ABSTRACT
Of all the general aspects of role performance encompassed within the ASSET Programme Core Assessment Criteria, only ‘knowledge’ is consistently picked out by the NCVQ model as a necessary aspect of all assessment decisions.1 This predominant emphasis on the cognitive dimension (at the expense of the affective and the ethical, for example) is not, however, surprising, since it echoes a widespread characteristic of educational curricula in general. In a famous comedy sketch from the 1960s Peter Cook tells us wistfully, ‘I wanted to be a judge; only I didn’t have the latin.’ What make us laugh here is that Cook reveals the contradiction within a familiar phenomenon. That a judge should be required to ‘know latin’ seems, from one point of view, intuitively justifiable (the traditional idea that classical languages are a general training in practical logic, perhaps); but from another point of view the requirement seems an absurdity, since the knowledge requirement is so esoterically remote from any conceivable practical application that it seems like a mere convention, a ‘senseless’ rule creating a purely discriminatory barrier. This ambiguity in the assumed relationship between ‘formal’ knowledge and practical ability has long historical roots which run deep in our culture. On the one hand it continually threatens to place a question-mark against the ‘relevance’ of conventional educational qualifications (see Chapter 1), and on the other hand it suggests the need to specify ‘underpinning knowledge and understanding’ if competencebased curricula are to be educationally acceptable. It creates the complex theoretical and practical issues which are the topic of this chapter.
