Developing the Capable Practitioner, a new collection of essays by British and Australian hands published here as part of the Kogan Page series called Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, is of mostly indirect interest, I would think, to most American professors and administrators. It is focused almost entirely on professional and vocational education, it operates from different assumptions about the nature of courses and assessment, and it is concerned with a controversy between competence and capability that, as far as I know, does not exist in the U.S. Nevertheless it is of interest, in several ways.
It provides some useful insight into what has been happening in British higher education roughly since the rise of Mrs. Thatcher in 1979. Contributor Len Holmes writes:
There is no doubting the major shift in the discourse of higher education over recent years. The move towards a mass rather than elite system, structural changes in the labour market, and a political and economic regime that emphasizes the (purported) links between education and economic competitiveness, have all played a part in the increased focus on higher education as, at least in part, preparation for employment.
Writing in the first instance for a British audience Holmes leaves unstated some of the ironies of this set of beliefs, most notably the one that insists higher education is preparation for employment while graduates enter a world without suitable jobs. The emphasis on linking all higher education with future employment (so that, for instance, all undergraduates at some institutions are required to spend a term in "work-based learning," which in practice means unpaid menial internships) is undoubtedly stronger in the UK than anything American higher education has faced. For many British educators and universities it is unsettling. But the most adaptable institutions have been those initially set up to serve vocational ends rather than liberal education. Thus the contributors to this volume, most of them from the fields of education, business, or social work, are almost all employed at the "new universities"--those former Polytechnics given university status in 1992.
There is often a class angle in Britain (partly seen in the continued distinction between the older universities and the former polys) and it is noticeable that the two terms which seem to mean roughly the same thing--competence and capability--are endorsed by respectively, the National Council for Vocational Qualification and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, an altogether more impressive-sounding organization.
It is a little difficult to be sure exactly what these contributors mean by capability; at one point it is described as "a more dynamic concept"--i.e. than competence--"embracing learning, culture and values." From time to time they provide descriptors, but these remain vague. What does emerge from the book is that the capable practitioner is reflective; and in support of this characteristic there is a conversation with and much discussion of the work of American Donald Schön, author of The Reflective Practitioner. One can infer other characteristics of capability from the discussions.
What emerges is that this is another version of the recent discussion in the U.S. of moving from a teaching-centered to a learning-centered model of higher education. One chapter is called "From didactic expert to partner in learning," and most of us will recognize here another way of saying "from the sage on the stage to the guide by the side," or some other recent catchy slogan for learning-centered education. There is another chapter on action learning which sounds much like our idea of active learning; its author, Steve Reeve, is the worst writer of educationese in this generally clear book, and the most given to bullet points, but he is onto something. He also discusses "working in sets"--i.e. group work--in graduate management study. And there is this caveat that reminds us that student timorousness is not just our problem:
a number of higher education management students are reluctant to take responsibility for their own learning. This can be demonstrated by the discourse used by some learners. They seem to be much more comfortable with a tutor focus than a learner focus. Consistently, and despite many briefings to emphasize the different nature of the self-development process, comments include "what do we have to do?" and "what do you (tutor) want?"
Finally, there is a sensible discussion of assessment. In the UK this is still seen primarily as judging the student; but these contributors recognize that, by changing the nature of the outcome they are causing difficulties for themselves in determining educational success, and there is some canvassing of alternatives such as portfolios.
The Kogan Page series is good to have available. Having said that, some of the previous volumes have been disfigured by opaque writing and jargon to a distressing degree. Despite occasional problems of that sort here, and a final chapter which dissolves into a series of nearly meaningless diagrams, this one is generally straightforward and I can recommend it to any American reader interested in seeing how a sister system of higher education, starting from a different place and moved by different forces, is making its way through many of the same avenues of educational change as we in North Carolina and the United States.
Merritt Moseley
UNC-Asheville