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From labour market to labour process: finding a


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DOI: 10.1080/14480220.2016.1254367

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International Journal of Training Research

ISSN: 1448-0220 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ritr20

From labour market to labour process: finding a


basis for curriculum in TVET

Jeanne Gamble

To cite this article: Jeanne Gamble (2016) From labour market to labour process: finding a
basis for curriculum in TVET, International Journal of Training Research, 14:3, 215-229, DOI:
10.1080/14480220.2016.1254367

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Download by: [Dr Jeanne Gamble] Date: 30 January 2017, At: 04:38
International Journal of Training Research, 2016
VOL. 14, NO. 3, 215–229
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14480220.2016.1254367

From labour market to labour process: finding a basis for


curriculum in TVET
Jeanne Gamble
School of Education, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY


In the sociology of education the relation between education and Received 6 October 2016
work is analysed in many ways and, since the rise of neoliberalism, Accepted 27 October 2016
increasingly in market terms. Skills are the dominant labour market
KEYWORDS
currency, described in terms of competence profiles that seek to Sociology of education;
link educational qualifications directly to work. Contrary to the curriculum; vocational
widespread appeal of competence-based curriculum approaches, knowledge; competence;
this paper argues that the vocationalist impulse of the neoliberal era work
impacts as negatively on technical and vocational education (TVET) as
it does on general education in its destruction of a basis for curriculum
that includes knowledge and not only skills. The paper draws on a
recent empirical study of labour processes in four industry sectors in
South Africa to show why work-related curricula need to foreground
knowledge not just in terms of its applied qualities but as a necessary
ingredient of technical systems complexity.

Introduction
The relation between education and work is both complex and contested, particularly when
it comes to arguments about the extent to which education should have labour market
entry as a main objective (Allais, 2014; Wolf, 2002). Technical and vocational education (TVET)
is usually excluded from such debates, as its direct purpose of skilling the potential workforce
is, after all, what distinguishes it from schooling (or ‘general’ education) and higher education.
Similarly, educational critiques of standards-based or competence-based approaches to
curriculum usually exclude TVET because it is considered to be the kind of teaching and
learning to which such approaches are most appropriate.
This paper argues that critiques of competence as the basis of curriculum also need to
extend to TVET. A relation to work undoubtedly distinguishes TVET from other forms of edu-
cation but the basis of the TVET curriculum lies in the labour process itself. Work needs to be
described not as what workers can do or should be able to do (competence) but in terms of
objective features that emanate from design-production logic. It is this logic that tells us what
kind of knowledge is built into different labour processes. In Bernstein’s (1996, 2000) terms,
the logic of work provides the ‘recontextualising principle’ for the TVET curriculum.

CONTACT  Jeanne Gamble  jeanne.gamble@uct.ac.za


This paper draws on research conducted under the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership, a research consortium led by
the Human Sciences Research Council, and funded by the Department of Higher Education and Training, South Africa.
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
216   J. GAMBLE

In this paper, a methodological framework that derives from the sociology of education
sets up the relationality between education and work as the primary unit of analysis. Moving
to the level of curriculum, different interpretations of ‘competence’ are discussed to show
why competence is not suitable as a basis for curriculum. It is then argued that we need to
look at work itself as a labour process to find a form of logic that allows work to connect with
knowledge. The feasibility of such an approach is demonstrated through a discussion of a
recent research study in four industry sectors in South Africa. The study, which looked at
diagnostic and problem-solving practices in two medium-large and two small firms in each
sector, was set up in a way that enabled inferences to be drawn between the logic internal
to each labour process studied and the type of knowledge artisans and technicians draw
on when diagnosing and solving production problems. The conclusion drawn is that such
an approach has potential as a basis for designing work-related TVET curricula that avoid
simple ‘correspondence’ relations and foreground knowledge as the crucial ingredient of
technical systems complexity.

