LIBERAL VOCATIONALISM AS NEW VOCATIONALISM: MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF THE 21 ST CENTURY GLOBALISATION THROUGH CURRICULUM CHANGE IN VET (original) (raw)
Related papers
This contribution to the symposium on Michael Young’s article ‘Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge based approach’, supports his contention that curriculum theory has lost sight of its object – ‘what is taught and learned in schools’, and argues that this has particularly deleterious consequences for vocational education and training (VET). VET is unproblematically positioned as applied, experiential and work-focused learning and it is seen as a solution for those who are alienated from or unsuccessful in more traditional forms of academic education. This paper argues that rather than being a mechanism for social inclusion, VET is instead a key way in which social inequality is mediated and reproduced because it excludes students from accessing the theoretical knowledge they need to participate in debates and controversies in society and in their occupational field of practice. It presents a social realist analysis to argue why VET students need access to theoretical knowledge, how a focus on experiential and applied learning constitutes a mechanism for social exclusion, and what a ‘knowledge rich’ VET curriculum would look like.
Knowledge and Skills: A Critical View
The paper puts forward a critical view on knowledge and education in the present techno-economic culture. This culture stresses the importance of knowledge and education, but it promotes only the instrumental knowledge that the present techno-economy directly needs. Such practice displaces other dimensions of the human knowledge and cognitive abilities, which are needed for the progress of people and humanity. Business forces are raising the means to the level of the end, and shape education in the way that serves business aim, rather than the promotion of knowledge. Information technology has brought many excellent means and services to education , but it should not be used in the way that reduces people to automatons that perform prescribed procedures, without understanding or asking anything beyond that.
Three Different Conceptions of Know-How and their Relevance to Professional and Vocational Education
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2013
This article discusses three related aspects of know-how: skill, transversal abilities and project management abilities, which are often not distinguished within either the educational or the philosophical literature. Skill or the ability to perform tasks is distinguished from possession of technique which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for possession of a skill. The exercise of skill, contrary to much opinion, usually involves character aspects of agency. Skills usually have a social dimension and are subject to normative appraisal.
Knowledge is known as the information which a person has. Person can get knowledge by getting education and from other resources. It is not necessary that if a person has knowledge he may also practically implement, knowledge is of two aspects practical and theoretical. For example many people have the degree of engineering but even then majority of them can not invent anything by practically implementing their knowledge.
Knowledge: Understanding, Structuring and Employing
BJSTR
Scientific Knowledge (and epistemology, which deals with the way of cooking it, in a sense, often almost literal, with a perspective of “recipes” of the “old” cook books, with x grams of this and y grams of that - what in epistemology is serious, both for the functions it must perform, or for the reasons we list below on “routines and innovation”) is like a... potato – we can fry it, bake it, grill it, ....Which does not mean, in any way, that we can use it in anyway. We have to consider the “dishes” in which it will be integrated, the taste of those who will eat it, the effects that result, the resulting cost / satisfaction ratio, the usefulness it will have, the risks it can bring, the benefits it offers, etc. This is either in the case of potatoes and in the case of scientific knowledge, of course. Today, both in science and in the kitchen, we must be able to distinguish between two completely different options, in their dynamics, in their consequences, in their causes, in the short, medium and long term.
Education in the Knowledge Society: Genesis of Concept and Reality
The aim of the article is to define the content of theoretical ideas about education in the knowledge society in terms of the birth of its social reality. It is shown that the genesis of the concept of education in the knowledge society goes back to the period of 1950-1960s and is due to the emergence of new qualities of an industrial worker that the knowledge worker inherits. In 1957 P. Drucker (1957) formulates an idea of advanced training and in 1968 the principle of continuing education to train the knowledge worker. Their relation to the concept of distributed education by P. Drucker is revealed. It is stated that the key institutions of the knowledge society are university and school established on the principles of research training and related scientific and cognitive continuity. The concept of dynamic competence is defined; the relationship of creative learning with the reality of the knowledge society is shown. The analysis of fundamental contradictions of education in the knowledge society is given.
2004
In the past decades, cognitive research has resulted in a vast amount of empirical findings on the nature, organization and development of students' knowledge. This new understanding allows scientifically based curriculum development, which is not the case in many educational systems yet. This paper argues for a more sophisticated and differentiated conception of knowledge for educational design and evaluation. It identifies the organizing principles, which create durable and working cognitive systems out of the distinct elements like facts, figures and skills. Three different types of knowledge organization are discussed and compared: expertise, determined by the values of a profession or discipline; literacy, the broadly applicable and socially valuable knowledge; and competence, that is still a vague, but on the long run a promising conception for education.
Transfer of Knowledge between Education and Workplace Settings
The first half of this chapter analyses the different knowledge cultures of higher education and the workplace, contrasting the kinds of knowledge that are valued and the manner in which they are acquired and used. In particular, performance in the workplace typically involves the integration of several different forms of knowledge and skill, under conditions that allow little time for the analytic / deliberative approach favoured in higher education. One consequence is greater reliance on tacit knowledge, including knowledge of how more formal, explicit knowledge is used in various practice settings. The second half focuses on transfer as a learning process, which requires both understanding and positive commitment from individual learners, formal education, employers and local workplace managers. Transfer is conceptualised in terms of five stages, whose distinctive characteristics and learning challenges are discussed in some detail. The neglect of transfer is attributed both to the cultural gap between formal education and the workplace and profound ignorance of the nature and amount of the learning involved.