Professional development can be divided into:
- Initial professional development – developing competence to a level appropriate for independent practice; and
- Continuing professional development – maintaining, deepening and broadening competence.
The IRSEA Graduate Diploma can be used for continuing professional development. However, continuing professional development is already well-served by:
- Publications – e.g. IRSE News
- Conferences and seminars – e.g. IRSE conventions, ASPECT, national technical meetings and local meetings.
Therefore, I suggest that the principal industry need for the IRSEA Graduate Diploma is for initial professional development.
Initial professional development typically consists of two stages:
- Stage 1 – education, resulting in a qualification
- Stage 2 – training and experience, resulting in competence.
Colloquially, ‘education’ and ‘training’ are often used interchangeably. However, these are actually distinct concepts, as contrasted in Table 2.
| Education | Training |
| Knowing (knowledge) | Doing (skills) |
| Theory | Practice |
| Understanding, reasoning, judgement and intellect | Performance, productivity and competence |
| Concepts | Tasks |
| Broad | Narrow |
Of note:
- Education is the theory
- Training is the practical application of the theory
- You need to know the theory (education) before you can apply it (training).
Where there are specialisations, it is usual for there to be multiple rounds of education, training and experience. For instance, the typical progression in medicine is shown in Table 3.
| Stage Name | Stage Type | Description |
| Medical degree | Generalist education | 4-6 years at university |
| Internship | Generalist training and experience | 1 year of working under supervision, rotating around various specialities |
| Residency | Generalist training and experience | 1-2 years of working under lesser supervision, rotating around various specialities |
| Registrarship | Specialist education, training and experience | 3-7 years of education, training and working under supervision in the speciality |
Of interest, registrarship starts with registration with the relevant medical college (professional body) for the speciality (e.g. surgery, emergency medicine, rheumatology).
After the completion of registrarship is independent practice in the speciality.
Where there are specialisations, I suggest that initial professional development consists of the following stages:
- Stage 1 – generalist education, resulting in a generalist qualification
- Stage 2A – generalist training and experience, resulting in generalist competence
- Stage 2B – specialist education, training and experience, resulting in specialist competence
Note that there are different levels of education and training. The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) levels…
…define the relative complexity and depth of achievement and the autonomy required of graduates to demonstrate that achievement. In the AQF there are 10 levels with level 1 having the lowest complexity and AQF level 10 the highest complexity.
It is important to match the education and training level with the work. Consider the following case study from [2]. A large pharmaceutical company had a quality control problem. When investigated, they found that it was caused by the lab technicians (equivalent to engineering associates). They decided to stop the lab technicians’ apprenticeship program and, instead, recruit technicians with associate’s degrees (a 2 year degree, equivalent to what the International Engineering Alliance would expect for an engineering associate) from a community college:
As management had hoped, the community college-trained lab technicians did improve quality control. These lab technicians understood the importance of precisely followed procedures and detailed documentation. Encouraged by their success, management decided to recruit people with more advanced degrees to be technicians. If an associate’s degree was good, then logically, a bachelor’s degree would be better; a master’s better still; and a doctorate would be best. Because of the company’s reputation as a good employer and the union pay scale, management was able to implement its upgrading plan. The company even recruited Ph.D.’s, mainly foreign-born scientists, into the bargaining unit. This plan proved disastrous. In Quality Control these more advanced degree-holders found their work boring, routine, and even demeaning. Once they realised that it would take at least three to five years to get a promotion, many of them expressed their intense displeasure with everyone, and many quit.
The case study also describes the pharmaceutical company removing the apprenticeship program for skilled tradesworkers and using the community college programs instead. Again a disaster.
It is important to match the education and training level with the work. Too low is a problem – e.g. the apprenticeship system for lab technicians. Too high is a problem – e.g. Ph.D.’s for lab technicians and community college for skilled tradesworkers.
In summary:
- The principal industry need for the IRSEA Graduate Diploma is for initial professional development
- Where there are specialisations, initial professional development consists of the following stages:
- Stage 1 – generalist education, resulting in a generalist qualification
- Stage 2A – generalist training and experience, resulting in generalist competence
- Stage 2B – specialist education, training and experience, resulting in specialist competence
- It is important to match the education and training level with the work.
[2] J. Keefe and D. Potosky, “Technical Dissonance: Conflicting Portraits of Technicians,” in Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in U.S. Settings, S. R. Barley and J. E. Orr, Eds., Ithaca, New York, USA: Cornell University Press, 1997, pp. 53-81.