How we think about universities, their purposes and about the place of postcompulsory education in our society is the exemplification of a number of attitudes about humanity and life in general. Perceptions about the place of tertiary or postcompulsory education in the life of the ordinary person have changed along with a broader sweep of changes in the way people view themselves in relations to the world. The meaning of education in general and in particular, that of tertiary or postcompulsory education in the life of people today occupies a very different one to that of as little as forty or thirty years ago. The recent movements in the policies and processes surrounding the structure, form and purpose of higher education in Australia signifies to some extent at least the depth of these shifts in perceptions. In the field of social welfare education changes in political and social attitudes have led to calls for increased accountability in standards of practice in both service delivery and professional education, yet this call has come at a time of change in the cultural climate where there is decreasing clarity about what is expected of social welfare as a service, and of education for professional practice in the area. This thesis contends that the practice of and education for social work and social welfare stand in an invidious position in the current society in that practitioners and teachers, agencies and universities are being called on to be more accountable both philosophically and pragmatically, but that at the same time as this call for accountability presses upon the profession, questions are also being asked about the value basis of professional practice. Criticisms are being levied at the profession some suggesting that it is ideologically bound and ineffective in dealing with social problems seen to be within its scope of contribution to society. With justification these same criticism are being aimed at social work and welfare training programs with suggestions that contend that the education of people to work in the social welfare sector is at a cross-roads. Unless a reassessment of the goals and purposes of education for this field takes place it may lose all social status and relevance, yet there are those who suggest that change is long overdue and that there has been little change in the philosophy and practice of social welfare education The thesis has a primary contention that training people to work as social workers and other professional providers of social welfare in the current society is being placed under the microscope as a consequence of a number of movements in educational and political thought that have had their culmination in the competency movement that has impacted on both tertiary education, the professions and the industries. The institutions in which this training or education takes place have been changed in form and function particularly since 1989, following the Dawkins restructuring of the tertiary education sector and the account of these changes provides a backdrop for the story about social welfare education in Australia. These changes have included the construction of a national training platform with the espoused intention of formulating a seamless web of credentialling linking schools, the workplace, industry based training, DeTAFE and universities. The introduction of Competency Based Education, where training is asked to demonstrate a higher level of accountability and transparency than has been the case in the past, and the introduction of higher, sharper demands for effectiveness and relevance have shaken the universities out of comfortable complacency. In particular the competency movement has placed demands on the professions to demonstrate that they are able to describe their skills, roles and functions in accessible and assessable terms. This demand has also been placed on the social welfare profession. The requirement for the social welfare profession to formulate competencies has thrown into sharp relief an ideologically bound framework of practice that is seen to be out of touch with the needs of the current society, and this has had direct relevance for the education programs preparing people to practice in these areas. Chapter One focuses on views of knowledge and education and goes on to critique the changes in higher education that have occurred over the last half-century in Australia in general and in South Australia in particular, specifically in reference to the programs for educating social welfare workers. This chapter is largely historical, but this history is told with more of an appreciation of the spectacle of history's passing or recycling parade rather than of social progress. Chapter Two addresses the impact and significance of the structural and policy changes within the higher education sector with a particular focus on the competency movement as a demonstration of one of the currently perceived purposes of education. Chapter Three explores responses to the competency movement as further indicators of the views about the purposes of higher education in general and their relevance to those teaching with the social work and social welfare programs. Chapter Four locates voices in the discourse about the social welfare field, the type of work involved in the area, the sort of training needed, and the dilemmas inherent in the profession in the current society. This chapter highlights the need for a consensus position to support the formulation of standards for practice as implied in the design of competencies, and the ramifications of the lack of such consensus. Chapter Five displays the state of disarray in the profession through the analysis of the draft competencies produced so far, where lack of vision and consensus are seen, in the final reckoning, as the stumbling blocks to future clarity of purpose. Of any profession, social welfare work is one of the most difficult to put into competency based form due to both the nature of the work and the lack of a consensus view of its primary goals and purposes, yet it is essential that this can be achieved given the impactful and intrusive nature of the work, and the push for accountability implicit in the competency movement. The thesis concludes with a statement of hope that clearer standards for practice can be formulated and that social welfare education and practice can re-configure to contribute relevantly to the current society.

