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Quality in Work-Based Studies Is Not Lost, Merely Undiscovered

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Part of the book series: Professional and Practice-based Learning ((PPBL,volume 4))

Abstract

My starting point is a wish to provide a quality experience that facilitates students’ mastery of the skills they, employers and educationalists desire. An essential part of confirming the quality potentially afforded by the world of learning is clarity of definition. I argue that central measurement and control of quality is neither effective nor necessary. As Harvey (2005) reveals in his history and critique of quality evaluation in higher education, the moves towards standards, benchmarking, codes of practices and qualification frameworks may have distanced us from, rather than returned us to, “an integrated process of mutual trust that prioritizes improvement in learning” (2005, p. 274). According to Harvey, current quality assurance processes point to a future for learning, which is “not a real engagement with learning, but the advent of more complex evaluation procedures: in that setting it is unlikely that the quality in student experience will improve” (2005, p. 274). This rush for transparency has meant that the prize, the “what-for” of quality, has been lost to its own image.

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Everydayness take Dasein as something ready-to-hand to be concerned with—that is, something that gets managed and reckoned with. “Life” is a “business,” whether or not it covers its costs.

(Heidegger, Being and Time, 1962, p. 336)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Taken as defined as a commandment, instruction, or order intended as an authoritative rule of action; a command respecting moral conduct; an injunction; a rule.”

  2. 2.

    As a development of this chapter, I would explore Dreyfus’ six modes of action, from novice to phronimos—wise practitioner. In this model, codes are required at the early stages of learning, but are disregarded as the user first masters, then transcends these rules.

  3. 3.

    For the purpose of this chapter it is not necessary, I believe, to detail the appearance of these concepts in Heidegger’s work, although they can all be found in his book, Being and Time (1962).

  4. 4.

    See Bonnett (2003, §11).

  5. 5.

    In what follows, the pronouns “we” and “I” refer equally to both individuals and institutions.

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Gibbs, P. (2011). Quality in Work-Based Studies Is Not Lost, Merely Undiscovered. In: Heidegger’s Contribution to the Understanding of Work-Based Studies. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3933-0_8

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