Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to review several major issues as they
affect the design and presentation of property courses. It is argued
that university level courses differentiate themselves from technical
training programmes by equipping students with background and
depth considerably beyond what is necessary for a particular
occupational role. This type of education should equip the student
with a broad background to the nature and operation of
occupational roles and their relationship to human society.
By contrast, technical training is directly related to conveying
expertise in occupational skills. Training under this definition is
highly job related and may avoid any depth or breadth that is not
clearly related to immediate occupational requirements. The
technically trained person is immediately employable and productive,
but is incapable of responding to the challenges of change or to the
interpretation of the relationship between his or her occupation and
the polis.
Property courses need to contain both education and training. The
balance between the two is considered in the light of
phenomenological approaches to education that have gained
acceptance in recent times. These approaches can be interpreted as
taking training to an extreme, where practical competencies can be rapidly developed with negligible background understanding. The
applications and challenges of these approaches are considered with
a focus on its application to university programmes. The paper
concludes with recommendations for the design of university level
property programmes.
