Technical and Vocational Education and Learning: An Investment-Based Approach

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Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Also available from Continuum Vocational and Professional Capability, Gerard Lum Guide to Vocational Education and Training, Christopher Winch and Terry Hyland Perspectives of Quality in Adult Learning, Peter Boshier

Technical and Vocational Education and Training An Investment-Based Approach

Stephen Gough

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Stephen Gough 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Stephen Gough has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-82643-484-5 (hardcover) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gough, Stephen. Technical and vocational education and learning: an investment-based approach / Stephen Gough. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-0-8264-3484-5 (hardcover) 1. Vocational education. 2. Technical education. I. Title. LC1043.G66 2010 370.11'3–dc22 2009048863

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Contents

Foreword by Rupert Maclean

vii

Chapter 1

Introduction

1

Chapter 2

A Framework for Analysis

11

Chapter 3

Investment: Some Preliminary Observations

28

Chapter 4

Case Study One: Water Education

48

Chapter 5

Case Study Two: Higher Education and Sustainable Development

60

Chapter 6

Case Study Three: Management Education

82

Chapter 7

The Macro-Context of TVET

104

Chapter 8

Rational TVET

115

Chapter 9

TVET and Freedom

127

Chapter 10

TVET and Justice

136

Chapter 11

TVET and Security

146

Chapter 12

TVET and Wellbeing

156

Chapter 13

Investment Revisited

165

Chapter 14

Conclusion: Vocational Learning and Teaching: What and How?

173

References

177

Index

189

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Foreword Rupert Maclean Chair Professor of International Education and Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, New Territories, Hong Kong; formerly Director of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany.

This is an important book on an important topic. Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has become a priority area in the education programme activities of many countries. In addition, in terms of members of the international education aid community, UNESCO’s 193 member states have identified TVET as being one of three essential pillars of the UNESCO education programme. This is to be expected since work is a fundamental activity in the lives of most people, in all societies, and as such has a major impact upon the self-identity, social status and standard of living of individuals and the small groups and larger communities to which they belong. The World Bank estimates that world-wide, 80 per cent of all work activities involve vocational and technical skills. While TVET has stimulated and fuelled high economic growth in some countries, in other countries it has failed to fulfil expectations. One of the reasons why TVET has not always delivered what has been expected of it is that in some cases the expectations of governments regarding TVET, such as TVET being a way to overcome youth unemployment, have been unrealistic. Nevertheless, because of the pressing need of countries to adapt to and accommodate mega-trends such as globalization, all governments, both rich and poor, are taking a renewed interest in this increasingly important and influential area of education. Regarding this matter, a recent report by UNESCO notes that: (amongst other things) countries realize that (TVET is) a means to jumping onto the bandwagon of globalization. This is reflected by the tremendous shift of employment from the United States and Europe to India and China, where you have such highly skilled work forces. By substantially investing in TVET, these countries laid a major plank in their economic foundation. (Perera in ‘Vocational education: the come-back?’ UNESCO Education today, April–June 2005, p. 2)

