Vocational and Professional Capability An Epistemological and Ontological Study of Occupational Expertise

The central claim of this fascinating monograph is that strategies for vocational and professional education adopted by the UK over the last two decades are founded upon a number of fundamental and fatal errors. The essential problem is that these strategies derive from a number of philosophical confusions about what it is to be skilled, competent or capable. The aim of the book is to unravel the philosophical assumptions at the heart of current strategies, examine their shortcomings and propose a more coherent account of vocational and professional capability. It will be argued that not only does this have serious practical implications for the vocational curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment, but that it indicates the need for an urgent and radical reassessment of the relationship between vocational, general and academic education.>

Introduction1. The Orthodox Conception of the Vocational 2. Philosophical foundations of the orthodoxy 3. Knowing how and Knowing that 4. The Competence Problem 5. Towards an ontology of occupational capability 6. An alternative conception of vocational and professional capability 7. Working to Rules 8. Constitutive Rules and the Problem of Structure 9. The Trouble with Competence-based Education and Training 10. Rethinking Vocational and Professional Education References