Playing the game?
Using Occupational Standards, Subject
Benchmarks and Professional Validation
requirements to create a global dimension.
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Outline
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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?
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Why the interest?

Global dimension was not included in a coherent and
consistent way in initial training for Youth Workers
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Influencing the curriculum has a strategic impact
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Young people in informal educational context would
become more ‘globally aware’ and/or develop as
‘global citizens’
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The ‘tools’
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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
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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’
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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
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“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 researchbased 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)
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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)
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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 sustainability within youth work and their relationships to
individuals and to each other (p.16)
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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
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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)
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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.
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Subject benchmark statement, Youth work, community
education and community development
Approaches to learning and development
4.15 Situated learning: local, global and metaphysical:
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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
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global learning, environmental learning and theological or faith-sensitive
learning, using characteristic methods of informal education, which require
practitioners to locate 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
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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.
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Quality is a contested concept
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There is little evidence that these mechanisms are effective at influencing curriculum in
in HEIs or the practice of youth workers.
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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
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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.
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Design and monitoring of National Occupational Standards and other standards are not
in the hands practitioners – trainers or academics
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These approaches may run contrary to the pedagogical principles of Development
Education.
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‘….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
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