viii

Foreword

The notion of ‘investment’ in TVET, as used in this book, is crucial to the definition of TVET as being the branch of education that specifically and most directly seeks to cater to meeting the often complex and changing needs of the labour market. This book argues that considerable additional financial and other resources are required in order to develop curricula, train staff and equip classrooms for specialized TVET subjects. Since TVET generally costs up to three times more per learner than do academic courses, this raises some key questions: Is TVET worth the extra money, especially when the funds being spent are part of development aid which can be put to other competing uses? What is the economic return on resources devoted to TVET, and is it really possible to accurately measure such returns? It must be recognized that TVET can provide skills for work but not the guarantee of a job. The world’s most sophisticated and expensive programmes are destined to fail if the labour market cannot gainfully absorb the students, despite their skills and expectations. In addition, for many parents and students, TVET is still regarded as being a ‘second-class’ education, and so it is often difficult to attract the most capable students into this area. Such considerations have led some experts and policy-makers to conclude that TVET is best left to the workplace. This was especially true after a radical policy shift by the World Bank in the 1990s, which was once considered one of TVET’s most committed supporters, away from investing in TVET. The very first World Bank (WB) loan for education (in 1963) was for TVET, which accounted for about 40 per cent of all educational loans by the WB in sub-Saharan Africa up until the early 1980s. But in 1991, the Bank reversed gears, largely due to a policy paper co-authored by Arvil Van Adams. Widely respected, Adams retired from the Bank in January 2008 with a single regret: People took us – the policy – too much at face value. The easy message of our policy was that TVET is not a good investment but that ignores the nuance of what we said. We argued for a shift away from heavy investment in workshops, instructor training and curriculum in order to invest resources into policy development. The point was not to do away with TVET but to reform the policy process. (Adams in ‘Vocational education: the come-back?’ UNESCO Education today, April–June 2005, p. 2) Investment in TVET, in Adams’ words, needs to entail not only investing in TVET plant and equipment, but also the allocation of financial resources to what may be called the ‘intellectual aspects of TVET’, with regard to

Foreword

ix

matters such as standard setting and policy advice. Unfortunately, few appreciated the nuance of Adams’ analysis and with very few exceptions TVET virtually disappeared from the international aid agenda for some 25 years. Partly as an outcome of recommendations arising from the Education for All conference in Jomtien (Thailand) in 1990, the WB began investing much more heavily in primary education at the expense of TVET, with the result that TVET now accounts for only approximately 9 per cent of WB spending on education. Likewise, over the past two decades, international strategies intended to reduce poverty have to a large extent ignored the need to develop employability skills. As Trevor Riordan of the ILO puts it: We are now seeing a skills-divide emerging with the least-developed countries falling further and further behind, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. (Riordan in ‘Vocational education: the comeback?’ UNESCO Education today, April–June 2005, p. 2) More recently, the concept of skills development for employability has made a come-back onto the development agenda because it is increasingly recognized that, since education is considered the key to effective development strategies, technical and vocational education and training must be the master key that can alleviate poverty, promote peace, conserve the environment, improve the quality of life for all and help achieve sustainable development. (The Bonn Declaration. UNESCO-UNEVOC: Bonn, 28 October 2004) The Bonn Declaration was signed by 122 TVET experts from UNESCO Member States who gathered in Bonn, Germany, in October 2004 at the International Experts Meeting ‘Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability’, which was convened on the threshold of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2004–2015). Halfway into the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, and again in Bonn in April 2009 at the UNESCO World Conference Mid-Decade Review of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), UNESCO Member States reiterated the Bonn Declaration and called for UNESCO Member States and partner agencies to, develop and extend ESD partnerships to integrate ESD into training, vocational education and workplace learning by involving civil society,

x

Foreword public and private sectors, NGOs, and development partners. ESD should become an integral part of the training of leaders in business, industry, trade union, non-profit and voluntary organizations, and the public services. Re-orient TVET programmes to include ESD. (Report by the Director-General on the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development and the Bonn Declaration. UNESCO Executive Board, 181st session: Paris, 17 April 2009)

As a knowledge-based organization UNESCO considers TVET to be an essential area of investment for member states. TVET has far reaching implications which go well beyond the narrow confines of economic planning. This is particularly the case at the current time when the world is in the midst of a serious economic recession. Increasing investment in TVET is essential, as part of a larger vision for promoting sustainable development, and, ultimately, to contribute to peace-building, poverty alleviation, security and to promote the overall well-being of individuals and the communities in which they live. Since its founding after the end of the Second World War, UNESCO has been developing recommendations and organizing policy debates concerning education for the world of work, in its role as a policy advisor for governments, as they seek to strengthen and upgrade their systems of TVET in terms of improving quality, relevance and access. In this regard, UNESCO notes, In the past, there was a supply-side vision, which created serious problems for developing countries. Either they invested heavily in trying to import foreign models of higher education, which produced a surplus of white-collar expectations. Or they tried to set up highly specialized training schools, which didn’t correspond to labour needs. Today, the goal is to teach students to adapt to changing working conditions, instead of locking them into specific jobs and skills. (Perera in ‘Vocational education: the come-back?’ UNESCO Education today, April–June 2005, p. 2) As a result of important and influential recent developments, such as a more widespread integration of ICTs into TVET, and a trend where employers are providing more on-the-job training as a core component of formal TVET programmes, investment in technical and vocational education and training has become more cost effective.

