NN46, September 2011
Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark
Researching Technical and Vocational Skills Development (SD): The End of the Renaissance of Educational Research in Africa?
By Michel Carton, NORRAG, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Email: Michel.Carton@graduateinstitute.ch
Keywords: social science and SD research; consultancy; research networks and institutions
Summary: Developing TVSD research in Africa is either a "dead end" or a window of opportunity for educational research. The political pressure and financial support for tackling the youth unemployment problems thanks to skills development could stimulate the researchers to overtake their individual scientific limits and consultancy "misbehaviour", as well as to rediscover the importance of institutions and networks for delivering relevant outputs.
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There is a gap of nearly 40 years between the two following quotes:
“Indigenous apprenticeship is at the heart of the explanation of the birth and growth of a free enterprise economy in Nigeria. Many of the best Nigerian entrepreneurs have started in trade, construction or sub contracting activities” (A. Callaway, 1972, 188, data 1963).
“It is important to recognise that it is necessary, even urgent, to address not only the problem of youth unemployment and the lag between the educational system and the labour market needs in particular, but also the situation of people employed in the informal economy” (17th African Union Summit, 2011).
Did research have a role in the disappearance for 20 years in the development discourse about some key sectors like agriculture, informal sector, technical and vocational education and training?
Did researchers use their knowledge to demonstrate that the consequences of undermining universities in the 80s, as a component of structural adjustment programmes, would have a price to be paid up today in terms of research capacities?
Is this price not too high to allow research to play a role in today’s revisiting of the sectors that were at the top of the national and international policy agenda in the 70s-80s, and are today presented as “new”?
Coming to educational research, one can raise the following questions:
- Did it play its functional but also critical and forward looking roles not only about the study of schooling, but also of non-formal education and technical and vocational education and training, in spite of the ups and downs of the globalisation discourses and processes as reflected in the above mentioned policies since the 70s?
- Were the positions of some economic development pioneers like Lewis known by educational researchers, so that they could have influenced the policy makers when this author writes in 1955: “expenditure on bringing new knowledge to peasant farmers is probably the most productive investment which can be made in any of the poorer agricultural economies” (Lewis, 1955, 187)?
- Why educationists did not pick up the visionary analysis done in 1960 by one another development economist pioneer, Anderson, stating that “education receives only passing reference in most of the now vast literature on technological change, modernization and economic development? A few writers accord it major importance, but they (referring to Lewis quoted above) only occasionally amplify on their reasons” (Anderson, 1966, 259)?
- Did research policy makers draw some consequences in terms of a meaningful support to educational research, from one another statement by Anderson: “ A functional approach to education requires attention to the relation between formal education and other training. Schools spread the basic sort of knowledge that encourage flexibility in later occupational roles and stimulate countrywide communication. Apprenticeship in various forms is essential for the creation of that kind of human capital we call know-how. In all these contexts, a loose structure without sharp boundaries implements the adoption of a functional program of education and its rapid diffusion” (A. Anderson, 1966, 276)?
- 35 years later, can we be optimistic about the future of educational research, when the President of the WB Group delivers a “revolutionary” speech of 14 pages on Democratizing development economics which includes only five times the word ‘education’, meaning that the influence of educationists on development economics is close to nil (Zoellick, 2010)?
Educational research in Africa was considered as “overlooked and undervalued” by the Educational Research Network for Education in Western and Central Africa (ERNWACA) in the mid 90s (Mclure, USAID, 1997). This conclusion is challenged by the states of the art just done in three West African countries (Burkina-Faso, Ghana, and Ivory Coast) and South Africa on 20 years researching on TVSD. The three first documents have been produced by the ERNWACA Chapters in these countries, in collaboration with NORRAG. The documents will be presented at the ADEA Trienniale to be held in Ouagadougou in February 2012, the theme of which is Promoting critical knowledge, skills and qualifications for sustainable development in Africa: how to design and implement an effective response through education and training systems. It must be noted that it will be the first time that African Ministers of Education and Training (in the larger sense of the term) will sit together in such an assembly, underlying the importance and urgency to deal in an integrated and holistic way with some issues like the role of technical and vocational skills development as an instrument to facilitate the inclusion of youth in society, both socially and economically, as well as sustainable economic development.
