NN38, February 2007
Technical and Vocational Skills Development
POLICY LEARNING FOR SUSTAINABLE VET REFORM
By Peter Grootings, European Training Foundation, Turin
KeywordsOwnership, Policy learning, VET reform, Country context, Transition countries
Summary
Many development agencies and their staff rely on traditional approaches to learning. They think and act as classical school teachers who have the right knowledge and know best what has to be done. New ? constructivist - learning theories, instead, argue that learners are more successful in acquiring, digesting, applying and retrieving new knowledge when they have been actively engaged in these processes. Facilitating active policy learning rather than policy transfer may therefore have better chances to contribute to sustainable reformed systems.
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Taking ownership and context relevance seriously
Multilateral and bilateral donor agencies increasingly issue declarations about the need to contextualise knowledge and secure ownership of development policies by involving local policymakers and other stakeholders in policy formulation and implementation. Yet, policy transfer through imposing or copying (selective knowledge about) policies and models taken from other contexts still dominates the day-to-day operational practices of the donor community. Knowledge as provided by the donors continues to be considered the only relevant kind of knowledge (King 1993 and 2005; King & McGrath 2004; Ellerman 2005).
Accordingly, development or reform are normally seen as a process of social engineering that will be successful if properly managed technically and with the right implementation capacities. In reality, as we know, most reform projects are short-lived because they do not fit in context and there is no local ownership. Reforms hardly ever develop the way they were planned and are usually not sustainable. On the contrary, they tend to come and go with the donors and their agencies.
One reason for the gap between declaration and actual behaviour is a particular understanding, often only implicit, of why and how people learn and develop new knowledge and expertise (Hager 2004). Many development agencies and their staff rely on traditional approaches to learning. They think and act as classical school teachers who have the right knowledge and know best what has to be done. Their knowledge just needs to be transferred to partners who don?t have this knowledge yet and they should implement measures that are presented to them as best practice. Local policymakers and local stakeholders are regarded as passive knowledge and instruction receivers who do not possess enough relevant prior knowledge and experience. They are in the true behaviourist tradition treated like students in old-fashioned - vocational ? schools, carrots and sticks included.
New ? constructivist - learning theories, instead, argue that learners are more successful in acquiring, digesting, applying and retrieving new knowledge when they have been actively engaged in these processes (Simons, van der Linden & Duffy 2000). Facilitating active policy learning rather than policy transfer may therefore have better chances to contribute to sustainable reformed systems.
Facilitating policy learning
There are many similarities between the current international discussions about new learning, the new professionalisation of teachers and our own view about the role of international policy advisers. Educationalists are discussing the need for teachers and trainers to shift from being transmitters of expert knowledge and skills to students - who are largely considered to be passive receivers of information - towards becoming facilitators of learning processes of persons who want to become competent themselves. Much of the new learning debate is about how to develop abilities to cope with situations of uncertainty instead of applying standardised rules and procedures. If ?ownership? is about national stakeholders having ? and being willing ? to learn new policies then international advisers should take proper notice of these discussions. After all, the new learning paradigm is firmly based on new insights about how people learn and about how more experienced ?experts? can help them to become competent (Schön 1983).
A policy-learning approach may therefore also be the appropriate response to some of the key challenges related to the VET reform process in transition countries. Policymakers and other key stakeholders should be enabled to learn to develop and implement their own policies. But in practice there are considerable obstacles for facilitating policy learning. These stem mainly from the many tensions between ?what? and ?how? in the relationship between experts and novices. Several of these obstacles are known from the search for operational approaches to make active learning work in classical education settings. However, others are particular to the field of reform policy development.
Understanding of context-boundness or institutional fit is not easy and it is a challenge that both local policymakers and international advisers share. While donors usually do not have a good understanding of local context (often they even do not speak the language), it can also not simply be assumed that local policymakers understand the characteristics and challenges of their own VET system. It is difficult to question what has always been normal and the rule. Often, local knowledge production is not well developed or ? as is the case in transition countries -impoverished.
Moreover, international consultants do not always understand that the advice they provide is perhaps firmly rooted in the institutional context that they come from themselves and they are often not well informed about policies and systems from other countries. How can local policymakers assess the fitness of what is sold to them as the latest international trend? How can international advisers properly assess prior knowledge and develop contextualisation of new knowledge? Policymakers are also under stress to come up quickly with solutions. Their political mandate does not leave them much time. Advisers are bound by the financial and time resources that the donors have reserved for their projects.
Also the ownership issue raises problems when this is restricted to a few cooperative national policymakers and ? simply because of the design of the donor project ? leaves out the vast majority of teachers and trainers in schools. We know very well that national education reforms cannot be completely developed at the central level, given the diversity of local conditions and the specific knowledge that can only be developed locally. There is a vast reform space that can only be filled by stakeholders at the community and school level. Policy learning needs to take place at all levels of the system. But who needs to learn what?
The basic assumption underlying the concept of policy learning is not so much that policies can be learned but that actual policies are always learned policies. Learning is not simply the transfer of expert knowledge or behaviour from one person to another but rather the acquisition of understanding and competence through participation in learning processes. Moreover, as mentioned before, policymakers are not only policy learners. They also have to act, and acting on the political scene, especially in environments that are undergoing radical change such as in transition countries, does not always leave a lot of space and time for careful and gradual learning.
