Quality-in-doing: Competence and occupation

Abstract

This paper explores the connection between occupation and competence, or "quality-in-doing," through an exploration of competence across a number of disciplines and theorists. John Dewey's concepts of functional coordination, habit, and imagination, Lev Vygotsky's views on cultural-historical development, intermentality, and fossilization, and Pierre Bourdieu's ideas on habitus, field, and capital are presented as part of an argument for a more robust theoretical underpinning of the basic sociocultural features, development, and consequences of competence as an undeniable function of occupation from a transactional perspective. I contend that competence creates essential space for describing skillfulness and effectiveness in doing, being and becoming (Wilcock, 1998) and mends dichotomies between social/individual, internal/external, and action/condition which are central to a transactional understanding of occupation (Dickie, Cutchin, & Humphry, 2006). Competence is deserving of clear articulation and attention because it illuminates how the ongoing reflexivity between knowing how to act and knowing why to act (Beckett, 2004) impacts perceptions of how well we act, which are essential features in determining if, when, and to what degree a client has responded to intervention, a student has responded to instruction, or a practitioner has responded to job requirements. © 2013 The Journal of Occupational Science Incorporated.