Assignment-1

Of

st

PEEMT

Submitted To: Ms.Nidhi Prashar Lect.

Submitted By: Kapil Gupta [81406107139] B.Tech CSE 8th

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 'STANDARDS IN TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT'

INTRODUCTION The Training and Development Lead Body (TDLB) has recently published for consultation a set of documents setting out its framework of occupational 'standards' for training and development occupations. According to the TDLB's timetable, the finalised framework will be published early in 1991, and new qualifications will be based on this framework of standards. In this paper we will subject the TDLB's 'Training and Development Standards' to critical examination, identifying what we believe to be serious flaws. Moreover, we shall take the TDLB's work as a case study of the wider national programme ('Standards Programme'). This was initiated by the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) to develop such a framework for all occupations and facilitate the development of new national vocational qualifications (NVQs) for all sectors of industry.

REFORM OF PROGRAMME

VOCATIONAL

QUALIFICATIONS

AND

THE

STANDARDS

There has been considerable critical examination of competence based approaches to vocational education and training, mainly in the US. However, it is important to be clear about the particular features of the current UK initiative rather than attempt merely to apply general criticisms about competence approaches. The Standards Programme forms part of the government sponsored 'reform' of vocational qualifications, set in motion by the 1986 White Paper, 'Working Together Education and Training'. In that White Paper the Government announced its intention to establish the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ). In future, only those qualifications which receive the endorsement of NCVQ will be recognised as 'national vocational qualifications' (NVQs). Such qualifications will be based on 'standards of occupational competence', to be determined by industry training organisations. The MSC (now the Training Agency) was required by the Government "to take the lead in stimulating" such industry training organisations to develop such standards. The emphasis on 'competence' has been a key feature of MSC, and now Training Agency (TA), policy since the publication of the New Training Initiative in 1981. It is defined by the TA as "the ability perform the activities within an occupation."

'STANDARDS IN TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT' AS AN EXEMPLAR "Trainers have a critical role in helping people to achieve standards. It's only appropriate, therefore, that their performance and practice should also be led by nationally agreed and employment led standards." (Training and Development Standards: Guidance Notes; TDLB, 1990) We believe this claim to legitimacy by TDLB is valid insofar as the fact that training (and vocational education) practitioners have a pivotal role in the implementation of any attempted national vocational education and training system. The knowledge, understanding and skills they develop, the meaning they attach to the nature of their work, the assumptions they have about their (legitimate) role in an organisation, all have an acute bearing on the quality of their work performance, and so on training as a whole. Any approaches to the development, assessment and certification of trainers must therefore take this into account. It is clear that the TDLB, with Training Agency guidance, has treated the development of standards for the occupation of training and development as an exemplar for the development of standards in other occupations. The TDLB has diligently stayed with the view that functional analysis alone will be able to provide the basis for examining competence. This insistence on functional analysis alone has been described as 'fundamentalism', and there has been at least one resignation from the TDLB as a result.

THE FACE VALIDITY OF THE STANDARDS In developing our critique of the TDLB Standards we shall start with a consideration of their face value, before we move onto a more in depth analysis. An in depth analysis will tend, by its very nature, to be theoretically based. As such it is likely to be treated to cursory dismissal by the proponents of the Standards, who would emphasise the 'practical' nature of the Standards, based on the views of 'practical' people actually involved with the work of training and development, ie as practitioners and as employers as practitioners. "The Training Agency has set up a nationwide initiative to establish clear occupational standards .... and to change the qualifications and training systems so that they are clearly based on what industry needs, rather than what educationalists and trainer assume we need.... It's not just an academic exercise it's extremely practical and worthwhile." (Training Agency:SFS, 1989, p2). The language used in the booklet from which this quotation is taken (which accompanies a video on the Standards Programme) shows how the Training Agency attempts to equate educationalists and trainers' with 'academic exercises', making assumptions. Whereas 'we' are more concerned with what is 'practical and worthwhile'. In a similar fashion, the TDLB states that "For many years we have been concerned about the quality of performance of our workforce. Employers have frequently voiced their disappointment in the ability of the young people coming out of vocational education and training to perform in a job." (TDLB:CD, 1990, p.1) The 'commonsense', 'practical', 'worthwhile' nature of the Standards Programme, as claimed by its proponents, presents a major obstacle to the presentation of an in depth critique.

