Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management

(Steven Felgate) #1

involved in ensuring that new entrants to the labor market are adequately trained,
continuing training is mainly the concern of the enterprise and the individual. This
section seeks to provide an overview of the theory, policy, and practice of training,
drawing out diVerent approaches associated with diVerent national contexts.
Theories of training are based on theories of learning since training eVectiveness
is measured by the extent to which the individuals concerned learn what they need
to know, can do what they need to do, and adopt the behaviors intended; i.e. the
acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Cognitive learning, related to the
understanding and use of new concepts (knowledge), may be contrasted with
behavioral learning, related to the physical ability to act (skill). Welford ( 1968 :
12 – 13 ), who deWned skill as a combination of factors resulting in ‘competent,
expert, rapid and accurate performance,’ regarded this as equally applicable to
manual operations and mental activities. Welford’s ( 1968 , 1976 ) work demonstrates
how actions are selected and coordinated at diVerent levels of skilled performance
and the conditions of practice and training that facilitate the acquisition and
transfer of skill. Fitts and colleagues (Fitts et al. 1961 ; Fitts and Posner 1967 )
developed a three-stage framework for skill acquisition involving (i) a cognitive
phase of understanding the nature of the task and how it should be performed;
(ii) an associative phase involving inputs linked more directly to appropriate
actions and reduced interference from outside demands; and Wnally (iii) an
autonomous phase when actions are ‘automatic’ requiring no conscious control.
Anderson ( 1981 , 1983 ) developed a framework for the acquisition of cognitive skill
in which the declarative and procedural phases correspond with Fitts’s cognitive
and autonomous phases. In place of an intermediary associative phase, Anderson
argued that there is a continuous process of ‘knowledge compilation’ involving the
conversion of declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. Proctor and
Dutta ( 1995 : 18 ), in what is arguably the most authoritative text on skill acquisition,
deWne skill as ‘goal-directed, well-organized behavior that is acquired through
practice and performed with economy of eVort.’
Training policies and practices are, or should be, informed by these and other
underpinning theories of learning. Training cannot be considered independently of
context, and diVerent national systems of VET reXect diVerent economic, social,
political, and cultural conditions and traditions. Various typologies of systems of
skill formation have been proposed to distinguish the diVerent families of
VET systems (Ashton et al. 2000 ;ILO 1998 ; OECD 1998 ). These variously distin-
guish the ‘schooling model’ where VET provision may be integrated within general
education or delivered through separate VET institutions, the consensual ‘dual
model’ where the emphasis is on apprenticeship, and voluntarist market led or
enterprise led models, which may be associated with high or low skills strategies.
With some simpliWcation, two key dimensions of VET systems allow an adequate
typology: thefocusof skill formation (workplace or school) and theregulationof
the VET system (state or market). Within Europe, four countries illustrate the


training, development, and competence 329
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