Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) - Let's Not Get Sidetracked
The purpose of this article is to encourage practitioners to think beyond the obvious issues around RPL and to challenge practitioners to reflect on and evaluate some of the more fundamental factors surrounding their assessment practice per se and recognition of prior learning (RPL) specifically. Although there are a number of descriptors used in the literature such as recognition of current competency (RCC), prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) and experiential learning (EP), for the purposes of this think piece, the term RPL will be used for simplicity’s sake.
What is RPL?
In relation to RPL, where does this ‘maverick’ sit in the scheme of things educational and vocational? The term tends to explain itself - learning which has been achieved at some previous place and time, probably informally, on-the-job or even accidentally and then such learning is documented in some way and submitted to a practitioner for recognition, scrutiny, judgement – assessment. So rather than viewing RPL as a maverick, I would contend that RPL is simply an assessment option – if we see it in this way, it becomes part of a suite of assessment strategies to be accessed by practitioners and candidates alike, as the occasion demands.
Some Current Key Themes
RPL has been getting some bad press. The broad issues thus far have been canvassed in many articles, short essays and also at various venues, such as the 2007 TAFE NSW RPL Colloquium. A number of themes around RPL emerged at this event, including issues about the RPL process itself, the need for professional development for practitioners, accountability requirements, and the role and challenges of the practitioner and applicant alike.
Observations from the Colloquium indicate that some practitioners see RPL as ‘different’ from other forms of assessment – maybe not quite legitimate; a little short cut to a qualification. Others see RPL as changing the role of the teacher – from instructor, trainer, teacher, guide, director, coach, demonstrator, reviewer, mentor and so on - and now assessor? Still others see the RPL process as just too difficult and complex – the language, the procedure, and – “Oh, the paperwork!” And of course, what about those auditors?
Checking Out Some of the Themes
The thing is that as vocational education and training practitioners, doing something different is not new to anyone. Good teaching (Smith and Blake, 2005) is “a process of facilitating learning rather than being the simple transmission of knowledge”. But it is also about innovating, adapting, modifying or changing to suit the needs of the student and trying something different in order to enhance learning and facilitating the progress for the learner. Providing variety is, or should be, part of a teaching practitioner’s daily routine. If we embrace variety and diversity in teaching and learning, surely we need to extend this to assessment.
The role of teacher has indeed changed and will continue to change in many respects, not just through or because of the RPL process. Dare I mention technology? But there are also economic, ecological, industrial and social changes impacting on industries and the community with which vocational practitioners are associated. And industry as a whole has very real and dynamic expectations of the various training providers, teaching practitioners and their own employees. Accountability, transparency and compliance are part and parcel of every job. And with the cyclic nature of processes, including quality assurance processes, changing roles would appear to be a done deal – here to stay.
Even the student of the 21st century has very different and diverse expectations about what, how and when he/she wishes to learn. With 24/7 communication and unprecedented access to information, today’s student is in varying degrees highly techno-literate and those who are not, want to be. One only has to stroll around the city streets and malls or travel on public transport to see the number of under-35’s wired into their mobiles, iPods and the like. These may seem like 21st century toys to some, but they are essential accessories for the upcoming 21st century populace.
Certainly over the next few years, given the way that work practices are changing, the global 24/7 organisations and the predictions that many of the younger workforce will have two, three or more career changes, RPL will be of significance in terms of a job applicant’s competitiveness. Because the concept of ‘life tenure’ in a job is fast disappearing, part of a person’s professional baggage will be the portable prior learning he/she takes along from job to job, career to career and training course to training course.
And confronting difficulty and complexity – can I suggest that as educational practitioners, the job involves people, which equates necessarily with diversity, variety and complexity. As far as work is concerned, the prefix multi has been attached to hundreds of work activities and processes over the last several decades – if all things difficult, complex and challenging were to be sidelined, progress would not be made. Our task is to study the present complexities and the challenge is to try to make sense of them for the future.
Now I am not dismissing any of the foregoing issues which surround RPL. I believe they are worthy of further research and they provide key indicators of areas for professional development. But I think they ought not to distract us from some fundamental factors relating to assessment practice and philosophy.
What About the Literature?
Smith (2007) writes about some fundamental systemic roadblocks which characterise the RPL process, including complexity, cost and the need for validated paperwork – usually lots of it. Hargreaves (2006) writes about the difficulty in actually defining RPL and the confusion which exists about it. Hargreaves again informs us that the take-up rate is very low, or maybe that it is just not being counted or recorded.
Jones (2001) cites case studies where practitioners have endeavoured to simplify, clarify and pacify all stakeholders in an effort to achieve a process of some kind with which the practitioner can work - the ‘one size fits all’ concept.
However, whilst acknowledging that these issues are real, they are not new, they will probably never disappear and can, if addressed, be either managed or even overcome. I contend that RPL is becoming the scapegoat here and that there are much weightier matters to be considered and discussed about assessment per se, including RPL as one assessment strategy among many.
