20 February 2014
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This NCVER research addresses the question of how Australian vocational education and training (VET) practitioners interpret units of competency .
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In Australian vocational education and training, the skills and knowledge deemed essential to perform in occupations covered by the VET system are identified by industry representatives and this content is recorded in competency standards. It is the job of VET practitioners (designers, trainers, teachers and assessors) to interpret these competencies and design and/or facilitate learning and assessment on the basis of this interpretation.
Accordingly, how vocational education and training (VET) practitioners understand and use competency standards is of fundamental importance to the quality and integrity of the Australian VET system, given that these standards are its very basis. This small study seeks to address this question by gaining insights from 30 VET practitioners about their use of competencies, by comparison with the way they are expected to use them, as expressed in the mandated entry-level qualification for practitioners — the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.
Key messages
- The interpretation of units of competency appears to be a highly sophisticated skill, yet the practitioners in this study did not appear to learn this critical skill adequately in their initial training. Many indicated that it took up to a year after completing their studies before they became confident in interpreting competencies when developing curriculum.
- Most experience with interpreting competencies was gained through practice, professional development and informal learning such as participation in assessment validation, rather than through initial training in the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.
- The difficulty with interpreting competencies is largely due to the unclear language and ‘jargon’ associated with them. Recent initiatives to simplify the language of competencies and ‘streamline’ their structure may make the work of interpretation more straightforward for VET practitioners; however, this is not the entire solution.
- To ensure that VET practitioners are well equipped to undertake competency interpretation work sooner, the author suggests a number of initiatives to help build expertise, such as more intensive training initially, combined with participation in follow-up activities such as assessment validation.
