Figure 3.3: Charles. To a large extent, Charles was profiling programmes which were service-oriented to begin with, and it was likely that most of these courses were less interpretive in nature but tended to focus on developing the competencies of retail or frontline staff in managing customers, for example. Pin echoed similar sentiments about WSQ programmes being more instrumental in nature. For example, she put it very elegantly when she cited the reasons for WSQ focusing on getting learners to be more employable: … when I know that my end goal is the WSQ programme, … I would veer a bit more to the instrumental portion where my design philosophy would be a bit more regulated and a bit more competency driven … if my starting point is the non-WSQ, then I think I veer a bit considerably more to the interpretive side … WSQ programmes … the whole paradigm of it is very much supposed to help you to be more employable and … the job and industry requirements become very key. Pin attributed the slant towards instrumental curriculum for WSQ programmes to job and industry requirements. Linked to these requirements are the competencies that learners are expected to exhibit at work, so leveraging instrumental curriculum to upskill workers is not wrong. Ginny had the same perspective when she made the point about the need to balance education with training: I was very excited to receive information from you because I think this is what we needed at the point when early childhood was adopted, or adopted the WSQ framework … we are very obsessed with competency … which is not wrong but there are certain industries like education that cannot just look at skills and knowledge … other than giving them the skills and knowledge, for example of literacy and numeracy, we need to think about how we impart or sort of, influence the values and also, the attitudes towards learning … it feels we are trying to put a round peg into a square hole because we can’t seem to put the attitudes and values into a common competency, for example, because it is not a competency. From what Ginny was saying, it would appear that there are grounds to include elements of interpretive curriculum which are more transformative in nature to educate the learner. Ginny made it very clear that the purpose is to be able to describe clearly the point of praxis between instrumental
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