Looking at the way educational research has dealt with the field of TVSD over the last 20 years is being used in this paper as an instrument to check whether the institutions, actors, working and financing conditions it implies are today in a survival or a (pre) renaissance situation. Answering the question needs to put educational research in the broader context of social sciences. The 2010 World Social Science Report (WSSR) underlines that “The science institutions in many sub-Saharan countries have been systematically eroded and destroyed over the past three decades through international economic policies as well as by the devastating effects of domestic policies and events….Many people have commented on the lack of indigenous African theories and conceptual models to address the region’s social dynamics and challenges. This is not a new observation. It is clear, however, that this call for theoretical innovation and more sociological imagination is even more relevant in an age of globalization and internationalization, of the continuous decline of key scientific institutions including research centres, societies and journals, in many countries, and of the widespread lack of government support for social sciences research in sub-Saharan Africa” (WSSR, 2010, 67).
Two issues are specifically crucial for social sciences research: “The individualistic research does not have much influence on society and rarely carries much weight.... ‘Consultancy’ social science refers to the widespread practice of academics engaging in consultancy work – mostly for international agencies and governments – to augment their meagre academic salaries. It is most prevalent in specific disciplines such as the health sciences, business studies, ICT, and monitoring and evaluation work, but is still widespread and on the increase” (WSSR, 2010, 65). The above mentioned case studies show clearly that consultancy work is dominant in spite of being often considered as antagonist to autonomy and quality work.
The South African case study provides an interesting perspective articulated with the overall transformation stages of this country’s society since the early 90’s: the author identifies three successive periods for SD research, namely Construction, Early Critique and Deconstruction (L.Powell, 2011). These three “seasons” might apply to the new perspective that ADEA is proposing with TVSD as a larger and more dynamic perspective than TVET, which remains one component of a SD strategy. The issue for researchers and policy makers is then not to keep criticising the limits of TVET but to build a new vision where research is one important instrument for relevant and sustainable decisions. At the same time, the limits and problems of the new SD “model” will have to be progressively identified in order to move towards a deconstruction/reconstruction stage. Such a process would reflect a different mode of governance of a policy making process, where autonomous (functional and critical) research as well as consultancy and quantitative data collection are needed. In other words, the a priori opposition between consultancy type “research” and fully autonomous research could be less extreme than how it is often presented. That is why researching on the economics and political sociology of consultation in Africa (that is very rare in every field, including education) and connecting the results with the on going works (like the ones by IDRC West Africa) on the designing of some new modes for university research governance could help decision makers as well as academics to relaunch a constructive dialogue.
It is worth noting that these topics were covered during a NORRAG-DSE workshop in 1995 (K.King, L.Buchert, eds, DSE, 1996). 15 years later, a bridge could be built between the debates in this workshop and a new way to look at the same topic with a skills research perspective. It could help us contradict the evaluation made in 1997 by ERNWACA which, otherwise, would conclude that we are at a (dead) end for educational research!
References
Callaway, P. 1972. Training young people within indigenous small-scale enterprises: the Nigerian example. Paris: Unesco.
Lewis, W. 1955. The Theory of Economic Growth. London: Allen and Unwin.
Anderson, A. 1963. The impact of the Educational System on Technological Change and Modernization. In: Hoselitz, B. and Moore, W. Industrialization and Society. Paris: UNESCO-Mouton.
MacLur, R. 1997. Overlooked and Undervalued. A Synthesis of ERNWACA Review on the State of Education Research in West and Central Africa. Bamako: Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWACA), Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA), Health and Human Resources Analysis for Africa (HHRAA), U.S. Agency for International Development.
Buchert, L., King, K. (Editors). 1996. Consultancy and Research in International Education. Bonn: DSE-NORRAG.
International Social Science Council. 2010. World Social Science Report 2010. Paris: UNESCO
Powell, L. 2011. From Reconstruction to Deconstruction. The Role of Research in South African Skills Development. Paper submitted to the 2011 UKFIET Oxford Conference.
Zoellick, R. 2010. Democratizing Development Economics. Unpublished document.
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Cite article as: Carton, M., (2011) ‘Researching Technical and Vocational Skills Development (SD): The End of the Renaissance of Educational Research in Afarica?’, in NORRAG NEWS, Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark, No.46, September 2011, pp. 109-112, available: http://www.norrag.org
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