes of the students; it is an instrument of measurement." (Mathews, 1985, p.52, emphasis added)

The issues which are usually addressed in debates about assessment, and attempts to develop 'better' approaches to assessment, are mainly methodological:- how can we measure more effectively (and efficiently, fairly, etc)?. It is a 'folk psychology' model where a person's performance is assumed to be caused by, the result of, some 'internal' dispositions, ie personality, attitudes, preferences, using some instrument or tool-like entity, eg knowledge, understanding, skills, capabilities, a sort of 'homunculus with a toolkit' model. For example, the leaflet publicising a workshop on 'developing students' transferable skills', run by the Oxford Centre for Staff Development, states that

"Transferable skills are the skills such as those involved in communication, organisation, teamwork and problem-solving which students will take with them to their careers." (emphasis added).As neither the dispositions nor the 'instruments' can be observed directly, it is usually assumed that they can be inferred from the performances of the individual in various situations. Whether a student is assessed by means of the essays written in response to questions in a traditional unseen examination or by undertaking some form of 'real work' whilst on placement with an employer, the assumption is that it is possible to gain access to such causal and instrumental entities. Moreover, these are treated as being very stable (though capable of development) so that predictions can be made about likely performance in other situations. So the main principle for ensuring effectiveness is that of validity, ensuring that the methods of assessment do actually measure those qualities and characteristics in question.

This 'homunculus with a toolkit' model is not explicitly used in discussions about capabilities. Rather, it is implicit in those discussions, such that the supposed 'fact' of the link between capabilities and performance is taken-for-granted, regarded as 'common-sense'. Indeed, it is not restricted to the (dominant version of the) ability-based curriculum, but is also commonly seen in discussions about education in general, especially in terms of the student using their knowledge and understanding. When we ask how the term 'use' is being used, we tend to find no coherent alternative to the instrumental meaning, ie knowledge being used like a tool. Whilst few may believe in a real homunculus, a ghost-in-the-machine, proponents of the dominant approach provide no explanation of how the self motivates, manages, promotes, relies on, is aware of self.

Recent developments in social psychology provide conceptual and theoretical bases for rejecting such a simplistic model of human action and behaviour. Notions of such causality in human activity have been well-explored and demolished by writers in the discursive approach to psychology (eg Gergen, 1985; Harré et al, 1985; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Edwards and Potter, 1992; Harré and Gillett, 1994). Drawing on the philosophical work particularly of Wittgenstein and Austin, such writers focus on how the actions of humans take place in social settings, within which their meaning is established through discursive interaction. What an individual does is not intelligible through an examination of causes; rather it can only be understood in terms of the discursive explanation of the individual's intentions in relation to some explicable rule, 'normative accountability'. So a student's performance in an assessment activity cannot be taken as a vehicle for discovering some inner ability which causes the performance. Rather, it can be understood only in terms of the student's attempt to influence the actions of the assessors, by following some (implicit or explicit) rules about how one does this. This is illustrated by the frequent complaint by examiners that students 'failed to answer the question set'; assuming the students did not intend to fail, we must conclude that they interpreted the examination setting, and the specific task set in the form of an examination question, in a way that was different from that interpreted by the examiner. What cannot be inferred from the students' (inappropriate) performance is how they would or might have performed if they had interpreted the situation and the task in the required manner.

Conventions of Assessment

The alternative approach I am proposing starts by recognising that assessment is a socially structured process involving a number of different actors engaging in different actions, within a context which has dimensions of time (and space). The usual focus in debates about assessment is on what the students should be required to do. The assessor is treated as making judgements about what the student has done, and what this purportedly shows about the student. The assumption about chronicity is that of the continuing present; the student 'has' knowledge, ability, etc, or 'is' capable, competent, confident etc. Yet when we consider the full socially structured process of education-assessment-selection, we can see more clearly its diachronic nature. In particular, we see that the purposes to which assessment is put are clearly future-oriented. Assessment within a degree programme is concerned with whether or not the student will get a degree, and with what classification. Within academia, the award of a degree and its classification plays a key part in the selection for advanced study, particularly for research degrees. Within the arena of graduate employment, professional-managerial-scientific occupations, a degree has an important role in recruitment and selection by employers. The gate-keepers to these social arenas, advanced study and graduate employment, are not primarily concerned with past performance, but rather with future performance. Implicitly or explicitly, the award of a degree is addressed to such gatekeepers; the outcomes of assessment in higher education are signals about the judgement about anticipated future performance.

