Re: [Fsfe-uk] qualifications

[Chris Croughton]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 10:32:55AM +0100, Ian Lynch wrote:

> On Sat, 2008-04-19 at 11:07 +0200, Davi Leal wrote:
> > Alex Hudson wrote:
> > > > I think learning ought to be driven directly by a person's needs, and
> > > > that learning cannot be benchmarked :-)
> > 
> > > Personally I don't believe there are many things you can't measure, and
> > > learning certainly isn't one of them.
> > 
> > Certifications are hard to define and maintain. Say for example the 
> > academic-qualification certifications.

That's certainly true.  Is it at all important (except to HR morons)
what class degree or grade A-levels I got 30+ years ago?  Nothing I did
in my degree is at all relevant to the work I'm doing now.

> You are all being too logical :-). Human beings like recognition. Read
> Maslow, Herzberg et al. Why do boy scouts get badges? We give
> certificates to our assessors - they aren't accredited and we don't
> really need them but a lot ask about their certificate at the end of the
> training. Even if you banned certification from schools it would spring
> up somewhere else because a big driver is not quality assurance for
> employers but recognition, status and progress measures for individuals.
> Try teaching a non-exam class with no certification in KS4. Motivation
> can come from the nature of the work for some people who probably then
> can't see why anyone needs a certificate at the end, that inherent
> motivation is not there in everyone or even a majority once you start
> telling people what is good for them :-).

That is a totally different ballpark.  Yes, people like rewards, and
shiny medals they can use in their peer group for a while, and it can
motivate them to do the course.  But how many people put on their CV
what Boy Scout badges they got?  How many people even remember what Boy
Scout badges they got?  The certificates you're talking about now are
personal confirmations that they did the work and achieved a standard,
that sort of certificate doesn't have to have any external backing or
relevance outside the context of that course.

> In the free software world attribution is similar. Why does RMS want
> people to refer to GNU/Linux? To recognise the work of GNU. That is not
> much different to certificating GNU in recognition of its contribution
> to GNU/Linux.

Yes, it is.  Calling something GNU+Linux is a long way from having the
IEEE certifying it as a recognised platform for the industry.  POSIX,
for instance, has that certification, and there it means something
because it is certified as a standard that everyone who calls their
system "POSIX compliant" can depend on.  SAying that a system is
"GNU+Linux" means very little, you can have a GNU+Linux system with most
of the utilities missing, the configuration in strange places, and
looking totally unfamiliar.

Of course, that's yet another digression from the type of certificaion
being talked about before...

> Of course in the UK you can say we have gone over-board and the
> regulations that have sprung up around certification negate the quality
> of learning eg assessment by inappropriate end testing or on computers
> because it might be cheaper. Valid testing is a big issue in my view
> because we tend to set tests that are cheap and appear accurate not
> tests that necessarily validate the intended learning and support the
> quality of learning. But this is detail related to reforming the system
> rather than scrapping it entirely.

Not necessarily.  There comes a point where the best thing to do is to
scrap everything and redo it from the start properly.  Whether the
education system has reached that point is a matter of debate.

Chris C