Eraut, Michael

2006-02-01
Eraut, 1998, Concepts of competence

p. 129: [competence is] the ability to perform the tasks and roles required to expected standard.

p. 129: "Competence as politically negotiated and socially situated". ... [competence is] being able to perform particular jobs and roles within [a given] organization. ...what is to count as competence results from negotiations, explicit or implicit, between employers, professionals and clients. ... three other parties influencing these negotiations: professional bodies, providers of education and training, and the government.

p. 130: There is a sociotechnical debate about what should be the competence of a particular type of professional, resolvable in principle by research and negotiation; and there is a concurrent political debate about who has the right to define such competence and award qualifications.

p. 130-132: ... magnitude of variation between jobs within the same profession, the same specialism or even the same sub-specialism ... qualification-competence gap ... differences between jobs can be both overt and covert. ... qualifications may be negotiated at national level but competence should be determined at local level. ... what counts as competence is that particular context will be co-constructed by the interested parties, though their respective influences are unlikely to be equal. ... expertise developed over time in handling particular kinds of problem and responding to particular kinds of client. ... situated knowledge ... this kind of know-how is acquired through experience and remains largely in the form of tacit knowledge, excluded from formal specifications for qualifications yet still necessary for performance on the job. ... A threshold level of formal knowledge may be necessary, and not all of that will be in the initial qualification; but beyond that threshold further expertise is mainly developed through experience.

p. 132: the question of whose expectations are to count has been discussed in the context of power relations and negotiation. The problem of variations in requirements between organizations and even within organizations has been raised. ... significance of situated and often tacit knowledge.

p. 133: [competency is] 'an underlying characteristic of an individual that is causally related to criterion-referenced effective and/or superior performance in a job or situation' (Spencer and Spencer, 1993). 

--05.09.14--
Eraut, 1994, Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence

p. 160: Previous research into competence has followed three main traditions (Norris, 1991).

1. Competency-based training and education has relied on very detailed specifications of competenc behavior in the tradition of behaviorist psychology but also combining the analytic techniques of psychologists with observations of, and consultations with, practitioners. Mastery learning approaches were supported and there was a limited role for theory.
   
2. Generic approaches to competence differed in almost every respect. They used psychometric techniques to identify overarching qualities linked to excellent job performance, focused more on mid-career professionals than trainers and more on selection than training. Nevertheless they had a strong influence on programmes of training and development, especially in management.
   
3. A third approach based on cognitive constructs of competence is less reported in the professional education literature because it has been referenced more to academic settings. The distinction made by linguistics, however, between competence (being able to speak in a certain way) and performance (actually speaking that way) can hardly be considered irrelevant to the world of work.Some approaches to competence appear to equate what a aperson can do with what they are observed to do in a performance context; and that can be very misleading. The cognitive approach also raises difficult and disturbing questions about the relationship between depth of understanding and long-term performance.

p. 167: ...a professional person's competence has at least two dimension, scope and quality.

• The scope dimension concerns what a person is competent in, the range of roles, tasks and situations for which their competence is established or may be reliably inferred.
• The quality dimension concerns judgments about the quality of that work on a continuum from being a novice, who is not yet competent in that particular task, to being an expert acknowledged by colleagues as having progressed well beyond the level of competence.

For many tasks, neither broad scope nor special expertise is expected; and if such tasks are in frequent demand or particularly important, they will form part of the agreed core of the appropriate professional qualification. For some tasks and roles, however, quality is of considerable significance, and there will be limited interest in a professional profile which gives no indication of quality in these areas.

p. 167: ... professionals will be changing the scope of their competence, through becoming more specialist, through moving into newly developing areas of professional work, ...; and they will also be continuously developing the quality of their work in a number of areas, beyond the level of competence to one of proficiency or expertise. ... learning professionals who are continually expanding the scope of their competence and developing the quality of their work. 

p. 169: ... competence is not a descriptive concept, but a normative one. Before a person can be judged as a competent teacher or manager, there needs to be agreement on a particular view of what it is to be a teacher or manager, what will be the scope of any statement of competence, what criteria will be used and what will be regarded as sufficient evidence.

(cognitive constructs of competence) differentiate competence from performance 

p. 178: Competence refers to what a person knows and can do under ideal circumstances, whereas performance refers to what is actually done under existing circumstances. Competence embraces the structure of knowledge and abilities, whereas performance subsumes as well ther processes of accessing and utilising those structures and a host of affective, motivational, attentional and stylistic factors that influence the ultimate responses (Messick, 1984).

p. 179: ... distinction between 'competence', which is given a generic or holistic meaning and refers to a person's overall capacity, and 'competency', which refers to specific capabilities. However, 'competency' can be used either in a direct performance-related sense or simply to describe any piece of knowledge or skill that might be construed as relevant. 

--05.09.13-- Eraut, 1994, Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence

p. 19: ... professional knowledge cannot be characterized in a manner that is independent of how it is learned and how it is used. It is through looking at the contexts of its acquisition and its use that its essential nature is revealed. --- that is, professional knowledge is essentially context-dependent. --- p.20: ... professional knowledge is constructed through experience and its nature depends on the cumulative acquisition, selection and interpretation of that experience.

p. 20: ... the nature of the context affects what knowledge gets used and how. Three types of context are distinguished: the academic context; the organizational context of policy discussion and talk about practice; and the context of practice itself.

p. 20: ... It is inappropriate to think of knowledge as first being learned then later being used. Learning takes place during use, and the transformation of knowledge into a situationally appropriate form means that it is no longer the same knowledge as it was prior to it first being used.

p. 20: ... different types of professional knowledge, distinguishing between the portrayal of knowledge in curriculum documents and evidence directly obtained from the observation of practice and discussion with practitioners. --- theory vs. practice --- ... modes of knowledge use by adopting Broudy's fourfold typology of replication, application, interpretation and association...

p. 20: ... New knowledge is created both in the research community and in each professional community. But each places different valuations on different kinds of knowledge in a way that minimizes interpenetration. --- academic knowledge is more general and explicit, while practical knowledge is more particularistic and implicit ---. 

p. 22: ... Ryle's distinction between 'knowing how' and knowing that' is transformed into a distinction between process knowledge and propositional knowledge... --- 'understandings' and 'abilities' ---