However, the future performance can be only anticipated, not known (or even predicted, in the strong sense of that word). Judgements about future performance are inherently subject to the risk of being wrong. Moreover, the immediate consequences of being wrong are usually borne by others, ie those in the situations in which performance is not as anticipated. The reputation and status of the assessors and of the assessment process is therefore crucially dependent on gaining and maintaining the confidence of those who make use of assessment judgements, what we might call a 'confidence trick'! (Holmes, 1994b). This is achieved by the use of conventions of warrant (Gergen, 1989), ie discursively-based rationales or justifications for the assessment judgements. The whole chain of processes, linking assessment activities in educational settings, through the inscription of some 'verdict' on the individual (such as class of degree), to the use of such inscribed verdicts for other purposes, including graduate recruitment, may be thus seen as a 'convention of assessment', whereby the links in the chain are warranted.

The discourse of capability, and also the discourse of competence, may thus be seen in terms of such warranting conventions. 'Capability' does not refer to some internal characteristic or attribute of an individual, but is a discursive element within the social-discursive process by which an individual is constituted as one who may be admitted to those social arenas into which graduates normally enter. One social arena is that of employment, typically in terms of occupations referred to as 'professional', 'managerial', or 'scientific'. The implication of this is that 'employability' must also be seen, not as a personal characteristic, but as a discursive element in the education-assessment-selection process. Employability is not the result of developing and demonstrating capability; employability is a facet of capability, the expression of assessors' warranting activity oriented towards the gatekeepers to graduate employment. When oriented towards the gatekeepers to advanced study, the warranting activity would use a different vocabulary, eg 'suitability' for a taught Masters or for a research degree.

Capability, employability and suitability (for advanced study) are, then, not individual characteristics, identifiable and measurable from performance. They are the discursive warrants for the assessment-selection decisions, inescapably risky judgements about anticipated future performance in social conditions where the attainment and maintenance of confidence in the decision-makers by others is of paramount value. Indeed, it may well be the case that the development of the discourse of capability has enabled employers and their (often self-appointed) representatives to contest the previous conventions of warrant. It is certainly noticeable that the sophistication of 'capability talk' has increased over the past decade of so (eg compare NAB/ UGC 1984 with CVCP, 1994). Little account is taken of research on the actual practices of employers of graduates, particularly in respect of the degree to which these involve processes of ascription rather than assessment of achievement (Brown and Scase, 1994). Contrary to the claims of proponents of the ability-based curriculum, rather than helping students to gain employment as graduates, profiles of personal competence and records of achievement may serve to stigmatise them as 'less capable'.

Reframing the ability-based curriculum

There are undoubtedly many people working in higher education who would wish to reject out-of-hand any attempt at an ability-based curriculum. However, critiques of the current emphasis on the employment-related aspects of dominant formulations of the ability-based curriculum are unlikely to affect significantly the widespread attempts at its introduction. The current context, in which academia is structurally dependent on state funding and in which there is political consensus on the 'need' for a mass higher education system, places high value on the vocabulary of employment-related skills. Any attempt to displace current formulations of the ability-based curriculum must seek legitimacy within the current social and political context. However, attempts at introducing the ability-based curriculum must engage with the traditions of academia, or face the prospect of being undermined by covert if not overt resistance. The danger is that this will also undermine those very traditions valued in academia, espousing disinterested pursuit of knowledge, its production and dissemination, for its own sake, of intrinsic value. We might therefore look at ways in which the critique above may form the basis not only for interpreting the world, but for changing it. After all, academia has, arguably, always been concerned with 'practical' affairs of society, including the occupational (eg see Silver and Brennan, 1988; Barnett, 1990). Moreover, typical presentations of the calls for the ability-based curriculum adopt the rhetoric of valuing 'traditional academic' education (although the sub-text is often anti-academic).

