The Vocational Quest

New Directions in Education and Training

Helen Connell, Nicholas Lowe, Malcolm Skilbeck, Kirsten Tait

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780415109154
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134838561
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Government attempts in recent years to create a national system of vocational education and training have marked a profound shift both in educational policy and in underlying concepts of what education is for. Relations between schools and the working world are changing all the time and the implementation of ideas of vocationalism has forced a blurring of the time-honoured boundaries between educations concerned with concepts and training, or with skills. The challenge now is to define how the schools can give young people the foundations for life in a working world in which they are likely to have to change jobs and where work will fill a smaller proportion of their lives. The Vocational Quest maps the evolution of vocationalism in Britain in historical terms and examines how the particular forms that have come into being in the last few years compare with developments in other parts of the world, including Continental Europe, Japan, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It argues for new forms of communication and partnership between formal education and training and the wider community, in which values will be shared and no one partner will win at the expense of others.

1
EMERGENCE OF THE NEW VOCATIONALISM

There are...two things about man’s future of which I think we can be certain. One is that things will not come out all right in the end if we merely sit by and let them happen. The other is that things will most probably turn out well for man if he conscientiously works at the task of making them do so.

(Montagu, 1961, p.27)

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, we outline the diverse and numerous factors that lie behind the emergence of new—and the reinforcement of some old—forms of vocationalism: what is meant by a vocational orientation in the education of young people, and why it has emerged. We do not, at this stage, differentiate between the settings—school, office, workshop, specialist college or whatever—since these factors are at work in all of them, and there are aspects of the responses which are common to all. Differences of course there are; they are considered in later chapters where a more detailed appraisal is made of the main theme of this chapter.

SETTING THE SCENE

For reasons that are primarily economic, the years since the early 1970s have witnessed a major resurgence of interest in the vocational role of education and training in the personal and social processes of formation which are governed by such purposes as preparation for working life and occupational choice, and the matching of human capabilities to labour market needs and opportunities. This interest is part of the close attention being given to the conditions necessary to sustain growth in the modern economy (Abramovitz, 1988). In the face of massive challenges to reorient and restructure, to achieve greater efficiency, to find new economic opportunities, and, more recently, to alleviate or forestall youth (and adult) unemployment, countries have increasingly turned to education and training as an investment in the future. This has given a strong functional or instrumental tone to a great deal of the contemporary debate about education, whose purposes and procedures have always included vocational preparation, albeit often indirectly, usually in conjunction with other values both personal and social, and seldom in sufficient degree. Changes reflecting the redefinition of the vocational factor, ways of making it a more explicit aim of education and the transformation of the nature and conditions of work are all evident; these are occurring within enterprises, both private and public, in schools and colleges and in public policy (OECD, 1989a, 1991b). Notable, too, are the so-called new growth theories which single out research and development, education and training as crucial factors in economic growth and thereby provide a stimulus to researchers and policy-makers to identify key points for intervention, including a working life orientation in schooling (Eliasson, 1987; Scott, 1989; Eliasson et al., 1990; Romer, 1990; Bishop, 1991).

Education in general has been coloured by the increased attention that has been given to its economic and its wider social utility (Skilbeck, 1990, Chapter 2). Of particular interest, however, is a distinctive movement of ideas, policies and practices which has emerged during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Known variously as the new vocationalism, preparation for working life, transition from school to work or simply as vocational or technical education and training, this movement has, in Britain and many other countries, been the source of significant and frequently controversial innovations in educational structures, content, methods and funding. A major challenge to much that is established in the education system, it has generated a growing volume of analysis and research, public policy initiatives, action in both the public and private spheres of education, training and employment—and sharp divisions among advocates and critics.

The initial focus of the new vocationalism in the 1970s and 1980s was on adolescents aged 14–18—at the point of transition from compulsory schooling to working life. Increasingly, as a response to demographic change (the ageing population) and to shorter-term employment needs, the focus is widening to include continuing education and training for mature adults including re-entrants to the workforce (OECD, 1991b). The initial stage, however, remains of great importance not least because it directly connects the all too frequently separate domains of schooling and general education with specialised vocational preparation and experience of working life. It is to this initial or transitional stage that the principal arguments of this book are addressed.

The different traditions—of general, school-based education with its roots in a culture of broad-based knowledge and understanding and of technical, vocational training with its origins in specific, employmentrelated tasks and its preparation for work through work—are converging. The diversity of interests involved, competing purposes and programmes and the pace of change in the working world, are sources of energy but also of uncertainty and confusion.

