Teaching and Assessment for Workforce Capacity Building

Organisations that sponsor staff for academic studies in order to build their workforce ca-pacity expect their learning experiences and outcomes to be aligned with their business. There are chal-lenges not only for facilitation of such learning, but also its assessment. Despite recent research on learning in the workplace the development of rigorous pedagogy to underpin work based learning and its assessment is still in its infancy (Brodie and Irving, 2007). This paper describes the teaching and as-sessment approaches negotiated for a cohort of worker-learners to develop their leadership capacity through a Graduate Certificate in Education (Executive Leadership) course. The course was delivered using an organisation centred curriculum framework that aligned the learning and assessment tasks to the functional roles of the learners and the strategic goals of their organisation. The framework trans-ported the learning curriculum into the realm of the workplace and its context, exemplifying the inte-gration of academic learning into the workplace.