I have suggested that assessment in higher education is a convention of warrant, whereby the award of a degree is taken as warranting entry into the graduate occupational arena, typically into professional, managerial, scientific occupations. It also warrants entry, or re-entry to advanced study, particularly for a higher degree by research. We might therefore say that a degree carries a double warrant (Holmes, 1994a). Now normally, attempts to introduce a ability-based curriculum have been based on the assumption that the requirements for each of these social arenas, occupation and academic, are isomorphic. That is, that there are certain transferable skills (eg problem solving) which may be 'used' in either arena, and so a single, common framework of such capabilities can and should be developed and adopted. Such attempts are mistaken, and the plethora of attempts with little sign of sustainable success may be taken as indicators of the underlying error.

If we take the occupational arena and academia as two, separate though connected generalised 'communities of practice' (Lave and Wenger 1991), albeit that each is highly varied, we can begin to focus on the typical practices in each. Rather than look for the supposed attributes and 'mental tools' which underlie these practices, it is the practices themselves which should concern us. Thus, instead of being concerned with students' 'skills of written communication' we can begin to consider how we get students to produce papers (as for a conference or journal), book reviews, research reports, and other sorts of documents that academics produce for other academics, and also (management) reports, memos, briefing papers, etc as used in the occupational arena. By engaging in such practices as a form of 'legitimate peripheral participation' (Lave and Wenger, 1991), the students will be engaged in the social process of education, moving from novice to accepted practitioner.

The Graduate Identity

Such an approach might be developed by considering higher education as a process by which an individual may develop their identity as a graduate, as one who is highly educated. However, it is important to use the term 'identity' as it has come to be understood and used within the social sciences over recent years. The notion of identity as a 'fixed' entity is rejected in favour of the idea of the process of identity formation and re-formation. The process involves a dynamic relationship between the individual's personal sense of self and the social processes which to a significant degree determine what count as the criteria for being ascribed a particular identity. Thus an identity cannot be decided on solely by an individual, as a personal act of choice and will, but must always be subject to affirmation (or dis-affirmation) by others.

Harré's concept of identity project (Harré, 1983) may be used as an approach to reconsidering the process of becoming a graduate. An identity project is the continuing process by which a person seeks to attain and maintain uniqueness and individuality (personal being) whilst also being socially recognised (social being). This involves the 'appropriation' by the individual of the characteristics of socially and culturally (and therefore discursively) legitimated identities. From this follows a stage of 'transformation', making personal sense of the socially acquired understanding, in terms of personal experience. The 'publication' of the actor's claim to the identity, the public expression of the characteristics associated with the identity leads, if successful, to 'conventionalisation' into the personal biography and social order. So the 'moral career' (Goffman, 1961) of the graduate is one achieved through the transition through a set of hazards, leading to esteem, reputation and self-worth, or loss of these - 'spoiled identity' (Goffman, 1963). In this way we can reframe the educational and assessment process, or more properly the education-assessment-selection process, as that of an identity project of becoming a graduate, someone who is highly educated. This would link with Vygotskian-influenced approaches to education (eg Daniels, 1993), and Lave and Wenger's (op cit) notion of 'legitimate peripheral participation' in communities of practice.

A key aspect of the identity project approach would be the reintroduction of the notion of agency on the part of the student. Despite the rhetoric about 'student-centredness' in the conventional approach to the ability-based curriculum, it is essentially a socialisation model, one of role-taking rather than role-making. The student's identity is formed by the inscription process involved in recording achievement. The more that the capabilities are specified, and especially where the assessment criteria are specified, the less that the student can engage in a creative transformation of the socially given attributes associated with a graduate. If the education-assessment process is one in which the student is enabled, through opportunities to engage in tasks and activities which are representative of those which graduates do, as professional workers and as academics, then the student can represent these as part of her or his personal claim on the identity as a graduate. The essential element is that the student must make the claim, and along with it, assert their claim on the right of entry to the social arenas associated with 'being highly educated'.