Foreword

xi

At a time when governments and international aid agencies working in the area of education are paying greater attention to TVET, this important book makes a very timely contribution to the field, as it moves beyond mainly viewing education as a means to building human capital, and as an investment which needs to be justified by the economic return it is likely to bring about, to presenting a re-evaluation of work skills as involving investment in economic terms as well as in promoting important intellectual values, which encompass skills for life and sustainability.

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Chapter 1

Introduction

The Scope of the Book This book is, first and foremost, about Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). TVET is a field of educational endeavour that exists worldwide. It engages a multitude of students at an important time in their lives, and provides careers and professional satisfaction for teachers. Providing for it taxes the imagination and skill of politicians and administrators. Its operationalization makes demands on businesses and other work organizations, providing them, if it is successful, with trained employees in return. As it does these things it consumes money and resources, in quantities that may often be both less than educators feel are really necessary, but more than administrators are comfortable to spend. Within the United Nations system, TVET is the responsibility of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), one of that suite of multi-national bodies set up as part of the post-war settlement in 1945. Within UNESCO, TVET has its own dedicated agency, UNEVOC, with Headquarters in Bonn, Germany. This hosts a network of more than 270 specialized TVET institutions (known as UNEVOC Centres), representing, at the time of writing, 166 UNESCO Member States. UNEVOC defines TVET as follows: TVET is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work. Throughout the course of history, various terms have been used to describe elements of the field that are now conceived as comprising TVET. These include: Apprenticeship Training, Vocational Education, Technical Education, Technical-Vocational Education (TVE), Occupational Education (OE), Vocational Education and Training (VET), Professional and Vocational Education (PVE), Career and Technical Education (CTE), Workforce Education (WE), Workplace Education (WE), etc. Several of these terms are commonly used in specific geographic areas. [www.unevoc. unesco.org/2.0.html?tx_drwiki_pi1[keyword]=What%20is%20TVET]

2


This definition provides a common denominator – ‘the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work’ – that enables us to link together, under the heading TVET, educational arrangements that may otherwise seem very different. Such differences occur both between one geographical place and another, and in particular places over time. They concern, among other things: the status of TVET in society; its perceived purpose; its level of resourcing; and, its relationship to educational provision more widely. The following, very sceptical quotation is helpful in illustrating this. We all have a fairly clear idea of what ‘vocational’ schooling means – which, of course, speaks volumes in itself. It does not mean a medical or veterinary degree; or a postgraduate law-school course; or taking one’s accountancy examinations while working for one of the big City accounting firms. It does not even mean nursing or teacher training. ‘Vocational education’ instead refers to courses for young people which are offered as a lower-prestige alternative to academic secondary schooling, and which lead to manual, craft and, more recently, secretarial jobs. ‘Technical’ education slots into the hierarchy above vocational and below academic, and leads, in theory, to the technician jobs which increased in number during the twentieth century. (Wolf, 2002, p. 58) Without doubt there are many who, as a matter of fact, do subscribe to this ‘fairly clear idea’ about the relative status and purpose of TVET and its relationship to the rest of the educational system. Further, much of the history of TVET in, say, Britain provides a strong basis for such a view. But that such a drab and depressing description does not do full justice to the opportunities and initiatives available at every geographical location might be illustrated by, to take only three examples: z

z

z

The Technical and Vocational Institute of the Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Maritime Transport, based in Alexandria, Egypt, which offers maritime and industrial training commensurate with the specifics of local geography and economy [www.aast.edu]. The ‘PRIDE’ project, administered by the University of the South Pacific across fifteen Pacific countries, which integrates TVET with all forms of formal and non-formal education outside of Higher Education, again under special geographical and economic circumstances [www.usp.ac. fj/pride]. The work of the UNESCO-International Hydrological Programme (UNESCO-IHP) to promote sustainable water management, assessment,