The very terminology, of ‘education’, ‘vocational’, ‘training’, ‘skill’, ‘competence’, ‘working life’ and so on, has become fluid: definitions need to be operational and provisional, relative to and clarified in the context of particular programmes and inquiries. While consistency is not easy to sustain, we shall, in this spirit, treat ‘education’ as a comprehensive term for purposive, structured human and social formation, governed by intellectual and ethical principles, directed at knowledge, understanding and their applications and informed by a spirit of critical inquiry. ‘Vocational’ refers to those educational functions and processes which purport to prepare and equip individuals and groups for working life whether or not in the form of paid employment. ‘Training’ is task specific but nevertheless, in our usage, a part of education and subject to the values, criteria and principles which govern educational processes generally, even though, as frequently used, its reference is to factual knowledge and unreflective skills. Obviously, those who control education, vocational preparation and training will in both policy and practice colour the interpretation given to these functions and processes. One of the most striking modern developments, affecting the vocational sphere as much as other aspects of education, is the emergence of new forms of control: the growth of parent power, of the influence of industry and commerce and of various partnership and collaborative procedures for decision-making. Less common until recently in school systems, the partnership principles have been long established in technical and vocational education.

As we look back on some two decades of rapid growth and change in vocational education, we can identify both the major landmarks and the tasks that must be addressed if this transformation of ideas and structures is to take effect in soundly conceived practice. Much has been achieved, as a result of immense effort during a period of change unparalleled for the scale and intensity of commitment to reform of vocational education and training. After this extended period of innovation and experimentation it is also necessary, now, that we undertake something of an educational audit. To what extent has this vocationally oriented drive contributed to our broader educational practice and values? What have we learnt about the problems in vocational education and training and how best to overcome them? Why is there a continuing sense of unease about the direction of reform, a questioning of assumptions, values and of what has been achieved? These questions have acquired a fresh significance in light of the immense changes now under way in the general secondary and higher education sectors—changes which should be informed by the experiences of reform in vocational education and training as much as they will, in turn, impact upon it.

The rationale for the national vocational drive in Britain since the 1970s is multifaceted, but its main purposes have been clear and stark: to create and consolidate a comprehensive system of vocationally oriented education and training for all young people; and to bring education and training at the mid-adolescent stage into line with perceived requirements of the work environment. In turn these purposes reflect concern—concern about the state of the economy, its competitiveness, adaptability and potential for growth, concern about the capacity, unaided, of schools, colleges and training bodies to meet these requirements as the nature of work itself undergoes substantial changes, and an overriding concern about the inadequacy of an education system which, for all the changes, remains unduly stratified and exclusive.

Education and training are, it has been proposed, to be perceived instrumentally and from a particular standpoint Notwithstanding the efforts made, the resulting achievements, and the clear and valuable corrective provided by this national vocational drive, there is still risk of a cramped vision and an inadequate understanding of the place of the vocational dimension in a wider philosophy and system of universal, lifelong education. It is in the nature of a reform which, its full potential yet to be realised, runs the risk of over-determination by its narrower rather than its broader purposes and values. In Britain, at least, this is the contention of the critics who have been quick to seize upon the values underlying major government initiatives even more than the change strategies that have been adopted (Finn, 1987; Holt, 1987; Jonathan, 1990).

Major central governmental initiatives both within and outside the formal schooling and further education sectors have been the key factors in the new vocational drive. Industry and commerce have in varying degrees cooperated and there have been a number of joint ventures, but there is no doubt about the prime mover. A considerable diversity of patterns is evident in Britain as among the other industrialised countries and the British experience both contributes to and can be better understood—and perhaps better directed—when seen in this international context. Key elements in the newer British approaches are also more clearly seen and appreciated when set against a background of national history. The new vocationalism is unintelligible unless it is situated or contextualised in this way.

VOCATIONALISM AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF EMPLOYMENT

Vocationalisation of education includes, but goes beyond, training for a job or paid employment. On the one hand, it is a dimension of education for life, for living, of which work in some form is an all but universal attribute: ‘vocationalism’ is a process or activity, the imparting and the acquisition of broadly defined skills and knowledge believed to have a discernible relationship with the capabilities needed for productive work and required or expected of workers, now and in the future. This aligns ‘vocationalism’ with a philosophy of purposive activity designed to accomplish results and render service (Dewey, 1916, Chapter XXIII). On the other hand, vocationalism is a function, whereby the education system services the workings of the economy, deriving its purpose and rationale from some assessment of economic need and requirement, such as trained manpower for the labour market (Ashton et al., 1990, Chapter 9). Both dimensions draw attention to the fundamental importance of vocational education in any society. In doing so they remind us that a critical problem for Western societies has been the persistence of dualism—a disunity rather than a unity of relationships: mind and body, head and hand, leisure and work, theoretical culture and utility, superior and inferior occupations.

