Occupational Standards and Competence-Based Qualifications for Professional Applied Psychologists in the UK

The paper outlines the development of employment-led qualifications in the UK. These qualifications have been based upon a notion of competence at work, defined in terms of standards developed using a functional approach to occupational analysis. While initial developments focused on standards development and the design of qualification at "lower levels", there has been increasing interest in extending the approach to the analysis of higher level professional, technical and managerial occupations. The paper reports the work being carried out by the British Psychological Society on the development of occupational standards for applied psychology and reports on some of the key issues emerging from this project. These include the problem of identifying and specifying the knowledge, understanding and skills required for competence at work and the relationship between the criteria for the award of qualifications and those related to entry into a profession as a practitioner.