Introduction

3

supply, treatment, community-based water and sanitation services, and water conservation in some of the world’s poorest countries, through the training of water technicians [http://typo38.unesco.org/index. php?id=240]. How successful these particular projects, and many others like them, eventually are remains to be seen. They are cited here simply to suggest that we do not have to accept as universal a characterization of TVET in terms of disaffected school students, unenthusiastic teachers and ill-maintained buildings – even though there have certainly been instances of precisely that. And variation occurs not only between countries, but over time as well. In Britain, which is the focus of much – though certainly not all – of Wolf’s study, things may also be changing in this respect. A recent government consultation on Higher Education states: We want to see all universities treating student employability as a core part of their mission. So we believe it is reasonable to expect universities to take responsibility for how their students are prepared for the world of work. (DIUS, 2008, p. 6) In short, the technical and vocational agenda has become securely embedded in the university curriculum. This book concerns itself with TVET in the broadest possible conception consistent with our core stipulative requirement that it is: ‘concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work’. It also draws on three case studies, and it may be that the choice of these at first seems at odds with this commitment to conceptual broadness, since all three relate in some way to the notion of ‘sustainable development’. However, this has the advantage of providing a common denominator across the case studies. Further, sustainable development has useful characteristics that facilitate discussion: it involves understanding of both scientific and social phenomena; it concerns itself with both empirical and ethical possibilities and consequences; it links understanding and action at the individual level to policy at the social level. Perhaps most importantly, it enables an engagement with all aspects of human productive activity in their particular historical context. As Marx (1858/1994, p. 123) put it: ‘All production is the appropriation of nature on the part of an individual within and through a specific form of society.’ This is to say that the natural environment should not be understood as an entity distinct from the economy, nor even as some kind of adjunct to it. It is the very stuff of the economy. More recent thinkers

4


have made clear that we should consider the social environment in a similar way. For example, Rorty (1999, p. xxiii) has written that: There is no way in which tools can take one out of touch with reality. No matter whether the tool is a hammer or a gun or a belief or a statement, tool-using is part of the interaction of the organism with its environment. To see the employment of words as the use of tools to deal with the environment, rather than as an attempt to represent the intrinsic nature of that environment, is to repudiate the question of whether human minds are in touch with reality. There is no intention in the book as a whole to promote a particular account of what sustainable development might mean, nor any attempt at advocacy of any particular sustainable development goals. The intention is simply to consider issues relating to TVET in a particular, broadly-focused, long-term way. Whatever the ultimate merits of sustainable development, issues related to it are both suggestive of, and suggested by, such an approach. It may well be that the developing argument has implications for sustainable development: but, nevertheless, sustainable development is not, first and foremost, what the book is about. The discussion therefore maintains a balance of respect between those, such as Fien et al. (2009), who see TVET as an important vehicle for the transformation of society according to principles of sustainability, and others like Karmel (2009) who argue for a simpler focus on enabling learners to earn a livelihood. The distinction between a social and an individual focus for thinking about TVET is developed more formally in Chapter 2. The book also focuses on the idea that TVET may be thought of as a kind of investment. This apparently simple statement invites a conflation of educational and economic thinking which, as we shall see, turns out to be a source of extensive complexity, confusion and controversy. The issues will be explored in detail as the arguments of the book unfold, but it should be clear at the outset that, as with TVET itself, we may think about ‘investment’ in a number of different ways. For now, it will suffice to say that investment may be considered to involve, fundamentally, some sort of sacrifice, effort, acquisition or expenditure in the present for the sake of some form of expected returns in the future. This wording carefully avoids a strictly economic definition for two reasons. First, and as will become clear, economic definitions are a matter of some controversy within the broad profession of economics. Second, the word ‘investment’ may be used in metaphorical ways, and the book considers some of these. Nevertheless, and as the quotation

