NN46, September 2011
Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark
Key Issues and Research Challenges for TVET: Bridging the gap between TVET research and the needs of policy makers
By Rupert Maclean, The Hong Kong Institute for Education
Email: maclean@ied.edu.hk
Keywords: TVET research; decision making in TVET; types of TVET research
Summary: An opinion that much TVET policy making is not based on research based evidence. The reasons why this is the case and what can be done to address this problem.
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Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), and skills development for employability and sustainable livelihoods, have been identified by UNESCO Member States as a major and growing priority within UNESCO’s range of programme activities. This is to be expected since there is overwhelming evidence to demonstrate that TVET can play an essential role in promoting economic growth and the socio-economic development of countries, with benefits for individuals, their families, local communities and society in general. Improving education for the world of work can help raise the incomes of poverty-stricken farmers, provide citizens with more choices in their lives, help alleviate poverty and empower individuals who would otherwise be marginalized. TVET is fundamental to the building of orderly and compassionate civil societies, peace building and to the promotion of justice and fairness.
Given the great importance of TVET it is disappointing that so much government policy-making in the area of TVET continues to be largely based more on intuition and folklore than on rigorous and reliable, research-based evidence. This is despite the fact that TVET research is by now an internationally established element of educational research.
It is widely accepted that educational research has the potential to play an important role in TVET policy formulation and decision making, aimed at improving skills development for employability, since “it is the tool which enables policy makers to determine national educational needs, to assess new approaches to resolving issues, and to evaluate the effectiveness of (TVET) policies and strategies” (ADB, 1996, p. 1.) Yet many TVET decision makers do not use research as much as they could and do not actively seek it out, thereby largely neglecting or overlooking the opportunity for better policy and decision making that research findings can provide.
Despite the potential of educational research to making an important, some would say essential, contribution to decision making in TVET, many researchers complain that education decision makers pay insufficient attention to research findings. Policy makers and implementers, on the other hand, argue that much of the available TVET research is unintelligible and lacking in relevance for TVET decision-making purposes. Examples of where educational research could usefully inform decision makers include monitoring the health of TVET systems, investigating options for reform and change, evaluating intended and unintended outcomes of interventions and the provision of assessment strategies which focus on performance and competency-based student learning in TVET which emphasizes the quality of leaning.
When considering the relationship between research and decision making in TVET, it is important to recognize that there is not one, but many different types of TVET research. These range from reviews of the research literature which present an overview of the research done by others on a particular matter (such as the influence of socio-economic status or gender on access to TVET and educational outcomes) to sophisticated and detailed research studies which examine key questions in great depth (such as the impact of particular TVET teaching methods on the development of convergent contrasted with divergent thinking in a group of students).
TVET research may serve many different functions, besides informing those who make educational decisions about TVET provision and the content of programmes. Some academic research in universities, for example, may be undertaken for no other reason than that it reflects the particular interests and inquisitiveness of the researcher involved. In addition, TVET researchers work in very different types of work settings, such as universities, research units in government departments, in independent or semi-independent research units, and in the corporate sector.
David Wilson’s and my six volume International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning, is an attempt to improve the interface and dialogue between research, policy and practice in the area of TVET, while the Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research, edited by Felix Rauner and myself, is an attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of TVET research internationally, to indicate the gaps and shortfalls, as well as the strengths, of TVET research to date.
In conclusion it may be said that educational research has the potential to make an important contribution to policy formulation and analysis in TVET. However, there appears to be at the current time a strong feeling amongst many TVET decision-makers and administrators that TVET research has a long way to go before it reaches its full potential. In order to improve the current situation, there is a need for all parties concerned to examine critically the relationship between research and policy-making in TVET with a view to identifying constructive and realistic ways in which policy makers and researchers in the area of TVET can work together more effectively.
References
Asian Development Bank (ADB) (1996). Case Studies in Education Research and Policy. Manila: ADB
Maclean, R. and Wilson, D. (Eds.), (2009). International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning, Springer: Dordrecht
Rauner, F. and Maclean, R. (Eds.), (2008).Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research. Springer: Dordrecht
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Cite article as: Maclean, R., (2011) ‘Key Issues and Research Challenges for TVET: Bridging the gap between TVET research and the needs of policy makers’, in NORRAG NEWS, Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark, No.46, September 2011, pp. 125-127, available: http://www.norrag.org
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