However, we believe that the TDLB Standards are, in fact, open to immediate criticism in terms of the claims to validity presented by the TDLB. The consultation on the draft standards has been undertaken over the summer, and was due for completion in September. A series of questions were posed by the TDLB, under six headings: 1. Are the Standards clear? 2. How would you use the Standards? 3. Are the Standards comprehensive? 4. Are the Performance Criteria accurate? 5. How do they relate to other Standards? 6. Are the Standards strategic? Usefulness In order for the Standards to be useful (to practitioners and their employers), they would need to reflect accurately the nature of training and development practice. The basis of disaggregation must be coherent with the distinctions which actually occur. The initial disaggregation for the TDLB Standards is on the basis of the 'training cycle', a concept which has widespread acceptance within the training field. There are various ways in which the training cycle is presented, but the TDLB has a four stage model: identify training and development needs; design and update training and development strategies, plans and systems; provide learning opportunities, resources and support; evaluate the effectiveness of HRD (human resource development) strategies, plans and systems. This four stage model was then used to four separate functional areas (coded A, B, C, D) each of which was then disaggregated further. However, this four stage model proved to be insufficient, the TDLB introduced a fifth area (E), establish and maintain effective communications and feedback systems. Comprehensiveness and Accuracy The questions for consultation pose the issue of 'accuracy' in terms of the performance criteria. However, we shall take the issue of accuracy along with that of comprehensiveness. To focus solely on accuracy of performance criteria would be to sidestep the important question of the accuracy of the Standards themselves, an issue which we partly addressed above. One of the key issues upon which there has been considerable agreement over recent years is with regard to the relationship between training and development as an occupational area, and that of personnel management. The question of whether training and development is a specialist function within personnel management, or a separate function, has to a considerable extent been made redundant by the advent of the concept of 'human resource management'. Although there is no comprehensive agreement on the meaning of the term, the generally accepted basis of the concept is that the activities and functions traditionally undertaken in the specialist areas of personnel management, industrial relations and training and development, should be integrated into overall strategic management of the organisation. There are of course considerable questions which arise from this, not least with regard to the the treatment of people as 'human resources'. But if we accept for the present such a perspective, complete with its managerialist orientation, we can identify problems with regard to the TDLB Standards.

Critical issues in training The TDLB claims that the Standards are intended to reflect 'best practice'. We might expect then that there would be clear reference to issues which are currently regarded as being critical in terms of best practice. We have referred to the emphasis on human resource management in recent developments in the training field. Another key area now seen to be of critical importance is that of quality. Although the Standards Programme is claimed to be about quality, little recognition is given to the way in which this is currently perceived in organisational management. THE NATURE OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT WORK There are of course a wide variety of methods for analysing work performance, some long established (eg skills analysis, task analysis) and some fairly recently developed (eg occupationl training families). During the 1970s the MSC undertook an examination of North American approaches for skill comparison (Freshwater and Townsend, 1977). Pearn and Kandola (1988) present a variety of methods for analysing jobs, many of which are not primarily intended for training purposes. However, the Training Agency has rejected all of these in favour of the relatively new technique of functional analysis. Very little published literature on functional analysis currently exists. What does exist tends to be repetitive, and is mainly descriptive of how the method should be used and/or merely makes generalised claims about what benefits it will lead to. As yet, no substantial theoretical or empirical justification has been presented. The method seems to have been "... developed over time and through close experience and involvement with standards development by a group of researchers and trainers at Barbara Shelborn Associates." (Mitchell, 1989) ALTERNATIVES IN ANALYSING WORK PERFORMANCE Despite the fact that vocational education and training has traditionally placed a heavy emphasis on methods for analysing work performance which are based on such functionalist assumptions, alternatives have been used. It seems to us that we can consider the nature of work performance in three ways. Firstly we can concentrate on the observable activities which are performed, treating the job as existing independently of the jobholder (the 'job' or 'technical' approach). Secondly we can focus on the performance of the individual within a social context, examining work performance as the enactment of role which emerges through the interaction between the roleholder and others with their varying perceptions, expectation, etc (the 'role' or 'social' approach). Thirdly, we can examine an individual's work performance in terms of its relationship to the real person with broader 'life' issues (the 'personal' or 'biographical' approach) (see figure #). Significantly for the area covered by TDLB, the 'role' approach was adopted in the work of Pettigrew et al (1982), examining training specialist roles. They particularly focussed on the training and development issues arising for those who were attempting to move from 'provider' roles to 'change agent' roles. The important issues were those of 'fit' between personal style, role, and organisational culture, and of 'survival and influence', arising from strategies adopted for maintaining legitimacy, for managing role boundaries, and for accessing sources of power and

influence. The research enabled the Chemical and Allied Products Industry Training Board, sponsoring the research, to develop workshops to help real trainers to develop their competence in the real organisational contexts in which they operated.

THE 'STANDARDS' PROGRAMME AS PUBLIC POLICY INITIATIVE Although the current Standards Programme was initiated by the Training Agency following the 1986 White Paper, its origins may be traced much further back, in public policy terms, to the 'Great Debate' on education launched by James Callaghan's Ruskin College speech in 1976. The explicit theme of the Great Debate, that education in Britain had failed to deliver what it promised, were later echoed in terms of vocational education and training. [The not always implicit theme, that the blame lay with teachers, has similarly been echoed by the suggestion that training practitioners are to blame for Britain's failure to train its workforce as well as competitor nations.] The Great Debate was followed under the Thatcher Administration from 1979 by a steady stream of official documents and initiatives focused on labour market intervention. They began with the Central Policy Review Staff's report, 'Education, Training and Industrial Performance' setting out the problems as perceived, and proposing Government intervention to develop a national training system which was 'standards based'. The report referred to many existing apprenticeships as examples of 'restrictive labour practices'. CONCLUSIONS The Standards Programme and the reform of vocational qualifications has been generally welcomed. We believe that such welcome is misplaced. Although based on a rhetoric of concern for 'standards' and 'competence', the policy is in reality being driven by a specific approach which has little theoretical or empirical justification. When the specific case of the TDLB Standards for Training and Development are critically examined major concerns emerge. Many of these concerns may be generalised to the Standards Programme itself. When placed in the wider frame of the directions taken in Government policy on vocational education and training the Standards Programme may be seen as being a key element in a policy of control, rather than the claimed major step forward in enabling Britain to improve its economic performance and the achievement of social advancement for its people.