Competence is a term which is making its entrance in the university. How might it be understood at this level? The Limits of Competence takes an uncompromising line, providing a sustained critique of the notion of competence as wholly inadequate for higher education.
Currently, we are seeing the displacement of one limited version of competence by another even more limited interpretation. In the older definition - one of academic competence - notions of disciplines, objectivity and truth have been central. In the new version, competence is given an operational twist and is marked out by know-how, competence and skills. In this operationalism, the key question is not 'What do students understand?' but 'What can students do?'
The book develops an alternative view, suggesting that, for our universities, a third and heretical conception of human being is worth considering. Our curricula might, instead, offer an education for life.
- ISBN13 9780335193417
- Publish Date 16 October 1994 (first published 1 October 1994)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 29 September 2006
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Open University Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 224
- Language English