From its foundation, systematic, popular or public education has always had a vocational content and function, even if it has not been recognised as such. The new vocationalism is a critical movement—radical in the sense that new foundations are being put in place and new structures erected on them. The issue is not whether education should be vocational, but what vocationalism means in contemporary terms, what could count as adequacy or quality of vocationalism, and how well the vocational orientation is balanced with other purposes and values of education.

Even though some industrialised countries seem reasonably satisfied with their provision of vocational education and its orientation, the new vocationalism as an educational force has not been an isolated trend, limited to economies in trouble or those moving into what is now frequently, if rather loosely, described as the post-industrial era. Societies throughout the world are aware of a lack of synchrony between, on the one hand, human, societal and economic needs and, on the other, the processes of production and distribution of wealth. A classic example is the unresolved environmentalist debate between conservation and exploitation of natural resources. Another is the apparent inability of many governments, in both the industrialised and developing countries, to solve the chronic problems of large-scale youth and adult unemployment. Every central government and educational planner is, to at least some degree, concerned with the matching of manpower, or, rather educated and trained people, to the drive for economic growth (Hughes, 1991). This is a drive which entails structural adjustment—that is, a restructuring, not only of jobs but also of industrial and social relations and organisation (OECD, 1991b).

Such restructuring necessitates an overview of the whole territory of vocational education and is perforce resulting in several different kinds of fusion. The number of fields of vocational and professional life has been reduced through job restructuring; professional associations and unions have amalgamated; the number of training ‘lines’ has been reduced through regrouping (Mathews, 1989a, b; Rojot and Tergeist, 1992). As work itself becomes more highly organised globally and not only locally and nationally, more dependent on research and on advanced knowledge and refined sensibilities in workers, more interactive in terms of both structures and relations, so do the domains of ‘work’ and ‘education for work’ become interactive. The corollary to the ‘vocationalising of education’ is the ‘educating of work’—its transformation into an educative culture. We are still at an early stage in this revolution, practice falling far short of what is technically and organisationally possible, let alone of advanced ideas.

Significant long-term, rather than short-term cyclical, changes in the nature and structure of jobs in industrialised countries have occurred over the last two decades. These long-term structural changes, as exemplified in the case of Britain, are acting to decrease the number of unskilled jobs available for young school-leavers, especially males, reduce full-time jobs generally, make greater use of sub-contracting, increase part-time temporary jobs, demand multiskilling of the existing labour force, and provide jobs requiring higher-level skills—that is, a more educated workforce (Ashton et al., 1990, Chapters 6 and 9). These structural changes in recent years have worked in the same direction as the cyclical downturn of the economy, exacerbating unemployment, especially among youth. Such long-term changes indicate that even the smaller youth cohorts of the next few years, allied with any significant upturn in general economic activity, will not fundamentally ameliorate employment prospects for the young unskilled.

The widespread development of global markets, especially, has changed the terms of competition in many product markets, notably those of largescale manufacturing industry. Companies with strong national bases from which they export to other national product markets are being transformed into transnational companies with the world as their market and no particular national allegiance or single base. As a consequence, production can be transferred between or cascaded across countries, weakening the link between the level of product demand in a national economy and established levels of demand for labour. This trend has led to the loss of many unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in manufacturing in Britain as in other industrialised countries. Technology and economic globalisation pose a profound challenge to established national practices in allocating and organising work (OECD, 1992i, 1994).

In parts of the service sector in Britain, particularly in the distribution, hotel and catering areas, increasing industrial concentration has occurred, with the consequent larger national and international companies adopting different systems of labour management and utilisation from those of the older family firms displaced in the process. A drop in full-time and increase in temporary part-time jobs (especially for mature women rather than youth) has been quite marked in this sector in Britain. Employers have sought recruits with good interpersonal skills, as quality of client contact has become of key competitive concern.