The education-work relation


It is useful to view education and the economy/the ‘world of work’ as distinctive domains
operating at a number of levels.1 At a macro-systems level, analysis would refer to the ways
in which global and national economic systems and labour markets impact upon and are
impacted by regional and national education, systems, policies and reform initiatives. A
middle-level analysis would investigate the relation (or not) between the ‘world of work’ and
curricula offered by formal educational institutions. At a micro-level, analysis would focus
on the relation between teaching, learning and assessment in educational institutions and
teaching, learning and assessment in workplace contexts
How do these fields inter-relate at each level? Earlier debates in the sociology of education
draw an analytical distinction between direct and indirect relations and their effects.2 At the
time, the degree of insulation or permeation between education and work was a focal point
in theory and research that investigated academic achievement patterns associated with
education’s function as a social class-reproducing device.3 Moore (1985, pp. 3–4) describes
‘direct relations’ as resting on an assumption that there is a fundamental, underlying conti-
nuity between education and work, with features of the former held to be intelligible in
terms of requirements of the latter. A further assumption is that the requirements of work
can be translated into effective educational forms. While the overall relationship is viewed
as determinant, the relation is not necessarily one of ‘simple correspondence’ as the connec-
tion between educational practices and the world of economic production are not always
obvious. More complex models would also incorporate notions of ‘resistance’, ‘struggle’ and
‘contestation’.
In contrast to ‘continuity’ theories, the argument that each domain needs to be treated
as having a distinctive logic rests on an assumption that education and work are independent
systems or fields, structurally distinct and with their own internal properties and logic. What
happens in each system is intelligible in terms of conditions internal to that system, which
may or may not align with conditions internal to the other system. Relationality is thus
‘indirect’ (Moore, 1985, pp. 8–9). In similar vein, Bernstein (1977, p. 186) argues that it is
‘parallels in structures and contexts [that] indicate the approximate or relative correspond-
ence’ between fields, as well as establishing ‘causal direction’.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING RESEARCH   217

In recent years, the focus of the sociology of education, as in many education-related


fields, has shifted. Relations between the global economy, the massive expansion of educa-
tion and the shifting nature and location of employment in stratified labour markets are key
markers of contemporary debates. Arguments about social justice and structural disadvan-
tage continue but they tend to be muted by a neo-liberal labour market rhetoric that ‘learn-
ing equals earning’, in an era of high-skill, high-wage work (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2011).
Terms such as ‘meritocracy’, ‘employability’, ‘graduate characteristics’ and ‘social mobility’
assert education’s direct relation with work. Concomitantly, we have seen a shift from an
educational dispensation that revolves around specialist educational and training institu-
tions, to a dispensation in which the individual learner’s opportunities to gain credentials
are at the centre. Increasingly, education is required to model itself in the likeness of the
market, as a quasi-market, and to deliver qualifications that have immediate purchase in the
labour market. In order to do so, education re-describes itself in a new currency of outcomes,
standards and qualifications, organised into qualification frameworks (Allais, 2014;
Wheelahan, 2010; Young, 2005; Young & Gamble, 2006). There is an extensive literature that
discusses and critiques how learning outcomes are specified as explicit dimensions of com-
petence. Competences (or competencies) are described in terms of what counts as satisfac-
tory work performance and what general ‘person’ attributes are required for effective
performance.4 The ‘world of work’ is thus deemed to provide the basis for decisions about
curricula where ‘relevance’ and ‘usefulness’ are dominant criteria.
But what if the ‘world of work’ does not come in a recognisable form, as is alleged by
critics of what was called the ‘new vocationalism’ in the sociology of education literature
from the 1970s onwards? And how could this happen? One sociological answer at a macro-
level is to view assumptions about direct relations between education and work as
expressions of a market-centred ideology which represents work in purely normative terms
that have little to do with actual work in actual workplaces, or with the immediate needs of
the economy and of employers. Work represented normatively sets up an idealised version
of the labour market ‘as it would be in a pure market economy’ (Moore, 1987, pp. 233–234).
In turn, the ‘idealised labour market’ creates the idealised environment for the ‘neoliberal
opportunity bargain’ of education, jobs and rewards (Brown et al., 2011, p. 5).5
At a meso-level, ‘means-ends’ views of education are criticised for breaking the ‘link
between practices (in the ‘world of work’) and elaborating curricular knowledge’ (Moore,
1985, pp. 503–504). This is not to say that education has no relation to the world of work but
rather that its intrinsic worth and its claim to autonomy are both directly related to its spe-
cialised function as a transmitter of conceptual knowledge that allows ‘independence of
thought from a material base’ (Bernstein, 1977, p. 190; Young, 2013).6 This is a very different
view on curricular knowledge than one that describes sets of topics as ‘embedded’ or ‘under-
pinning knowledge’, as is the case in competence-related qualification standards (Gamble,
2013; Young, 2006).
Where does this leave college-based technical and vocational education aimed at pre-
paring young people for intermediate-level technical work?