This thesis develops a multi-faceted picture of competency based training and the impact it is having on vocational education. The thesis is a personal attempt to act agentically by deconstructing the discourse of vocational education within which I am positioned in my working life. It is an attempt to push back the boundaries of the discourse and to explore and create spaces for contestation. In order to do this I undertake three different readings of a set of texts. The texts come from two sources. The first is a set of documents identified in the Framework for the Implementation of Competency Based Training and which represent the official government position on competency based training. The second is a set of interviews I undertook with teachers at the Canberra Institute of Technology regarding their views about competency based training. Details of the texts are provided in Section 2 of the thesis. The body of the thesis is a set of three readings of these texts. The particular view of 'reading' used in the thesis is a post structuralist one. Each of the readings brings into play the understanding of the texts created within a particular discourse. I draw on the work of Michel Foucault for the understanding of discourse used in the thesis. The first reading is from within the discourse. It is a reading which seeks to understand competency based training in its own terms, and in relation to the critical debates within the literature of vocational education. I argue in this reading that competency based training emerges as a grand but flawed vision for the future of vocational education. The second reading takes the viewpoint of the work of Michel Foucault, and in particular his book Discipline and Punish. It uses the metaphor of the panopticon to explore the nature of power/knowledge within competency based training and the regime of truth which it brings into being. The final reading is from a feminist post structuralist position. I argue in this reading that the discourse of competency based training is phallocentric. I explore the liberatory claims of the discourse and conclude that the claims are limited because they do not challenge the fundamental and powerful dualisms through which competency based training is constituted. Finally in the conclusion I briefly explore whether I have achieved the aim of the thesis. I question what it means to act agentically and whether the type of thesis I have undertaken constructs the possibility of doing so.

The study was designed to determine how learner outcomes, one aspect of a comprehensive assessment plan at an urban community college in the Northwest, may have influenced professional practice. Research subjects were selected from a group of forty-four faculty who participated in a college sponsored professional development activity. The purpose of this activity was to provide resources for faculty to develop curriculum from a learner outcomes perspective. The researcher was interested in how the adoption of learner outcomes may have influenced pedagogical methods, instructional content, classroom assessment, or other aspects of professional practice. Research participants responded to open-ended interview questions administered by the researcher. The shared phenomenon being investigated was the experience of community college faculty who were directly involved with transforming instructional objectives to learner outcomes and/or assisting other faculty with the conversion. Data were analyzed following a five-step process based on phenomenological research methods. Five themes were evident in the data: 1) importance of the process (writing outcomes and designing curriculum); 2) changes in classroom instruction; 3) classroom assessment modifications; 4) the integrative nature of the experience; and 5) changes in the classroom experience for students. The data indicated that participants shared two common experiences--writing outcomes and changing the syllabi as a result of incorporating learner outcomes. The findings indicated that learner outcomes influenced professional practice. However, the degree of influence was not at the same level of intensity for all participants and the degree of influence was not related to the number of years a participant had been teaching. Experienced faculty with twenty or more years of experience were distributed among three subgroups which denoted the degree of influence on professional practice or the amount of change evident from lower to higher levels of intensity. / Graduation date: 2003

In Canada, residents’ views on which roles and tasks are effective to becoming a competent physician is not yet part of the research discourse. Ensuring that competency-based curriculum (CBC) objectives are aligned with competencies and evaluation methods is critical to build a curriculum that will produce competent physicians. This research reports on the residents' views of the current Orthopaedic Surgery curriculum (UofT) which is solely competency-based. The residents' views were explored about which CanMEDS Roles and Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA’s) would be important to develop for them to become competent physicians. This study employed a mixed methodology. The individual interviews were from CBC orthopaedic surgery residents and the survey respondents were orthopaedic surgery regular time-based stream and competency-based stream residents. This research provides a better understanding of the resident experience so that educational practice and residency education can influence decisions around the curriculum design in postgraduate competency-based medical education programs.

In Canada, residents’ views on which roles and tasks are effective to becoming a competent physician is not yet part of the research discourse. Ensuring that competency-based curriculum (CBC) objectives are aligned with competencies and evaluation methods is critical to build a curriculum that will produce competent physicians. This research reports on the residents' views of the current Orthopaedic Surgery curriculum (UofT) which is solely competency-based. The residents' views were explored about which CanMEDS Roles and Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA’s) would be important to develop for them to become competent physicians. This study employed a mixed methodology. The individual interviews were from CBC orthopaedic surgery residents and the survey respondents were orthopaedic surgery regular time-based stream and competency-based stream residents. This research provides a better understanding of the resident experience so that educational practice and residency education can influence decisions around the curriculum design in postgraduate competency-based medical education programs.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-118). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-133). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (PhD(Didactic Pedagogics))--University of Pretoria, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2001. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-152). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-118). Also available on the Internet.