I would further suggest that there is a preoccupation with issues and insufficient reflection and debate about the more fundamental and underlying aspects of assessment.
Some More Fundamental Issues
Green et al (2007) “suggest that assessment is currently an educational realm without professional consensus”. Their study focuses on ethics in classroom assessment and the results of this study indicate significant division among practitioners on many aspects of assessment, including the observation that although we have guidelines for assessment practices, they are “without an overarching ethical framework that can provide support and guidance for exercising judgement in specific situations”. The example we already have of this is the lack of consensus on just what RPL is (Hargreaves, 2006). The challenge for practitioners is to examine and reflect on how this lack of consensus impacts assessment practice and influences outcomes in processes such as RPL.
Wilson’s (2004) article on classroom assessment and accountability suggests the “implementation of a community of judgement”, placing the teacher’s judgement at the centre of the process. The notion of professional judgement and its place in assessment was a recurring theme from the 2007 Colloquium. Reflection for the practitioner should focus on the nature, role and practice of professional judgement in making assessments.
Jones (2001) writes about “the need to make a judgement call” as part of an assessment process. How many of us have done just that? It is a form of risk management and does risk management have a place in assessment?
Speck (2003) writes about the conflicting roles of coach vs judge and equates this with formative and summative assessment. Speck refers to formative assessment as coaching and summative assessment as judging. He sees these two roles of coach and judge as presenting an ethical dilemma; two roles needing to be carefully balanced. The role of the teacher was a significant theme emerging from the Colloquium. How does this notion of coach vs judge fit with current assessment practice? What are practitioners currently doing about coping with accountability? What are the ethical dilemmas confronting practitioners? How are practitioners resolving role conflict in assessment?
RPL is an assessment process in reverse. The judging comes before the coaching. Jones (2001) highlights what may be missing – in the RPL process, assessors do not have the advantage ‘of the rich historical, social and ethical context in which real teachers and assessors make judgements.’ Should this idea inform debate about RPL?
What does a practitioner bring to an assessment process involving RPL? How does a practitioner cope with this apparent contextual void in RPL?
So Let’s Not Get Distracted
Experienced practitioners know that good teaching and good assessment generally lead to good learning. Teaching, learning and assessment become a continuum, which is second nature to the training practitioner, part of everyday professional routine and part of a student’s implicit expectations of his/her academic process and progress. Bearing the above challenges in mind, as Meiers (2007) states “it is timely to re-emphasise the importance of assessment as a responsive, developmental process which mostly occurs within the classroom, integrally linked into the teaching and learning cycle.”
Whilst there are significant process and procedural issues around RPL that impact on implementation, I believe we need to focus and reflect on actual practice and examine some of the assumptions behind assessment. What is the collective understanding of assessment to begin with? What are the ethics of assessment and how do they impact on RPL? How does accountability impact on assessment outcomes? What is professional judgement and its place in an RPL process? What are the roles of the practitioner in an assessment process?
A Final Challenge
If as Boud (quoted by Rust, 2007) suggests, that ‘while students can, with difficulty,
escape from the effects of poor teaching, they cannot (by definition, if they want to
graduate) escape the effects of poor assessment’, then practitioners must as part of their professional development get beyond the implementation and infrastructure issues about all forms of assessment, including RPL, and focus on the elements of assessment that build good-practice models which ‘explicitly articulate and establish a scholarship of assessment … which should be at the very heart of our scholarship of teaching and learning’ (Rust, 2007).
Bibliography
Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, TAA40104, (2005) - Participant Guide, Managing Business Communication, Pearson Education Australia
Green, S, Johnson, R, Do-Hong, K and Pope N (2007) – Ethics in classroom assessment practices: Issues and attitudes, Teaching and Teacher Education, Volume 23, Issue 7, October 2007, pp 999-1011
Hargreaves, J (2006) – Recognition of Prior Learning, NCVER, Adelaide
Jones, A (2001) – It’s a Judgment Call . . . and Consistency Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be, from Research to Reality: Putting VET Research To Work, proceedings of the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) Conference (Adelaide, March 28-30, 2001)
Meiers, M (2007) – Teacher assessment in testing times; IDIOM, Vol 38, No 1, June, 2007, pp 66-71
Rust, C (2007) – Towards a scholarship of assessment; Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Vol 32, No 2, April 2007, pp 229-237
Smith, L (2007) – Blocked paths; Campus Review, Vol 17, No 37, September 18, 2007.
Smith, P and Blake, D (2005) – Facilitating Learning through Effective Teaching, NCVER, Adelaide
Speck, B (1998) – Unveiling Some of the Mystery of Professional Judgement in Classroom Assessment; New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No 74, Summer 1998, Jossey-Bass Publishers, pp 17-31
Tovey, M and Lawlor, D (2004) – Training in Australia, Second Edition, Pearson Education Australia
Wilson, M (2004) – Assessment, accountability and the classroom: a community of judgement; Towards coherence between classroom assessment and accountability: part II, pp 1-19, Chicago III: NSSE