Competence: bridge or dichotomy?7


The influence of ‘competence’ has been a frequently debated topic at all levels of the edu-
cation-work/economy relation. At a curriculum level, competence is not considered to be
218   J. GAMBLE

an inherently undesirable educational outcome. What is problematic is its amphibious ability


to move between education and work and to misrepresent each domain to itself. On the
one hand, competence is seemingly allocated the role of ‘bridge’ between education and
work and/or employment (Willbergh, 2015). On the other hand, different versions of com-
petence are depicted as deeply dichotomous and mutually exclusive (Gonczi, 1994; Jones
& Moore, 1995). Even if one only considers competence from the vantage point favoured by
‘qualification framework’ policy approaches in many countries, the various mutations of
‘competence’, ‘competency’, ‘competencies’, ‘skills’, ‘outcomes’ and ‘standards’ are, in them-
selves, bewildering, as a quick glance at Allais’s (2014, pp. xxv–xxviii) Note on terminology
shows. Brockmann et al.’s (2009) distinction between ‘integrated’ and ‘discrete’ competences
also point to two very different conceptions of how the term is used in TVET systems.
How can a concept simultaneously be dichotomous and serve as a bridge? To investigate
this paradox, we turn to educational interpretations of competence, drawn from two theo-
retical papers which coincided more or less with the rise of competency-based approaches
to curriculum and assessment. In different ways, both capture the flavour of debates and
critiques that took place at the time.

Representations of competence
Commenting on the widespread involvement of the professions in the competency move-
ment in Australia, Gonczi (1994) identifies three basic conceptions of the nature of compe-
tence: behaviourist, generic and holistic. Behaviourist or task-based competence conceives
of competence in terms of discrete behaviours connected to the completion of single tasks.
In a generic approach, competencies are thought of as general attributes of the practitioner
that are crucial to effective performance, with a particular focus on underlying attributes
which provide the basis for transferable or more specific attributes. Generic competencies,
such as critical thinking, or communication skills, are deemed to apply to a broad context
of professional development, despite, as Gonczi asserts, ongoing evidence from novice/
expert research and critical thinking literature that expertise is domain-specific. The third
approach, described as integrated or holistic and adopted by some professions in Australia,
views competence as a ‘complex structuring of attributes needed for intelligent performance
in specific situations’ (1994, p. 29). This form of competence incorporates the idea of profes-
sional judgement and seeks to bring together combinations of attributes and tasks in par-
ticular contexts.
Jones and Moore (1995), writing from a UK perspective, join Gonczi in supporting a holistic
approach, although they prefer the term ‘relational competence’ to indicate a broader the-
oretical perspective on competence and its contextual and social locatedness. They describe
their approach as follows:
…the relational acknowledges that competence is tacit, informally acquired, culturally embed-
ded and contextually located in practice. Competence is to do with culture and social practice.
These relationships between inner and outer and between capacity and practice are well cap-
tured in the term ‘embodied knowledge’. Essentially, competence is to do with membership
– with the tacit acquisition of group cultures. As opposed to the core behaviourist view that
competence can be directly represented in a simple, empirical form (checklist of skills), the rela-
tional approach recognises that it can only ever be inferred. Competence is that which makes
holism holistic – the whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Though always present in
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING RESEARCH   219

social practice, it can never, by definition, be directly represented. (Jones & Moore, 1995, p. 88;
author reference in cited text omitted)
The fault line that runs through these different representations of competence is easily
discernible. The most salient criticism of the industrial training variety of competence is that
it ‘“recontextualises” by “de-contextualising” – by denying context’ (Jones & Moore, 1993,
p. 395); or, as Willbergh (2015, p. 3) puts it more directly, ‘people do not have competence
independent of context’.
If competence is criticised for having little to do with the actual reality of the ‘world of
work’, why would employers accept competence statements and profiles as representing
‘the world of work’? In order to understand how this can be the case, the focus needs to shift
to the ‘world of work’ and to changes in corporate management practices that coincided
with the rise of neoliberal corporate reform in the 1980s.