Introduction

5

above from a British Government ministry shows, it is hard to separate thinking about education, and particularly TVET, from thinking about the economy. Another challenge arises because while TVET, in all its complexity and variety, is the core concern of this volume, it is also of perceived importance to many others whose own particular core focus happens to be something else. Anyone with a principal professional or personal interest in, for example, e-pedagogy, economic literacy, full employment, sustainable development, disease control, international security, community empowerment or trade promotion is likely to think that TVET is important. But the preconceptions and assumptions that accompany these different concerns, and that therefore guide the ranking of priorities and alternatives, are likely to vary widely. So too, therefore, are the resulting prescriptions for TVET. In a reciprocal way, the sustainable development campaigner or trade advocate may well feel frustrated if dedicated TVET specialists seem to care more about individual learning outcomes than they do about supposed educational impacts on aggregated environmental or business measures. In short, it is possible to believe that TVET is of intrinsic importance, and therefore that its success or failure should be measured by the extent to which it is educational: or, alternatively, one can believe that the importance of TVET lies in the fact that it is instrumental to the pursuit of other ends, in which case success depends on whether those ends are, in fact, achieved. There are still further ambiguities inherent in our topic, and these all matter because if they are allowed to pass unrecognized and unaddressed the result is likely to be muddled thinking, confused decision-making and, ultimately, wasted human potential. One possible source of confusion that deserves mention at this preliminary stage is that thinking about TVET may take place at a number of distinct levels. We can see it as primarily a system of training, an element within educational policy, or an important factor (both as cause and effect) within increasingly globalized processes of social change. So, for example, one valid and important issue for TVET practitioners concerns the usefulness, design, application, assessment and evaluation of e-portfolios. These typically involve learners in the archiving and iterative critical self-examination of their own experiences during a period of instruction and/or workplace experience, using ICT tools of one sort or another. Their pedagogical use is a skilled business that gives rise to potentialities and to pitfalls in equal measure. Part of their attraction in particular circumstances lies in the fact that, through them, the medium (ICT) becomes

6


part of the message; that is, experience of, and learning about, ICT happens in tandem with other, less generic, educational goals. This is a strongly positive feature from the point of view of policy makers at a time when the notion that high skills (of which ICT-proficiency is an important example) are essential to economic wellbeing is widely accepted without question. The view of the UK Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education would be found uncontroversial, at the present time, by government officials around the world: Key competitor countries have higher proportions of their adult workforce with high level skills, we need to do better to prosper. (DIUS, 2008: 3) However, ICT may also be seen as not merely as a response to the economic imperatives of the modern world, but as a crucial factor in shaping them. Globalization has created a new world order for doing business. New information and communication technologies have dramatically changed the way we live, learn, and work, and even think about work. The synergy of combining globalization with new technology has had dramatic economic and social impacts. It has created new opportunities as well as new challenges and uncertainty. (UIITE, 2003, 10) Sentiments such as these are also widely accepted as expressing a foundational truth about contemporary life and, indeed, paragraphs such as this one introduce many public and corporate documents. However, there are difficulties. These arise not so much because the claimed link between globalization and ICT is a false one, but because it can be used as evidence to support a number of radically different points of view. First, the nature and merit of globalization itself is contested (for example, Stiglitz, 2002; Bhagwati, 2004). Second, even given a particular interpretation of globalization, the implications for policy at the national level may be unclear. So, for example, although the rhetoric of UK policy is firmly in the accumulatehigh-level-skills-or-perish camp, there is evidence to suggest that: ‘British employers make relatively few skill demands on their employees and, consequently, have relatively little demand for skills and hence for vocational education’ (Winch and Hyland, 2007, p. 81). This means that, third, the mechanics of policy, which in this instance seek to facilitate leadership of the skills acquisition agenda by employers through a network of Sector Skills Councils (SSCs), may well be misguided to the extent that this is a role that many employers simply do not want to take up (Payne, 2008).

