Playing the game? Using Occupational Standards, Subject Benchmarks and Professional Validation requirements to create a

1. Playing the game?Using Occupational Standards, Subject Benchmarks and Professional Validation requirements to create a global dimension.

2. Outline • The paper will consider the implications of a ‘standards’ approach for the professional practice of development education i.e. is it effective in achieving DE’s goals? • what are the potential challenges to creativity, academic freedom and learner and professional autonomy?

3. Why the interest? • Global dimension was not included in a coherent and consistent way in initial training for Youth Workers • Influencing the curriculum has a strategic impact • Young people in informal educational context would become more ‘globally aware’ and/or develop as ‘global citizens’

4. The ‘tools’ • NYA Professional Validation and Curriculum requirements – essential for professional validation • National Occupational Standards for Youth Work – reference to these in learning outcomes & assessment is required for professional validation • Subject benchmarks – essential for academic and professional validation • Common Core of skills and knowledge for work with children and young people (DfES 2005) – reference to these is required for professional validation

5. Context of HE in the UK Collins in 1979 predicted changes to HE would turn ‘intellectual culture into a short-term obstacle for students to pass through on their way to credentials’ • Modularisation - Ainley, P. (1994) • Commercialisation & employer engagement - Lee, D. (2006) • Tuition fees • Widening participation – resources, appropriateness A ‘technical rational’ model of professional knowledge predominates, a positivist view of the connection between scientific findings and reality i.e. these can be simply applied to real life problems. e.g. Common Core of Skills

6. “In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the use of research-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowlands, problems are messy and confusing and incapable of technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or to society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern.” Schön, D. (1983)

7. Professional Validation and Curriculum Requirements ‘Programmes of study must locate Youth Work in its historical, political, cultural and organisational contexts.’ and ‘include a thorough grounding in current issues affecting the personal and social education of young people, in terms of their health, housing, employment, education and welfare, and the local, international and global context’. ‘Programmes must be fully abreast of historical policy, including the UN Declarations on Human Rights and the Rights of Children and also contemporary policy and practice initiatives.’ ‘Programmes also need to ensure sustainable literacy as a core competency for all professional graduates, as described in Securing the Future: delivering UK sustainable development strategy.’ Introduction to Professional Validation and Curriculum Requirements (Book 1 of 3) The National Youth Agency’s Requirements for the Professional Validation of Higher Education Programmes (p.17)

8. NOS for Youth Work (2008) 1.1.3 Encourage young people to broaden their horizons to be active citizens. Outcomes To meet the standard, you must be able to: • Explore with young people the global context to personal, local and national decisions and actions (P.15) Knowledge and understanding To meet the standard, you must know and understand: • Key local, national and global issues, including issues associated with sustainabilitywithin youth work and their relationships to individuals and to each other (p.16)

9. 3.2.1 Engage with the local community Knowledge and understanding To meet the standard, you must know and understand: • How local, national and global issues and activities can impact upon each other, including how local activities relate to the wider context, and vice versa

10. Broadly these are or contribute to systems of quality assurance; Post 1992 Universities have ‘extensive quality assurance mechanisms an Extensive bureaucracies which seek to monitor every aspect of academic life from initial validation of programmes to the periodic review and monitoring of all programmes’ Cartwright (2007) Leading to a ‘Grotesque turbulence’ (Webb 1994) Quality as value for money and fitness for purpose rather than excellence or transformative, Harvey and Green (1993) Lomas (2002) Erosion of academic autonomy and professional self determination by intrusive external QA procedures via the Quality Assurance Agency, McNay (1995)

11. Some specific issues The Education and Training Standards committee, which sets the validation requirements and carries out validation, contributes to a ‘competencies’ approach focused on skills to the detriment of theory developed in practice. Jeffs & Spence (2008) National Occupational Standards are applied at pre-graduate, under and post graduate levels these are shaped by employers adopting a competency approach controlled by Sector Skills Councils not practitioners.