Competence and the ‘world of work’


A connection is often made between task-based competence approaches that disaggregate
work and Frederick Winslow Taylor’s time and motion studies at Midvale Steel Works in
Philadelphia in the early 1900s, which became known as ‘scientific management’. Taylor
studied work and work organisation at the point of production. What was at issue was not
the labour process itself, but transfer of control over the labour process from workers to
management (Braverman, 1974, p. 100). It is important to note that Taylor did not study one
person displaying competence in a job. In order to work out the quickest way of doing a
sequence of tasks, he observed and timed a number of workers individually performing the
same task or ‘element’. He then added up the fastest individual task performances into a
time sequence that set a ‘best way’ standard and allowed no deviation (Rose, 1978, p. 35).
Scientific management practices (also known as Taylorism) have been carried forward in
different ways over the years, most significantly in constantly evolving quality control and
quality management systems required by the globalised production and service delivery
practices of multinational corporations. Criteria such as ‘certainty, repeatability and predict-
ability’ (Stoller, 2015, p. 319) are the sine qua non of standardised work practices, as encoded
in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Operations Manuals.8 In their turn, corporate
training departments draw on ‘standard procedures’ as the basis for the development of
in-house training materials. It is particularly the methodological affinity between the task
analysis of Taylorism and the educational objectives movement in North American ‘curricu-
lum theory’ (Curzon, 1985, p. 100), as exemplified by Ralph Tyler’s (1949) ‘behavioural objec-
tives’ and Robert Mager’s (1984) ‘instructional objectives’ – both reprinted in numerous
editions and still influential – which establishes a direct correspondence between education
and work at the level of curriculum.
It would be misleading, though, to trace the lineage of competence only in relation to
in-house corporate training practices. Since the 1980s, when personnel practices in many
countries shifted from procedurally-based and industrial-relations orientated personnel
management operating under collective and pluralist values to the unitarist and individualist
values of strategic corporate human resource management (HRM),9 competence, a term first
used in connection with ‘managerial competence’ (Holmes, 1995, p. 34) has taken on a prom-
inent role in all practices concerned with the ‘qualitative characteristics of the workforce’
(Fowler, 1987, p. 3). Holmes describes strategic human resource management as follows:
220   J. GAMBLE

The individualising approach of HRM, emphasising individual contracts of employment with


individual employees on separately agreed rates of pay, including performance related elements,
personal performance review and appraisal renders collectivist modes of discourse, outdated,
old-fashioned … HRM also claims to provide a clear link between organisational goals (as defined
by senior management) and the way that employees are recruited, deployed, developed and
rewarded. The language of competence fits well with the language of HRM (1995, pp. 40–41).
In the broader HRM milieu of ‘mutuality of interest’, every aspect of employee management
is viewed as integrated with general business performance (Fowler, 1987; Guest, 1989).
Competence standards act as the mechanism that links the potential of the individual
employee to the business performance needs of the corporation and, in doing so, position
employees and prospective employees as productive units of labour in an economic market
relation.
There are arguments that it is particularly the technical rationality and bureaucratic logic
of ‘competence approaches’ that set up a direct correspondence relation between corporate
people management systems which promote a market-driven meritocracy and qualification
frameworks that standardise and align labour market credentials required by such a dispen-
sation (Cohen, 1995; Holmes, 1995). The common format of competence standards used in
both domains provides the basis for assuming continuity between work and education,
without the need for specification of content. ‘Key skills’ such as ‘critical thinking’ ‘prob-
lem-solving’ and ‘teamwork’ assume generic dimensions across occupational and profes-
sional boundaries (Beck & Young, 2005; Jones & Moore, 1995; McLagan, 1989; Packard, 2014).

Competence, knowledge and the vocational curriculum


Does the direct relation established in market terms between generic human resources
management representations of work as competence standards and qualification standards
in the education domain carry through to educational practice? The answer is neither a
definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’. While a growing policy concern with explicit rather than implicit stand-
ards (Young, 2014) has led to competence approaches achieving what Hyland (1994, p. 30)
describes as ‘an unprecedented degree of popularity … from school to university, from
lower-level craft skills, to postgraduate professional courses and from hairdressing and cater-
ing to teacher education and higher management’, such alignment claims can be misleading.
A ready correlation may well exist in the areas of assessment and accreditation between
competence standards used for appraising work performance and learning outcomes used
for individual assessment of education-related performance, but such correspondence
attracts as much criticism as it is given support. If we return to some of the literature sources
cited earlier, we see that the professions criticise competence assessment for a-theoreticality,
for ignoring the complexity of performance in actual contexts and, crucially, for ignoring
the role of professional judgement in intelligent performance (Beck & Young, 2005; Gonczi,
1994). Vocational critiques argue that generic standards ignore the essentially cultural and
tacit character of competence and the impact of workplace contexts on how work is per-
formed (Jones & Moore, 1995; Stewart & Sambrook, 1995).
At the level of curriculum, Ashworth’s unequivocal assertion that ‘the role of knowledge
and understanding is … treated in a paltry way by the advocates of the competence model’
(Ashworth, 1992, p. 10) is echoed by many. Hyland (1994) offers an insightful review of the-
oretical arguments about knowledge and vocational qualifications and concludes that
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING RESEARCH   221