On the other hand, policymakers engaged in systemic reforms are in need of new knowledge which very often contradicts established knowledge and routines. For policymakers, therefore, because they are under pressure to act, learning is more than merely a cognitive process: learning is practice. Their learning is situated learning as it is an integral and inseparable aspect of their social practice. How can the policy making process be organised as a policy learning process?
Policymakers in transition countries can be regarded as highly motivated novice learners and policy learning can be facilitated by letting them participate in relevant communities of practice. Such communities of practice could be created by bringing together policymakers from different countries that have gone through or are undergoing reforms of their education systems. International and local policy analysts, researchers, advisers and other practitioners could be part of such communities as well.
However, policymakers in transition countries may be seen as ?novices? in terms of knowledge and expertise concerning the development of modern educational systems in market economies but they are also ?experts? as far as their own country context is concerned. Similarly, international policy advisers may perhaps be the ?experts? with respect to educational policymaking in developed economies but they are often ?novices? in terms of knowledge about the particular context of the partner country. Neither local stakeholders nor international advisers really exactly know what ?fits? with regard to modern education policy in a partner country?s context.
The community of practice concept therefore needs to be further developed to properly take into account these differences in learning experience and high levels of uncertainty. Since old and new knowledge relate to different contexts there are different peripheries and centres and even those who are closer to the centre remain learners themselves.
Policy learning through knowledge sharing
Reforming education and training systems in transition countries implies combining old and new knowledge in changing contexts for both local stakeholders and international advisers. Policy learning is not just about learning the policies that other countries have developed but rather about learning which policies can be developed locally by reflecting on the relevance of other countries? policies for the situation at home. Policy learning in this sense can only happen when there is information and knowledge available and shared. The principal role of donors therefore would be to enable a reform policy learning process by providing access to such information and experience and by facilitating a critical reflection on their relevance. However, donors and their staff cannot do their learning facilitation role well if they don?t recognise that they themselves are also learners in the same policy learning process.
VET reform policy development seen as VET policy learning would have to use knowledge sharing to enable decision makers from partner countries to learn from ? and not simply about ? VET reform experiences from elsewhere for the formulation and the implementation of their own reform objectives. Knowledge sharing would also enable donors and international advisers to better understand the institutional context and history of the partner country. For them, in becoming familiar with local knowledge it will also be easier to appreciate and value the expertise that partners bring into the reform process.
Thus, international donors and their policy advisers would have to take a role similar to the one a modern teacher is supposed to play: not that of the expert who knows it all and simply passes on existing knowledge but the one that recognises problems, does not know the solutions yet, organises and guides knowledge sharing and in so doing develops new knowledge for all involved in the learning process. Policy learning therefore can only happen in partnership.
Policy learning is sharing experience from the past to develop knowledge for the future. It is also about sharing knowledge from abroad and knowledge that is locally produced. It is therefore about developing new knowledge. Policy learning contributes not only to creating more coherent system-wide reforms that fit but also facilitates system-deep reforms of VET systems as it enables all stakeholders to learn new roles and develop new working routines. It will be a challenging task to develop concrete approaches that can make policy learning which is based on principles of active learning theory work in practice
Further research and practice should reflect the new paradigm of socially organised learning processes. The setting up of research projects run by external education/VET scientists will not in itself be of sufficient help in the dynamic processes of transition if based on a linear thinking about theory and practice. Participative and action-based research will need to receive more attention.
Obviously, even if policy learning takes place, this will not guarantee that new learning will lead to new policies and political action. Policy learning by policymakers is a necessary part of the policy process but by far not sufficient on its own to produce policy changes. Other, collective and institutional factors are also at stake. Policy change remains after all a political process. However there will not be any policy change, unless those who are in a position to take and realise policy decisions themselves are convinced that a particular policy issue is important and are broadly familiar with policy measures that can be taken to address them.
References
Ellerman, D. (2005) Helping People Help Themselves. From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press
Grootings, P. (Ed.) (2004) Learning Matters. ETF Yearbook 2004. Turin: ETF
Grootings, P. and Nielsen, S. (Eds.) (2005) The role of teachers in VET reforms: professionals and stakeholders. ETF Yearbook 2005, Turin: ETF
Grootings, P. and Nielsen, S. (Eds.) (2006) Skills development and poverty reduction in transition countries. ETF Yearbook 2006, Turin: ETF
Hager, P. (2004 ) ?The Competence Affair, or Why Vocational Education and Training Urgently Needs a New Understanding of Learning?, Journal of Vocational Education and Training. Volume 56, Number 3, pp 409-434
King, K. (1993) Aid and Education in the Developing World: Role of Donor Agencies in the Analysis of Education. Longman.
King, K. (2005) Development Knowledge and the Global Policy Agenda. Whose Knowledge? Whose Policy? Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh
King, K. and McGrath, S. (2004) Knowledge for Development? Comparing British, Japanese, Swedish and World Bank Aid. London: Zed Books
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books
Simons, Robert-Jan, van der Linden, Jos & Duffy, Tom (Eds.) (2000) New Learning, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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