Hi Maggie

I hope it's clear by now that it's not the *word* 'skill' that I consider
problematic, but rather the particular way in which the term is
conceptualised and the kinds of practices that such conceptualisation
underpins. The target of my critique is the possessive-instrumentalist
conceptualisation, skills regarded in naive realist terms as having
objective and measurable existence *in* individuals, causal of their
behaviour. The alternative I propose treats the concept of skill as a
discursive construction, deployed (inter alia) in the warranting of
identity claims and ascriptions.


>I do remember your name from the Enterprise in Higher Education days, when
>I was faculty co-ordinator for the Business School in UNL's EHE programme.
>The Graduate Identity approach originated largely from the work I was
>involved in (see the papers from that period on the website), and formed
>the basis of what became University policy (later overtaken by a return to
>SKATTY in the form of the 'Capability Curriculum').
>
>I too was alarmed when I first took up a full-time academic post, in 1988,
>that there was such little reflection on issues concerning learning. EHE
>certainly provided funding - but my observation is that there was too
>quick a rush to produce some tangible results in the form of
>documentation, without a clear analysis of the issues. The regime of
>monitoring and evaluation prevented an open consideration of whether or
>not the work being undertaken was really addressing the 'problem'. There
>was a lot of copy-cat work. The emphasis on skills had been, in effect,
>created by NAB and UGC in their joint statement in 1984, and a subsequent
>report by NAB in 1986. The competence movement was getting into full swing
>in the late 1980s, with the NCVQ's model dominating. So the whole process
>was hobbled from the start! The 'conversation about skills', as you put
>it, became a dominating discourse preventing alternative voices from being
>heard with any serious commitment to give open-minded consideration. **And
>as we have seen, the dominating discourse continues to dominate!!**
>
>You say that
>"Of course skills are not enough, the notion of capability tried to
>enhance the reduced notion of skills, but even that didn't go far enough.
>I know it's about identity and how you decide you belong and whether you
>are prepared to play the game and how much it costs you to do that."
>Again, it is important to be clear what I am proposing. The key concept is
>not 'identity', but 'emergent identity', ie the outcome of the interchange
>between identity claim by the individual and the ascriptions by
>significant others. Such claims and ascriptions are warranted through
>conventionalised discursive and other symbolic modes - and the language of
>skills may be viewed as generalised modes of talking about practices, used
>as warranting discourse. Such an approach, I suggest, enables us to
>overcome the problems with the conventional skills agenda, and to take
>proper account of issues usually addressed in terms of cultural and social
>capital. However, it is a different mode of conceptualising and theorising
>the issues, and does require suspension of patterns of thinking that have
>arisen from the dominance of the SKATTY approach.

As I have indicated on various occasions, implementation of the practices/
emergent-identity approach involves much that currently is practised
espousedly under the conventional skills agenda, just as blacksmiths etc
carried on working as before after Lavoisier's oxygen theory had supplanted
phlogiston theory. But phlogiston theory would not have led to the
development of blast furnace technology, nor of rocket science! So, rather
hubristically you might think, I suggest that the practices/
emergent-identity approach may yield a better understanding of why current
good practices work and may generate new practices which enable us to help
our students better.

regards


Len




Dr Leonard Holmes
Director, Management Research Centre
London Metropolitan University
Holloway Road
London N7 8DB

email: [log in to unmask]
tel.: +44 (0)20 7133 3032
websites:
        www.re-skill.org.uk
        www.graduate-employability.org.uk
        www.odysseygroup.org.uk