competence offers no coherent account of knowledge, nor does competence distinguish


adequately between theoretical and practical knowledge, apart from persistently down-
grading the former and in preference to the latter. Young (2006), in tracing the trajectory of
VET policy in the United Kingdom, explains how a knowledge-based curriculum approach,
under the authority of vocational subject specialists in schools and colleges, was dominant
from the late nineteenth century to the 1980s. Its successor, the standards-based curriculum
is considered to be more directly workplace-aligned even though, as we have seen, compe-
tence standards described as decontextualised skill sequences and generic personal attrib-
utes are a long way from actual work in actual workplaces. From a policy perspective, Young
argues that it is not the content of the vocational curriculum that is at issue, but rather control
over curriculum and a shift in control from educationalists to employers.
While it is understandable and indeed desirable that employers should have an interest
in how employees and prospective employees are prepared for work, their interest is in the
control of work performances through explicit standards. An educational interpretation
would argue that the two systems of education and work are actually least intelligible to
each other when vocational knowledge is deemed the connecting point. If, as Hyland (1994,
pp. 69–70) explains, ‘the assessment of knowledge in educational contexts rarely involves
an evaluation of performance’, then knowledge assessment would add little of value to what
employers would recognise as work performance.
This is the conundrum that has bedevilled vocational education through the years. In
educational terms, knowledge and its organisation is the essence of curriculum. Without
knowledge, the notion of curriculum becomes nonsensical. Qualification framework-related
TVET systems background knowledge by ‘jumping’ from learning outcomes and their related
assessment criteria to learning materials development and then straight to assessment.
Alternatively, the concept of knowledge is manipulated so that it somehow fits into a com-
petence mould. In Bernstein’s sociological language (1996, 2000), the requirement would
be to find an adequate ‘recontextualising principle’ that connects the logic of work to the
knowledge logic of curriculum so that there is a measure of approximate correspondence
while each retains its own distinctive logic.

The logic of work10


If it is the activities and attributes of people who perform work that are captured in compe-
tence statements, then how can work itself be described in objective terms? Labour process
theory offers an understanding of work as a three-way relation between labour, tools/tech-
nology and materials (Marx, 1867/1976, p. 284). Even though the division of labour, the social
relations of power and control, levels of technology and types of materials will vary within
and between industry sectors and workplaces, a structural relation such as this one exists
at a general level that is independent of any social formation.
Within this three-way relation, work can be described by two concepts: certainty and risk
(Pye, 1968). The difference between certainty and risk lies in the degree of predetermination
of the end result. All workplaces try to reduce risk and aim for ‘certainty, repeatability and
predictability’ through the use of templates and jigs in handcraft, through automated work
processes, through strict adherence to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and health
and safety procedures. Yet, Pye argues, the ‘principle’ of uncertainty of end result determines
222   J. GAMBLE

the standard to be attained, using ‘judgement, care and dexterity’ as assessment criteria
(Pye, 1968, p. 7).
In competence terms, complex problem-solving is considered the key skill of the twen-
ty-first century (World Economic Forum, 2016a, 2016b). Problem-solving refers to part-whole
connections. Work of certainty and risk brings two kinds of problem-solving into focus. Where
solutions have been worked out before, either through generalisation by experience or
pre-coded as an SOP, or as an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard,
then problem-solving is a routine process which proceeds in a sequential or step-by-step
manner. Each step is predetermined and jobs are arranged so that work can be done in a
machine-like way (Ainley, 1993, p. 22). What Thompson and Davidson (1995, p. 19) describe
as a sequential ‘techno-logic’, is the basis of reasoning. In contrast, in novel and non-routine
problem-solving the problem is solved in the mind or on paper through theoretical gener-
alisation and inferential reasoning (Clarke & Winch, 2004; Davydov, 1990), before a solution
is attempted in practice.
It may seem as if these two types of problem-solving logic are oppositional but they are
in fact complementary as both types occur in all work, even though one could predominate.
It is a fallacy that only semi-skilled or low-skill occupations are predictable and routined,
while high-skill occupations are non-routined and complex. A very recent 27-country study
on the impact of global value chains on employment (Marcolin, Miroudot, & Squicciarini,
2016) found no necessary relation between the level of skill required and the routine intensity
of an occupation. Certain occupations classified as ‘high-skill’ were also classified as high-
routine occupations and certain occupations in ‘medium-skill’ categories were classified as
non-routine occupations (Marcolin et al., 2016, p. 13).
The distinctive logics that govern all types of work can broadly be described in two ways.
The logic of work is procedural where problem-solving is standardised and the end result
predefined. The logic of work is principled where problems are novel and unpredictable and
‘general principles’ that explain how something works, guide specific problem-solving. Each
of these logics rests on specialised kinds of knowledge that support that particular logic. It
is at this point that it becomes possible to identify a strong approximate correspondence
between the structure of work and the structure of curriculum.