In commerce the introduction of information technology, and in manufacturing information technology and advances in machine design to produce computer numerically controlled (CNC) machines, robots and flexible manufacturing systems, have worked to enable a smaller number of more highly skilled individuals to achieve a given output. From its retrospective review of member country labour markets in the 1980s, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) drew one basic conclusion: ‘that more training and retraining will be required’ (OECD, 1991a, p.59). The issue is, however, not only a quantitative one, important as that is for an under-educated country like Britain, but one of form, content, relevance and quality.

VOCATIONALISM: A WORLDWIDE TREND

A broadly defined vocationalisation has been a common thread which runs across the education and, increasingly, the employment policies of every country, whatever its level of development, political system or geographical location. In the post-war era, it has been advanced under many shapes and forms depending on the ideology and economic system of each country, through such concepts as unity and diversity in the curriculum, career guidance and education, polytechnic and polyvalent education, work experience, multiskilling and pre-vocational and further education and training. Since the early 1970s there has been a powerful impetus as well in most, if not all, OECD countries towards vocationalisation of the curricula of basic and post-compulsory schooling and towards a multiplication of vocational training measures designed to bridge perceived gaps between educational provision and social and economic needs (OECD, 1985b; Levin and Rumberger, 1989; Papadopoulos, 1991).

Such developments are not confined to the major industrialised economies. Many less industrialised countries have long been concerned with enlarging and updating the vocational dimension of the education systems they inherited from the colonial past (Coombe, 1988). Strenuous efforts continue to be made to orient primary and secondary education towards meeting the perceived needs of adult working life and to adapt them to local and national development requirements, both economic and social, nowadays usually under the rubric of ‘human capital formation’ or ‘human resource development policies’ (Rawkins, 1993). At higher levels, the aim has been functional education within the framework of established development plans, again with the goal of raising the competence of the citizenry to the highest possible levels (Foster, 1965; Lauglo, 1983; King, 1984; World Bank, 1991). Surveys and consultation meetings carried out under the auspices of the Commonwealth Secretariat, and under the Commonwealth of Learning, which has been established to foster and strengthen international collaboration in distance education among the 40 plus members of the Commonwealth of Nations, confirm the very strong interest in reshaping the education of the 14–16-plus age group to bring it into line with national development needs (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1987). Unesco, too, has sought to give a fresh impetus to its long-standing involvement in technical and vocational education by launching a project for the creation of an International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education (Unesco, 1991, 1992). The language of ‘enterprise culture’ and the competence required of effective workers in such a culture has, too, emerged in the Asia-Pacific region of Unesco (Unesco, 1990).

In the era of planned economies of the former COMECON countries, a commitment to the principle that labour is the fundamental source of human value was part of the declared ideology. The human capital theory in some form or other has indeed long had widespread support across political and ideological boundaries: Adam Smith and Karl Marx had much in common. The theme of education and training for productive work has for long played a significant part in the Central European countries as it has in other parts of the world (ILO, 1979; Ailes and Rushing, 1980; Lauglo and Lillis, 1988; O’Dell, 1988). How far this will remain a focus following the recent and continuing political changes in these countries remains to be seen. Given the necessity and the widely declared aim of restructuring their economies, it is to be expected that the development of education and training in these countries will retain a very strong vocational flavour, albeit on somewhat different ideological premises.

The new vocationalism in several of the Western industrialised countries belonging to the OECD may be said to be rapidly following a direction which some other countries, from a variety of value positions, began to pursue many years earlier. Put in simpler terms, this may be expressed as a recognition of the fundamental importance in educational provision during the compulsory years of schooling of an explicit element of ‘preparation for working life’ and of the necessity for all youth, beyond the compulsory years, to have the opportunity of systematic training and of continuing general education.

It is important to realise that we are not witnessing an isolated phenomenon, one...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FOREWORD
• SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
• 1: EMERGENCE OF THE NEW VOCATIONALISM
• 2: EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONS FOR WORKING LIFE
• 3: THE CORE LEARNINGS CHALLENGE
• 4: THE ‘SCHOOLING’ AND ‘WORKING LIFE’ MODELS
• 5: NATIONAL MOVES TOWARDS A NEW VOCATIONALISM IN ENGLAND AND WALES
• 6: HISTORICAL ROOTS ORIGINS OF VOCATIONALISM IN ENGLAND AND WALES
• 7: NEW SCHEMES FOR TRAINING BRITISH YOUTH
• 8: VOCATIONAL INITIATIVES FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES: ENTERPRISE AND PARTNERSHIP CULTURE
• 9: EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR ALL YOUTH
• BIBLIOGRAPHY