NN46, September 2011
Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark
Skills for Development? Rethinking the Kind of Development we Want TVET to Support
By Simon McGrath, University of Nottingham
Email: Simon.Mcgrath@nottingham.ac.uk
Keywords: TVET, development theory, human development.
Summary: TVET is based on an outmoded version of development and the current interest in its reform needs to be tied to a consideration of how it may be enriched by a consideration of new accounts of development that are more human-centred.
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2012 could be labelled the “International Year of TVET”. UNESCO is launching two major reports on TVET- the latest Global Monitoring Report and a report on the state of TVET – with the latter being also the major input into the Third International Congress on TVET to be held in Shanghai in May. Multilateral, regional and national TVET strategies are also being developed by a range of other organisations.
For those of us, including many NORRAG members, who have critiqued the absence of skills from the Education for All agenda over the past 20 years, the renewed interest in TVET may be welcome. However, it is vital that these major opportunities to revisit TVET lead to a serious dialogue about the role that TVET can play in development. Crucially, this requires detailed consideration of what model of development TVET should be seeking to help deliver.
TVET currently sits firmly within the economic development paradigm. Even where it increasingly addresses poverty and equity, it tends to do so with a modernisation perspective – seen especially in drives to formalise the informal economy – that would not have looked out of place in the 1960s. Anderson (2009) argues that TVET is based on two strong assumptions:
- -training leads to productivity, leads to growth (training for growth)
- -skills lead to employability, lead to jobs (skills for work).
When it comes to TVET reform, moreover, there is an international tool kit (including national qualifications frameworks, quality assurance regimes, institutional autonomy, national governance structures) that draws heavily on Neoliberal assumptions and takes a new public management approach to public TVET reform.
I do not want to argue that the economic rationale for TVET is not important, but our global visions for development have moved on to be far broader, and it is important to ask whether TVET can be more than is allowed for in this narrow economic development approach (EDA).
2010 was both the twentieth anniversary of Jomtien and of the launch of the Human Development Report series. The past 20 years have seen the rise of a range of developmental approaches that seek to place humanity at the centre of thinking about development. Space does not allow for an exploration of the complexities of these approaches; so I will simply provide a very brief sketch of four strands in order to ask what they might imply for TVET:
- -human rights
- -human development and capabilities
- -human security
- -human flourishing.
The human rights based approach (HRBA) to development has largely been pioneered by lawyers and activists and focuses on idealised and universal notions of what people should have access to. In education, valuable work was done by Tomasevski in developing the 4As:
- - availability of provision at the systemic level,
- - access in practice,
- - acceptability in terms of quality, process and content and
- - adaptability to the needs of individuals and groups (Tomasevski 2001).
Each of these considerations can be applied specifically to TVET. First, we can examine whether there are policy frameworks in place that guarantee TVET access for all or for more people and whether there is any attempt to focus particularly on certain “target groups”. Second, we can question whether there are sufficient sites and modes of TVET learning practically available – i.e., within physical or financial reach – for those who want to access them (this includes formal and informal sector workplaces). Third, we can consider the ways that TVET could be increasingly accessible and of increasing quality. Fourth, we can address how to overturn exclusionary practices within TVET institutions and workplaces. Such exclusion happens through the overt and covert messages of who is welcome in the institution and which knowledges matter, and can be deeply institutionalised in the curriculum, timetable or facilities provided. We know too that workplaces can manifest similar problems and that access to traditional apprenticeship, for instance, is hugely shaped by matters of ethnicity, gender and caste.
The human development and capabilities approach (HDCA) builds from a view that individuals need the freedom to be able to choose their own developmental paths. HDCA has largely been applied in education to schooling. However, it is apparent that its focus on addressing individuals’ and communities’ broader developmental needs and aspirations offers a very different perspective from the top down formulations inherent in both the EDA and HRBA. From a HDCA perspective, it is likely that TVET could be expected to respond to a more expansive set of skills that reflect personal, family and community development concerns as well as narrow labour market ones. Moreover, the HDCA approach suggests a very different methodological lens for understanding TVET priorities. The EDA in particular is interested in macro data on rates of return or meso-level evaluation of institutional efficiency, but the HDCA approach draws us into seeing from the inside and hearing the voices of those who may be engaged with TVET at the micro level.
Human security was also promoted conceptually through the Human Development Reports. It draws on both the HRBA and HDCA but stresses the challenges caused by insecurities and seeks to encourage a focus on how these can be addressed through dialogue and targeted action. From a TVET perspective, this may lead to a particular stress on the role that TVET can play in promoting peace and dialogue but also environmental sustainability.
Human flourishing as it has recently been applied to development (it is a key concept of classical Greek philosophy) also draws heavily on these other attempts at humanised development. It stresses the need to consider social, cultural and environmental relationships. This particular form is based in a Christian understanding of human nature "in which all humans are intrinsically creative and productive; all have the potential to contribute to our common good; all are relational, formed and fulfilled by a complex web of relationships; all are moral, with an ineradicable responsibility for one another; and that all have a vocation to cultivate the natural world conscientiously and sustainably". (Theos 2010: 12)
This account too adds to the richness of thinking what a broader vision of TVET might include. It could encourage a focus, for instance, on the moral dimension of TVET learning, which does not have to be a Christian one. Indeed, this resonates well with the broad sense of the value of skill as being morally grounded that can be found in the work of TVET philosophers such as Winch (2002).
Taken together, these accounts suggest that we need to consider TVET not just as an immediate contribution to the employability of young people or the increased productivity of adult workers. Rather, we need to see it as contributing to our richer understandings of what we mean by development. In part, this requires a radical reconstruction of who “we” are – away from experts and policymakers and towards learners and communities that should be reflected in research as well as in practice. Whilst, in keeping with the capabilities tradition, it is important to allow for local definitions of what TVET should encompass to emerge through processes of reasoned dialogue, it can be surmised that these may move beyond a narrow economism to include considerations of the wider value of TVET for wider well-being and flourishing.
Of course, given the low status and poor investment in TVET internationally, this may seem romantic and over-ambitious. However, that needs to be tested and it is not acceptable without debate that our notion of TVET’s role in development is so out of step with wider thinking about development. 2012 offers a chance to decide what TVET should be for and who should have a voice in determining this.
References
Anderson, D. (2009) Productivism and ecologism: changing dis/courses in TVET in Fien, J., Maclean, R. and Park, M.-G. (eds.) Work, Learning and Sustainable Development. Springer, Dordrecht.
Theos (2010) Wholly Living. Theos, London.
Winch, C. (2002) Work, well-being and vocational education: the ethical significance of work and preparation for work. Journal of Applied Philosophy 19, 3, 261-272.
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Cite article as: McGrath, S., (2011) ‘Skills for Development? Rethinking the Kind of Development we Want TVET to Support’, in NORRAG NEWS, Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark, No.46, September 2011, pp. 16-18, available: http://www.norrag.org
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