Work as recontextualising logic for the vocational curriculum: a case study


In educational terms, the idea of a curriculum is inescapably tied to the selection and organ-
isation of knowledge (Bernstein, 1977, p. 85). When structure is understood as referring to
ways in which parts are put together to form a whole, then the logic of work offers two
options for the vocational curriculum. When the recontextualising logic is procedural, then
the kind of knowledge that is selected must help learners to understand work and prob-
lem-solving as predetermined sequences of step-by-step procedures. Similarly, if the recon-
textualising logic is principled, then the kind of knowledge that is selected must help learners
to understand that work does not consist only of predefined sequences or solutions but that
part-whole relations must also be worked out through abstract reasoning based on theo-
retical principles.
A second feature of any work-related curriculum, whether vocational or professional, is
that it has a theoretical or classroom component and a practical component in a workplace
or in a simulated work environment. What counts as ‘theory’ and what counts as ‘practice’ is,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING RESEARCH   223

of course, a contested issue (Gamble, 2006; Mutereko & Wedekind, 2016; Winberg,
Engel-Hills, Garraway, & Jacobs, 2013). The argument throughout this paper has been that
the vocational curriculum needs to draw on investigations of work and labour process to
understand ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ as curriculum categories. Research of this nature was
recently undertaken in South Africa (Gamble, 2016) and a component of the larger project
is presented here as a case study. Adopting a definition of skill proposed by the European
Commission (as cited by Bohlinger, 2007 [2008], p. 99) which describes ‘skills’ as the ability
to apply knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and solve problems and ‘knowledge’
as the body of facts, principles, theories and practices that is related to a field of study or work,
the study wanted to find out what kinds of knowledge artisans and technicians draw on
when they employ the skill of problem-solving in their work practices.
The study hypothesised that each ‘work logic’ would draw on different types of situated
and formal knowledge. The terms ‘situated’ and ‘formal’ refer to sites of knowledge. Situated
knowledge describes familiar work routines in a workplace (‘how to’ knowledge). It also
describes familiar and/or novel part-whole relations in a trade or technical operation (craft
knowledge). Both types of situated knowledge are acquired through experience in a work
practice. Formal knowledge lies outside informal workplace routines, trades or occupations.
It takes the form of general work procedures documented as SOPs or ISO standards (systems
knowledge). It also describes specialised disciplinary and scientific knowledge which func-
tions at a general level (scientific knowledge). Formal knowledge is written down and can
be learnt as ‘theory’.
The four kinds of knowledge are presented as a typology ( See Figure 1 below) and labelled
K1 to K4 for ease of reference.
Problem-solving activities were studied in four different economic sectors: Boat Building
(Occupation: Boat Builder and Repairer); Engineering (Occupation: Mechatronics Technician);
Film Production (Occupation: Camera Assistant); and Tourism and Hospitality (Occupation:
Confectionary Baker). In each sector, the sample comprised two medium/large firms and
two small businesses. In each site, a researcher job-shadowed an artisan or technician for
one full shift and then interviewed two artisans and/or technicians, their immediate super-
visor and a manager/business owner (separate interviews). Respondents were asked to talk
about intermediate level problem-solving by reviewing a list of suggested problem-solving
activities and then allocating a rating from a Likert-type scale with five rating preferences
to each activity. They were then asked how they thought work would change in the next

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE FORMAL KNOWLEDGE

‘How to’ knowledge Systems knowledge


PROCEDURAL
WORK LOGIC Work procedures or routines Formally codified knowledge of
learned through everyday work rules and procedures
(Certainty of experience (written down)
end-result) (not written down)
K1 K2

PRINCIPLED Craft Knowledge Scientific knowledge


WORK LOGIC Principles visualised through Principles understood in abstract or
drawings and sketches. symbolic terms
(Uncertainty of
end-result) K3 K4

Figure 1. Types of knowledge investigated in LMIP study (adapted from Gamble, 2016, p. 18).
224   J. GAMBLE

