Capability

The graduate profile is at the centre of learning design. From the graduate profile we see a cascade through learning objectives, courses, and assessments to create the whole learning experience.

Defining the graduate profile is particularly crucial for the Bachelor of Leadership for Change because we don't have the specific discipline (such as Engineering or Information Technology) to fall back on. Indeed, the Bachelor of Leadership for Change programme is designed to support learners towards careers in fields or vocations that might not yet exist. In a review of practice and learning Reich and Hager (2013) pointed out that “practices are emergent, in the sense that the ways that they change and evolve are not fully specifiable in advance”.

For these reasons, as well as all the usual employability skills, graduates will also have to be equipped with special skills - those associated with managing their own career (Carpenter 2013) and with developing their own emergent professional frameworks of practice.

Capability

For the Bachelor of Leadership for Change we are using a competency - capability framework:

● Competency: what the graduates can do;

● Capability: how they use those skills when the going gets tough (or unexpected opportunities arise); and

● Meta-capability: Knowing what competencies and capabilities are important for each learner's emergent professional framework of practice.

This framework is based on Geoff Scott’s Capability framework (http://flipcurric.edu.au/, Appendix 14.23) and extends it slightly to include a meta-capability of framework/practice capability.

The crux of the degree is that learners define their own framework of practice which should align with/exceed that of the qualification itself. So, they might define themselves as a "thought leader in values-based marketing”. The longer articulation of this framework would include, for example, a consideration of what code of ethics apply (or creating/hybridising one) expected professional behaviour and so on which is then the basis for the competencies of knowing that code of ethics (etc) and using it in difficult situations. So, rather than this being done in qualification development by experts, the learners themselves are doing it (on the basis of the curated experiences). The articulation of that framework is, then a meta-capability. (An alternative conceptual model – but to same effect - is that it sits outside as a framework – the blue box in the image).

The Meta-Capability, then is a bit more complex. It includes the capabilities to articulate, test and productively use the capability and competency framework to make sense of and assess the impact of their emergent professional framework. What this means is the ability to understand how all the competencies and capabilities mix to define each learner's own professional framework.

This meta-capability will form the basis for each learner's negotiated learning agreement (their "exit strategy") from which form the basis of regular reviews and from which their personal learning plan will be derived.