“Whose IDeA is this?” Facilitating Professional Reflection and Communication Through The IAL Design

Figure 3.6: Chris.

It is interesting to read the comments from the different stakeholders, especially when they possess different perspectives on the same issues. This section also illustrates how the IDeA Model can potentially be used as a shared tool with common terminology and concepts to drive upgrading or transformation of curricula within national frameworks. In relation to Ginny’s suggestion that the IDeA Model be used as a starting point for dialogue with the regulators and other stakeholders, it does bear reminding that dialogue and alignment will move the CET sector forward, for the benefit of our workforce.

The completed profiles from our participants also highlighted different approaches in design between curriculum designed to teach technical skills and curriculum designed to teach other dimensions of development. This is the result of how the purpose of the curriculum is conceptualised and also reflective of how learning outcomes are conceptualised and written. Technical skills standards are often broken down into micro skills, reflected in many criteria or standards to be achieved. This approach inadvertently privileges and values technical skills as a standalone, outside the context of performing such skills, ignoring the complex workplace contexts in which technical skills are applied to identify and solve problems, and are an implicit part of exercising professional or vocational judgement. Such approaches therefore result in a prevalence of behavioural performance indicators to assess learning, characteristic of instrumental curriculum. According to Rice, a learning and development manager with a logistics company: … for the majority of my training which is 70 per cent … it’s very extremely on the right side [instrumental] and the other type of training which I explained as the transformational or the development, that soft skills type, they are more like here, this part [on the left].

Darren made the same observations with regard to WSH curriculum, which is more technical than the service excellence or leadership courses, which are more transformative in nature. He commented: WSH ATO with this organisation curriculum philosophy, they will I think they will be more to the extreme right for outcome-based, lesser transformative, maybe even lesser dynamic because very highly regulated. If you go to say service excellence or LPM in particular say … very transformative, then it will go towards right, to the right.

Outcome-based yeah they may even achieve outcome-based also and it’s very transformative. So I think it depends on the organisation’s own curriculum philosophy.

Technical skills valued in these ways are tangible and measurable, making them easy to tick off as completed and therefore to meet funding requirements. Rice identifies different types of skills and the different approaches that are sometimes used: … for example for the soft skills training and email writing trainings and the telephone soft skills, we are free to be more flexible, you know and make changes along the way, improvise on the spot and continuing follow up with them as though it’s normal everyday conversation … Whereas under product and process training, we really have to be more pragmatic and more outcome driven.

Likewise, several members in the reference group mentioned the possibility of using the IDeA Model to map their curriculum to understand the characteristics of the specific modules within, for example, a 3-year curriculum, across dimensions such as curriculum philosophy and approach. The manner in which learners transit from one type of curriculum to another also deserves attention, as, often, these 56