10–20 years and thereafter repeated the rating exercise to indicate change envisaged in the
future. Each problem-solving activity linked to a knowledge type and in this way we could
build a current and future knowledge profile for each site.
Figure 2 provides a spatial representation of the combined current and future aggregate
rating at a sectoral level for each of the four occupations studied. The light grey background
shows the maximum possible knowledge base that could have emerged if all respondents
had given a rating of 5 to each problem-solving activity. This provides a context for inter-
preting actual and envisaged knowledge bases for each occupation. The larger grey surface
in the middle represents the current knowledge base as a sectoral aggregate, with the very
dark grey reflecting future change. Where the lines are very close together, minimal future
change is anticipated.
Numerous conclusions can be drawn from the data, but for the purpose of thinking about
the possible knowledge content of vocational curricula, the most obvious finding is that a
labour process view on curriculum such as the one presented here, provides substance to
the ubiquitous generic skill of ‘problem-solving’. Extension along the horizontal axis (K1 and
K2) shows problem-solving of certainty with a predefined end result, while extension along
the vertical axis (K3 and K4) shows problem-solving of risk where the end result is not known
beforehand.

Figure 2. A spatial representation of the depth and breadth of occupational knowledge bases at sectoral
level (adapted from Gamble, 2016, p. 24).
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING RESEARCH   225

A second important general finding is that all four types of knowledge are found in tech-
nical occupations at the intermediate work level in each sector. The extent to which a knowl-
edge base veers to the right-hand side depicts a strong presence of formal knowledge. A
shift to the left-hand side depicts strong reliance on situated knowledge. Overall patterns
have a lot to do with the three-way relation between work and its organisation, levels and
type of technology and materials used. In baking, the mechanisation and automation of
mass-production bakeries and the resulting standardisation of work prioritises ‘how to’
knowledge. In film production, shifts from analogue to digital format are viewed as increasing
the technical sophistication of a sector that has always had a strong artistic craft base.
In each sector, there is also a dynamic view of change. In sectors such as engineering,
where work is organised around formal qualifications, the knowledge base displays stability.
In the other three sectors, where market conditions regulate work organisation, knowledge
bases are more volatile.
Finally, the findings confirm that principled and procedural logics of work co-exist in all
sectors. Despite fears that workers might get displaced by machines, there is no indication
that problem-solving of certainty will be the dominant work mode of the future. Any version
of curriculum that prepares learners only according to pre-specified standards or outcomes
does both learners and prospective employers a disservice.

Conclusion
The argument of this paper has been that the dual purpose which competence serves, make
competence-based approaches conceptually unsuitable as a basis for curriculum. Discussions
often point to technical differences in various versions of competence or competency as a
marker of required work performance, but what remains opaque is the normative role of
competence in setting up an ‘idealised’ labour market currency to serve the neoliberal prom-
ise of a direct relation between education, employment and financial rewards. Competence
attaches labour market value to individuals and this value cannot be indeterminate. It
requires exact pre-specifications of excellence in employee performance, stipulated and
controlled through adherence to substantive and technical criteria for the assessment and
appraisal of individual performance. All of this is good news for work and problem-solving
of certainty, but, by their very nature, such versions of competence cannot take into account
the basis of innovative judgement as a tacit ‘inner’ capacity. In his argument about personal
knowledge, this is what Polanyi describes when he claims that ‘the aim of a skilful perfor-
mance is achieved by observance of a set of rules which are not known as such to the person
following them’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 49). It is this side of human endeavour that is closed off
when the requirements of market standards demand that all elements of competence should
be able to be stated explicitly and precisely and assessed accordingly.
If competence does not provide an adequate basis for curriculum, then knowledge is the
obvious alternative. However, this route is by no means unproblematic. From a liberal edu-
cation perspective, disciplinary knowledge is the bedrock of curriculum. This has led to an
‘applied knowledge’ approach to the vocational curriculum, aimed at transcending the
restrictive limits of narrow competence-based approaches. However, there is no neat and
direct correlation between ‘real world’ problems, specialised disciplinary knowledge and the
organisation of such knowledge into curriculum. Science educators in the schooling sector
argue, for instance, that there can be no such thing as ‘applied science’. Given that science
226   J. GAMBLE

