The discursive construction of the ‘competent’ learner-worker: from key competencies to ‘employability skills’1

Abstract

The subjectivity of workers, articulated in terms of the personal attributes required in ongoing conditions of economic change, has been at the forefront of current discussions of generic skills in Australia. This article explores the discursive construction and reconstruction of the ‘competent’ learner-worker from its initial elaboration in the Mayer Committee's 1992 report on Key Competencies to its re-specification in contemporary reports concerned with developing a new framework of ‘employability skills’. I argue that various theories of subjectivity necessarily (if implicitly) mobilized in any consideration of the personal attributes of learner-workers generate confusion around their learnability. I suggest that a nature/nurture dichotomy haunts past and present discussions about the personal attributes of learner-workers and that this will likely create stumbling blocks as policy makers and educators attempt to codify personal attributes for the purposes of including them in training programs. Apart from its conceptual problematics and incongruities, the whole project of specifying the desired personal attributes of learner-workers and making these available for assessment against competency standards is necessarily a normalizing exercise. As such, the project will be subject to refusal, resistance, contestation, or appropriation in various ways by educators, trainers and worker-learners alike.