National qualifications frameworks: mapping the terrain and planning the journey.

Countries developing national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) would be ill-advised simply to import models from other national contexts, but could benefit from other countries' experiences. This paper elucidates principles underpinning successful practice and distils lessons learned from setbacks. Some general purposes of NQFs are identified, noting the preconditions for success they imply. Evaluative studies illustrate tensions arising when pedagogical and socio-political assumptions embedded in the very concept of an NQF are brought to bear on socio-cultural values and traditions of learning and teaching predicated on different sets of assumptions. Questions are raised about the tendency of NQFs to perpetuate the barriers to student and workforce mobility they were ostensibly intended to dismantle. Finally, the paper examines how various countries have attempted to resolve such tensions, either by adapting their model of NQF to suit local practice and/or by attempting better to align local practice with the general requirements of NQFs.