is characterised by generality and comprehensiveness, it does not come in a form that makes
it useful for practical action in an immediate and straightforward manner (Layton, 1993).
Adopting an ‘applied’ approach unproblematically continues adherence to an assumption
of underlying continuity between education and work, except that this time it would be the
‘education’ side, assuming such causal direction.
The labour process approach suggested in this paper agrees with competence approaches
that work should be the basis of the vocational curriculum, but disavows an assumption of
direct relationality between education and work. In viewing the relation as indirect, I have
argued that we need to search for contextual and structural parallels that allow relative
correspondence. I have tried to show that when the sought-after skill of ‘complex prob-
lem-solving’ is viewed through the lenses of certainty and risk, two oppositional yet com-
plementary forms of work logic emerge. Taken together, procedural and principled logics
provide the basis for understanding work as predefined routines and standardised task
sequences interspersed with novel, unexpected and unpredictable problem-solving that
requires ‘parts’ to be fitted together in new ways, or even for new ‘parts’ to be made. When
this understanding is employed as the recontextualising principle for the transition from
work to curriculum, it becomes possible to explore relations between different types of
knowledge in ways that enrich the vocational curriculum and prevent stereotypical theo-
ry-practice interpretations.
One of the most troublesome aspects of certain kinds of competence-based approaches
is that they are conceived, within an HRM paradigm, as applying to workplace training where
the notion of curriculum would be interpreted as a manual plus a workbook plus a form of
competency test, with the trainer as facilitator, rather than instructor. This often leaves edu-
cational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities of technology at a loss as to
how they should translate competency specifications into a curriculum with substantive
content and assumptions about conceptual progression. It is for these reasons that we need
to continue searching for a more nuanced and complex understanding of what ‘theory’ and
‘practice’ might mean in the preparation of intermediate level artisans and technicians.

Notes
1. 
I am endebted to Jim Hordern (2016) for a diagrammatic depiction of education-work relations
intended to emphasise ‘the distinctive logics and parameters of the two “domains”’ (2016,
p. 2). Hordern, in turn, acknowledges his debt to Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’ (2016, p. 5).While
I follow both Hordern and Bernstein in a three-level typology, I do not imply a necessary
hierarchical relation between the three levels (Bernstein, 2000, p. 28). My interest is more in
horizontal relations at any level.
2. 
In this literature a distinction is drawn, in Marxian terms, between ‘education and production’.
At the level of curriculum and pedagogy, this translates into a distinction between ‘school and
work’ or ‘school and the “world of work”’ (Bernstein, 1977; Moore, 1985).
3. 
See, for instance, Muller and Gamble (2010) for a discussion of this time period in relation to
the work of Basil Bernstein.
4. 
See, for instance, Burke (1989); Gonczi (1994); Jones and Moore (1993, 1995); Wheelahan (2007).
5. 
The breakdown between contemporary labour market rhetoric and labour market realities
is discussed extensively in (Brown, 2013; Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2008; Brown et al., 2011).
6. 
Education’s broader concern with the ‘whole person’ is not intended to be minimised by an
exclusive focus here on knowledge transmission.
7. 
In the discussion that follows the paper draws on a range of literature from the early 1980s to
1990s that coincides with the rise of competence-based approaches in Anglophone countries.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING RESEARCH   227

Northern European approaches and traditions are not included in the discussion as they
draw on different philosophical and historical traditions (Brockmann, Clarke, & Winch, 2009;
Deissinger, 2005; Green, 1995).
8. Cohen finds what she calls ‘an echo of Taylor’s “one best way”’ (Cohen, 1995, p. 50) in the
work that the authors of procedures manuals do when they impose discursive order on the
‘flux of organisational life’ to create precisely defined work procedures that reflect a ‘smooth
linearity’ and a ‘seamless procedural rationality’. These procedures are subsequently taken up
by management as the ‘right way’ (1995, p. 55).
9. See, for instance, Fowler (1987); Miller (1989); Keenoy (1990).
10. Philosophical and sociological discussions about work often distinguish between work and
labour (Arendt, 1958/1998; Standing, 2009; White, 1997) I use the two terms interchangeably to
refer to work that is related to the ‘production of marketable output or services’ (Standing, 2009,
p. 6)Philosophical and sociological discussions about work often distinguish between work and
labour (Arendt, 1958/1998; Standing, 2009; White, 1997) I use the two terms interchangeably to
refer to work that is related to the ‘production of marketable output or services’ (Standing, 2009,
p. 6)Philosophical and sociological discussions about work often distinguish between work and
labour (Arendt, 1958/1998; Standing, 2009; White, 1997) I use the two terms interchangeably
to refer to work that is related to the ‘production of marketable output or services’ (Standing,
2009, p. 6)

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