The Competence Affair, or Why Vocational Education and Training Urgently Needs a New Understanding of Learning

The notion of competence has received sustained and ongoing critical attention. Despite this, many important matters remain unclear. This article argues that much of the confusion can be traced to both proponents and opponents of competence variously sharing highly questionable assumptions about learning that revolve around viewing it as a product. An examination of various writings demonstrates the pervasive influence of these assumptions on both proponents and opponents. The result is ambiguity and equivocation as both camps run together items that are logically and conceptually distinct. It is argued that to advance these matters we need to distinguish clearly between three items--performance and its outcomes, the underpinning constituents of competence (capabilities, abilities, skills) and the education, training or development of people to be competent performers. This article identifies five pervasive errors that stem from a failure to recognise this threefold distinction. These distinctions are wholly consistent with an alternative conception that views learning as a process. When the three distinctions are maintained in an account of competence, it turns out that many common criticisms fail. It also turns out, however, that the notion of competence lacks many of the superficially attractive features that appealed in the first place to policy makers, politicians and industrialists.