12. Subject benchmark statement, Youth work, community education and community development Approaches to learning and development 4.15 Situated learning: local, global and metaphysical: • starting where young people are, but not leaving them there; knowing where young people are coming from the idea of roots (historical and geographical) as sources of informal education • global learning, environmental learning and theological or faith-sensitive learning, using characteristic methods of informal education, which require practitioners tolocate their practice within a matrix of power dynamics across local, global and faith divides, citizenship learning, collaborative and open enquiry and political education. Subject benchmark statement Youth work, community education and community development Draft for consultation June 2008 p13

13. Some thoughts so far.. We should be careful and critical of using ‘quality assurance and ‘technical rational’ tool to Influence the training and education of professional youth workers. • Quality is a contested concept • There is little evidence that these mechanisms are effective at influencing curriculum in in HEIs or the practice of youth workers. • The certainties and outcomes proposed may not be achieved in the complex day to day practice of working with young people and their imposition may lead to reduced professional autonomy and perceptions of failure • We contribute to the reproduction of a discourse which seeks to control and direct individual professional practice. A hierarchical structure where knowledge is produced transferred and applied in practice, telling practitioners what to do, what works and what counts. • Design and monitoring of National Occupational Standards and other standards are not in the hands practitioners – trainers or academics • These approaches may run contrary to the pedagogical principles of Development Education.

14. ‘….often in the unstable world of practice, where methods and theories developed in one context are unsuited to another, practitioners function as researchers, inventing the techniques and models appropriate to the situation in hand: real-world problems do not come well-formed. They tend to present themselves, on the contrary, as messy, indeterminate, problematic situations…’ Schon, D. (2001) pps 185-207

15. References Ainley, P. (1994) Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart Ball, S.J. (1995). Intellectuals or Technicians? The urgent role of theoryin educational studies». British Journal of Educational Studies, 43, 255-271 Cartwright, M (2007) The rhetoric and reality of “quality” in higher education An investigation into staff perceptions of quality in post-1992 universities, in Quality Assurance in Education Vol. 15 No. 3, 2007 pp. 287-301 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Collins, R. (1979) The Credential Society: an historical sociology of education and stratification, New York: Academic Press Bourn, D., McKenzie, A|. & Shiel, C. (2006) The Global University - The role of the curriculum DEA: London Davies, B. (2003) ‘Death to Critique and Dissent? The Policies and Practices of New Managerialism and “Evidence based practice”, Gender and Education, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp 91 – 103 DfES (2005) Common Core of skills and knowledge’ for Children and Young People, London: DfES Dominelli, L . (1996) ‘Deprofessionalising Social Work, Anti Professional Practice, Competences and Postmodernism’ British Journal of Social Work No 26, pp 153 - 175 Eraut, M. (1997), Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence, London: Falmer Press Harvey, L. and Green, D. (1993), “Defining quality”, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 9-34. Jeffs, T. and Smith, M. K. 'Individualization and youth work', Youth and Policy 76 pp. 39-65. Available in the informal education archives: http://www.infed.org/archives/e texts/individualization_and_youth_work.htm Jeffs, T. & Spence, J. (2007) ‘Farewell to All That? The uncertain future of youth and community work education’ Youth & Policy Journal Nos. 97 and 98 autumn 2007 pp 135 – 166 McKenzie, A. & Shiel, C. (2008) The Global University - The role of Senior Managers DEA: London National Youth AgencyIntroduction to Professional Validation and Curriculum Requirements (Book 1 of 3) The National Youth Agency’s Requirements for the Professional Validation of Higher Education Programmes (p.17) Lifelong Learning UK (2008) National Occupational Standards for Youth Work Available at: http://www.lluk.org/national-occupational-standards.htm Accessed: 30 July 2009

16. McNay, I. (1995), “From the collegial academy to corporate enterprise: the changing cultures of universities”, in Lee, D. (2006) University Students Behaving Badly, Stoke: Trentham BooksAtkinson, T. & Claxton, G. (2003) The Intuitive Practitioner, Maidenhead: OU Press Schuller, T. (Ed.), The Changing University, Open University Press, Buckingham. Schön, D. (1983) The reflective practitioner. London: Basic Books. Schön, D. (2001) The Crisis of Professional Knowledge and the Pursuit of an Epistemology of Practice, Chapter 13, in Competence in the Learning Society, John Raven and John Stephenson (eds), published 2001 by Peter Lang, New York, pps 185 207 Webb, A. (1994), “Two tales from a reluctant manager”, in Weil, S. (Ed.), Introducing Change from the Top in Universities and Colleges: 10 Personal Accounts, Kogan Page, London.