It is also essential to emphasise the notion of the double warrant. In order to succeed in the claim on the graduate identity, the student must gain acceptance from key parties whose recognition is important. In the assessment-selection phase, the student must engage with gatekeepers to the desired social arenas. As these may be broadly distinguished into the academic and the occupational, the student will have to make the claim doubly, within the languages of the two social arenas. We might therefore extend the socio-linguistic notion of code switching to this process of claiming the graduate identity. Rather than search for a generic vocabulary of capabilities, or even a vocabulary of generic capabilities, we might focus on helping students represent the activities in which they have engaged in the separate languages of academia and the occupational arena. This is more than 'selling oneself' (a rather ominous phrase to apply to job seekers); it is at the heart of the claim on the graduate identity, and is truly student-centred.

If we reconsider some of the ways that the notion of capability and other cognate terms have been introduced, we can see how these support the idea of focussing on the graduate identity. Stephenson talks about 'capable people' (op cit) and the AGR's report refers to the 'self-reliant graduate'. That is, they start with some general notion of what sort of person a graduate should be. Furthermore, the various lists of supposed abilities and characteristics which have been produced by various agencies may be regarded more as semantic elaborations of how we might expect to recognise capable people and self-reliant graduates, in terms of what they do and the way they do it. The variety of terms used may be seen as indicators of the rich vocabulary that is available to engage in descriptions of what we would expect to see in such persons - and also for individuals to use of themselves in laying claim to be such persons (Holmes, 1995). What these terms do not do is refer to some internal qualities and skills, capabilities, which are used in or result in desired performance.

Putting it into practice

One feature of the rhetoric around the supposed need for graduates to be more 'employable' leaves the foregoing necessarily conceptual and theoretical critique open to the accusation of being 'academic', a term which in Britain often has the force of an insult. I therefore offer below some examples from the teaching practice I and colleagues have begun to develop. In themselves these may be seen as not particularly novel. Indeed, I believe that excessive emphasis on novelty may be inhibit rather than encourage curriculum change. Rather, the examples are presented here in terms of the rationale on which they are based, ie the emphasis on helping students to lay claim to the identity to which they aspire, particularly in terms of the 'double warrant'. The examples relate to undergraduate programmes in the Business School at the University of North London.

Example 1: Academic work at preliminary level

The Employment Studies pathway on the modular degree scheme was introduced in 1994/95. 'Work, Employment and Society' is a core module at preliminary level, the content of the module being primarily sociology of work. The module is organised around students exploring chosen topics about current issues in relation to work and employment. The coursework assignment requires each student to produce three items of written work. First is a short paper discussing the theoretical frameworks and models which might be used to examine the issue. This is limited to a maximum of 1200 words, the emphasis being on producing a 'map' of the theoretical issues rather than a discussion of them. Secondly, the student is required to produce a full bibliographic listing of 20 relevant items from a literature search, presenting this in a standard form and including at least 10 journal articles. Thirdly, the student must write a review of two relevant journal articles. Although the written submissions must be individual work, the students are encouraged to work in groups on their chosen topics. Groups make an oral presentation of their analysis of the conceptual and theoretical issues to the other members of the class; although compulsory for completion of the module, the presentations are not assessed for module grades.

These activities are discussed with the class in the first week, and represented to the students as examples of the types of activities in which academics typically engage. They choose an issue of concern or interest, and then relate this to the existing scholarship. To do this, literature search must be undertaken and the bibliographic details of items noted. Academics write papers, reviews, books, etc, in which they usually discuss the literature with which they have engaged. They present their views and arguments to an audience of peers, in conferences, seminars, symposia, etc.

It is made clear to the students that the emphasis is upon their engagement in the activities typical of academic workers rather than those in professional-managerial occupations. Other modules will provide for opportunities to engage in activities representative of professional-managerial workers.

