Social and Cognitive Constructions of Competence

• "Congratulations, you are now competent to be a doctor".
• "You incompetent, idiot"!
• "He has an attitude problem which makes him less than competent for this job".
• "her performance so far does not suggest that, she will be able to cope with the new role".
• "Many young people emerging from 11 years of secondary and higher education, are not equipped with the levels of competence required to succeed quickly in the demanding technical and economic occupations that need to be filled. Furthermore, we have a massive skills shortage in basic, craft and technician jobs - but univesity graduates don't seem to want to do these kinds of jobs."

To speak of competence is to reference expectations about:

• performance efficiency (tasks are done well, to a standard defined by the speaker). Thus there is problem of how the standard is defined.
• principled understanding (Glaser 1990, p 36). Similarly, how is the domain and content of this understanding defined.

What assumptions prevail?

• that knowledge, and the behaviours associated with this knowledge are organised, in a structured, principled sense: patterns are recognised. Such understanding may vary according to level of knowing
• understanding is measured and monitored. Norms and beliefs are open to examination rather than merely unilaterally defined as being correct. and points of reference in open or closed cultures.

A cognitive psychology view (Ryle, 1949, Glaser, 1990 op.cit) would tend to equate competence with expertise.

• Learners and experts are differentiated by 'level'
• 'Levels' relate to differences in the way individuals represent and can demonstrate (through behaviours) their cognitive structures.
• The expert performs
  • complex procedures routinely, with mastery, to achieve the outcomes required in the situation
  • they can use their "knowledge-base" and reasoning abilities to problem-solve in new, demanding situations. They analyse and appraise the situation, the problems present and they develop options and solutions based on profound, structured conceptual understanding. They are able to implement the solutions and review their performance.

So, expertise - from this perspective - is enabled by

• familiarity with programmed, analysis and decision routines: specific, known and rehearsed procedures. These require knowledge for their development, implementation, adaptation and maintenance. The knowledge and ability requirements involve both general and specific elements that relate to the procedures and the nature of the problems that the procedures address.
• general problem solving ability and 'heuristic' strategies. These also demand "principled" understanding and reasoning. The expert, aware of the needs of the situation, selects and uses such strategies and structures opportunistically, "in action.

The emphasis given in cognitive psychology to types of cognitive representation has ranged from:

• "disciplined" thinking to
• behaviourism with demonstration of specific skills
• a focus on heuristic problem-solving strategies and skills and associated meta cognitive procedures.

The late 1980s saw more interest on conceptual understanding and the acquisition of "schemata" (e.g. Gott, 1989, Sweller, 1990) that enable problem states to be recognised and suitable strategies and actions to be selected and applied. Thus there are various ways in which knowledge is defined and valued.

• Expertise may be seen to depend on the mastery of a discipline. Here we give a high value to "forms of knowledge" and "principles of procedure".
• If expertise is seen as a capacity for automatic, flexible action, then procedural know-how (knowledge+ skill in performance) is valued.
• Some educational schemes have championed the development of heuristic and general problem-solving abilities.
• Today we may see experts as those with "schemata" and capacity
  • to see problems from a deep level of structured conceptual understanding (a schemata)
  • to deploy and control strategic and specific procedures that reflect abstracted, problem representation

Different views of competence-expertise may thus value conceptual understanding over specific procedural knowledge - or vice versa according to what is fashionable perhaps. The enthusiasts of artificial intelligence in the 1980s and 1990s were interested in how specific and general purpose procedures and productions could be captured in software applications.

We may feel that conceptual understanding enhances capacity for solving new problems more than the an ability to perform routine, procedure based skills with fluency. The latter has a "craft and technician" air to it - perhaps unworthy of those possessing cerebral, abstracted conceptual understandings and schemata. These matters are relevant to public education, university curriculums and the expectations of people and their employers in respect of the status afforded to occupations and the development of expertise for these occupations.

Consider the plumber.

Educationalists and the customers of education - governments, employers and learners - may be advised by the emphasis that various schools of cognitive psychology attribute to cognitive structures and we can see that views of expertise are not value free.

If we stress importance to "abstract thinking", internal processes and schemata of deep structured conceptual understanding - then other explanations of behaviour e.g. conditioned behaviours, may be regarded as insufficient and even disparaged. A preference for heuristics and meta cognition will run counter to curriculums that 'teach' proceduralised behaviours.

There is a problem if in university circles - when higher education is valued because of its importance to national cultural and economic health- knowledge about "how to" is undervalued compared to knowledge "of or that" - a view that Aristotle would not subscribe to.