NN37, May 2006
Special Theme on Education and Training out of Poverty? A Status Report
BECOMING SKILLED: EDUCATION FOR LIVELIHOOD OR LIVELIHOOD FOR EDUCATION? A CASE STUDY FROM WEST AFRICA
By John Pryor and Mariko Shiohata, University of Sussex
The African city at the beginning of the twenty-first century is blighted by unemployment and underemployment. Many people, especially those who have had little access to formal education, struggle to make a living through manual labouring or trading activities. However, if they can acquire marketable vocational skills, their life chances are improved and a sustainable livelihood becomes possible which may eventually lead to some measure of prosperity. At policy level, it is often assumed that the route to skilled employment is through education for livelihood, a progression through basic education, either formal or non-formal, to some form of vocational training. This training will build both on basic skills of literacy and numeracy and on an orientation to learning already developed. However, for many young people this route is not relevant. Net enrolment rates in even the more successful African education systems are well below 100%; so many young people have had very little formal schooling and access to non-formal education is limited. Nevertheless, because of family support or serendipitous opportunity, the chance to learn a trade does sometimes arise for young people, irrespective of their basic educational skills. This summary reports on research into the kind of learning that is possible in such circumstances. Using a case study approach it compares and contrasts the learning of trainee tailors in two settings, both located in the Guediawaye a suburb of Dakar, Senegal. The first is a workshop in Medina Gounasse, a disadvantaged area where five apprentice tailors work alongside the owner and more experienced workers. All were deemed illiterate by their employer and were appointed on that basis. Only one of them had had experience of state schooling though others had received some Koranic instruction. The other setting is a Women's Training Centre, a private enterprise owned and partly subsidised by a Senegalese Italian, and located in Sahm Notaire, a more prosperous part of Guediawaye. Here the practices of the teachers and twelve trainees were researched. The particular research questions addressed by this paper are:What is the relationship between the formal skills of literacy and numeracy and the practical skills involved in learning a trade? and,
What constitutes successful learning in these vocational contexts?
The data set was produced in 2004 and consists of unstructured observation, notes and photographs from practical activities designed for the research and semi structured interviews conducted through an interpreter. The research interprets and makes sense of the data through reference to social theories of learning. Notions of situated cognition derived from Lave and Wenger (1991) are contextualised through reference to Freire's (1995) notion of praxis and further theorized through attention to the salience of social identity in learning. This research indicates that, even without reading and writing skills, it is possible to acquire professional techniques. Furthermore, the case studies suggest that, particularly within the apprenticeship approach, trainees were seen to be learning conventional literacy skills even though these were not explicitly being taught or even seen as a goal by the teachers. What appeared significant was that when they could be accommodated within their construction of their own present and future identity, opportunities for learning were seized upon by trainees. Nevertheless, gains seemed to be limited to areas directly addressed in their work with no clear carry-over or transfer to other areas. The paper has important implications for vocational training practitioners and policy makers, especially for those who are working in contexts where trainees have received very limited formal education and which aim at inculcating basic literacy and numeracy as well as more specific practical skills. It suggests that in such circumstances rather than looking for education for livelihood it might be better to seek livelihood for education or more accurately to ground the learning basic literacy skills more solidly in a specific vocational context. By raising the profile of reading, writing and calculation, whilst continuing to emphasize the primacy of vocational skills for accomplishing specific productive tasks, it might be possible to help those struggling for a livelihood to acquire the kind of flexible skills that are at a premium in the increasingly unpredictable world of the early twenty-first century.
Freire, P. (1995) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press.