Example 2: Training and Development as Professional Practice

The Human Resource Management electives in the final year of the BA Business Studies includes a module on Training and Development. The module covers the theory and practice of training, within work organisations and in the wider public policy arena. The coursework for the module focuses on the practice of training within work organisations, and particularly on the generally accepted principle that such practice should be based on the training cycle model. Two elements of this model, analysing training needs and designing the training programme provide the basis for coursework assignment. Using one of a selection of case studies made available to the students, each student must produce a proposal for analysing the training needs in a particular area, and design an outline training programme for another specified area of need. The proposal for analysing the training needs must be presented in the form of a report, addressed to the relevant member of senior management. The proposed design for the training programme must be presented in the form of outline documentation, as this might normally be presented by training practitioners.

In discussing the coursework briefing with the class, it is made clear that the students must not engage in discussion of theoretical and conceptual matters. Rather, they are required to show through practical application that they have a sufficient grasp of the principles involved. The emphasis on the particular forms of documents to be presented is to provide for the students to engage in the type of activities in which a personnel and training practitioner would engage. Thus the report is part of the way that the practitioner would seek to gain the support of the senior manager, gaining and maintaining legitimacy in the identity of a professional practitioner. Students are encouraged to use the active voice and personal pronouns in the report, which must be clearly addressed to a specified senior manager. That is, the student must write as if they were the practitioner.

Conclusion

Simplistic attempts at developing an ability-based curriculum on lists or models of 'transferable skills' or 'capabilities' have failed to yield acceptable and generalisable pedagogic practices. The recognition of the inherent conceptual flaws should lead us to seek an alternative model, which reframes assessment as a social process based on conventions of warrant. The award of a degree constitutes a double warrant, oriented towards anticipated future performance in two possible social arenas, academia and the 'world' of graduate employment. Reframing the education-assessment-selection process as an identity project for the student 'becoming a graduate' enable us to re-introduce the agency of the student, asserting her or his right of entry into desired social arenas through the claim on the identity as graduate. By maintaining the distinction between the social arenas, we can perhaps enable the call for 'parity of esteem', between the academic and the vocational, to be achieved in a manner which is positive and progressive. Practical applications of this within the undergraduate curriculum can be readily identified, providing contexts and activities through which students move towards being able to make an effective claim of the graduate identity. Such a social-discursive approach as outlined here does, of course, require further development work. Given the fact that, at a conservative estimate over 50 million has been spent so far on the dominant approach, with little sustained and widespread effect, it must surely be wise to devote some limited resources to an alternative which addresses some of the key difficulties with the dominant approach.

REFERENCES

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BROWN, P. and SCASE, R. (1994) Higher Education and Corporate Realities, London: UCL Press

CVCP (1994) Strategy Paper on Vocational Higher Education, London: Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals

DANIELS, B. (ed)(1993) Charting the Agenda, London: Routledge

EDWARDS, D. and POTTER, J. (1992) Discourse Psychology, Sage, London

EMPLOYMENT DEPARTMENT (1995) A Vision for Higher level Vocational Qualifications, London: Employment Department

GERGEN, K. (1985) "Social Pragmatics and the Origins of Psychological Discourse", in K. Gergen and K. Davis (eds.), The Social Construction of the Person, Springer-Verlag

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GOFFMAN, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Prentice Hall

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HOLMES, L. (1994b) "Is Competence a 'Confidence Trick'", keynote address to the first Competence Network conference, University of Leicester, November

LAVE, J. and WENGER, E. (1991) Situated Learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

LYON, E. STINA, and MURRAY, K. (1993) "Graduate Labour Markets and the New Vocationalism in Higher Education", in Payne, G. and Cross, M. Sociology in Action, London: Macmillan

NAB/ UGC (1984) Higher Education and the Needs of Society London: National Advisory Board for Public Sector Higher Education/ University Grants Council

NAB/ UGC (1986) Transferable Personal Skills in Employment: The Contribution of Higher Education, London: National Advisory Board for Public Sector Higher Education/ University Grants Council

POTTER, J. and WETHERELL, M. (1987) Discourse and Social Psychology, Sage, London

SHOTTER, J. and GERGEN, K. (eds.) (1989) Texts of Identity, Sage, London

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