implicitly includes the opportunity for ACTA assessors to judge whether or not the ACTA assessee understands the standards required. 3.1.2 DACE The documents we draw on for this section are the competency standards for the following units: “Develop curriculum and instruction for adult learning programme”, “Develop a workplace learning plan” and “Develop assessment tools”. In keeping with a competency-based approach, the competency standards for these units are separated into underpinning knowledge and performance standards. While this allows the assessor to “see” different behaviours because they are presented as discrete entities, this separation assumes that we enact knowledge and performance separately when in fact they are deeply entwined with each other. This aside, the DACE units provide a more cohesive approach to learning, assessment and curriculum design than was evident in the ACTA documentation. DACE units are heavily predicated on instructional design considerations. This is one approach to designing curriculum. Theorists in the field note the term “instructional design” as suggestive of an expert giving instructions, a didactic approach which the field has moved on from. However, the limitations of this approach for the design of assessment and learning for the changing nature of work are perhaps encapsulated in a range statement from the unit “Develop curriculum instruction for adult learning programme. It states there should be a “balance amongst affective, behavioral and cognitive learning”. Again this is consistent with a competency-based training approach; however, it also points to a separation of context from learning and assessment. This statement also assumes learning is individual, omitting the fact that learning could be through social interaction or interaction with tools situated in specific contexts, and could also be collective (e.g. teams and groups learn through problem-solving together). Thus the limitations of considering the only affective, behavioural and cognitive, are that the approach removes learning from authentic contexts and limits consideration of the holistic nature of performance at work. In the unit “Developing assessment tools”, the performance statements include reference to “determining the background for the selection of the assessment tools and relevant stakeholders” and also reviewing the tools with the stakeholders. This indicates a strong need for not only liaising with stakeholders in the workplace, but also engaging in collaborative negotiations with them. The unit “Develop curriculum instruction for adult learning programme” also makes mention of stakeholder engagement for curriculum-design purposes. There is therefore quite a strong message that curriculum designers are expected to engage with the workplace, and thus for learning and possibly assessment to be authentic. What may be missing to support this message are opportunities to share how to do this and how to overcome the considerable challenges involved (see section 2.3 in Chapter 2). The range statement (what MUST be covered but not limited to) for “Developing assessment tools” lists, among many other possible tools, work-based projects, portfolios and third-party reports. These assessment tools lend themselves to authentic work-based assessment. The authors of this report suggest that additional ideas can be gleaned from the six individual case studies on assessment and the changing nature of work. The range statement also makes mention of instruments for recording assessment (in particular, to developing recording formats for both formative and summative assessments) and also to the development of rubrics and graded assessments to assist in the making of assessment judgements. All this augurs well for supporting assessment at, through and for work. However, the tensions between the intent to support learning and assessment at, through and for work are also evident in the DACE documentation, although not as strongly as they are in the ACTA documentation. For example, reference to observation checklists and questionnaires, and structured interviews to assess competencies related to underpinning knowledge and also for assessing attitudes
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