Introduction

7

Therefore, fourth, while time and resources may be devoted to the design and refinement of pedagogic techniques such as e-portfolios, and while these may well benefit particular individuals at particular times and places, it would seem that their exact form is likely to be more a consequence of the preferences, skills and circumstances of those involved than a coherent progression towards the fulfilment of a policy-driven strategic plan. Some may feel, perhaps, that on balance this is likely to be a good thing: but it also leaves open the possibility that educational resources will be wasted on the creation of internally superb, externally irrelevant learning experiences. Finally, we should note here that TVET gives rise to a tension between the desire for change and the desire to conserve what is, or was. Of course this tends to be a characteristic of education – and indeed society – more widely, but it finds its own particular form and significance in the context of this book. We may lament the inability of store check-out staff to perform simple mental arithmetic, but welcome the computerized till receipt they hand to us. We may feel nostalgia for times past when children often followed in their parents’ footsteps, but encourage our own kids to do something different. We may feel warm about speciality shops and the personalized service provided by skilled tradespeople, but take most of our personal business to out-of-town shopping malls, discount stores and online providers. This issue often presents itself in a particularly acute form in developing countries, where traditional forms may be present even as the modern world rushes in. For example, there are many places around the world where people earn a living by showing off their traditional lifestyle to foreign tourists (Gough and Scott, 1999). This usually involves training in tourism and business skills, rather than – and often at the expense of – traditional custom and practice.

Disciplinary Perspectives and the Importance of Institutions It is hardly surprising that a topic that touches upon such a wide range of issues has attracted attention from a similarly wide range of disciplinary specialisms, each of which brings its own particular assumptions and techniques to bear. Disciplines may be implicated here, either because they add something to our understanding of the processes, purposes and contexts of TVET, or because they are at the heart of its technical and vocational content. Psychologists, economists, educationalists, political scientists, sociologists, management theorists, computer scientists and development specialists all have valid insights to contribute to our understanding of

8


TVET provision. So also do engineers of all kinds, hydrologists, and those with expertise in, inter alia, art and design, graphic design, fashion and clothing, accounting, marketing, catering, computing, construction, stonemasonry, carpentry, air conditioning, English language, floristry, hairdressing, media studies, music, performing arts, public service, sports, and travel and tourism. If we take the broadness of our definition of TVET seriously enough to allow it to include provision within the Higher Education sector, then the ranks of those with an interest are swelled even further. This situation gives rise to two further points that are important in framing the analyses of this book, and that are therefore outlined here in an introductory way. The first is that it would be a mistake to conceive of TVET as a single problem with a large number of component parts, each of which is best seen as the responsibility of a particular disciplinary specialism. According to such a view, for example, the contribution of TVET to the enhancement of social justice would be a proper matter for consideration by sociologists, while its role in sustaining economic competitiveness would be best left to economists. Psychologists and educationalists might then be responsible for the design of programmes and pedagogies, with engineers, media professionals, sports experts, linguists and others being left to provide appropriate content as necessary. Success would be expected to follow provided only that all these groups pulled together towards the common goal. The true situation is rather different. TVET has a wide range of stakeholders whose interests vary according to the nature of their stake. It takes place in complex contexts such that similar provision may produce different results in different places – and over different time scales – while varied provision may sometimes produce similar results. Further, there is no absolutely clear answer to the question ‘who is the customer?’ for TVET: it might be the individual learner; a community or other social group; businesses within a geographical area; businesses of a particular type; a profession; the regional or national economy; or, the region or nation considered according to some wider criterion. It would be simply naïve to suppose that any solution found optimal by one of these parties would necessarily be equally so for all the others. This lack of clarity creates problems for conventional definitions of quality, efficiency and effectiveness. In short, TVET provision is conceived, designed and delivered under conditions of uncertainty. We do not face a clearly-identified problem with a finite number of well-distinguished component parts. Rather, there are many different definitions of what the problem actually is, some of which may directly contradict, or be in competition, with each other. Of course, uncertainty is not the same thing as ignorance. There is much that we do know, and every point in trying to know more. But in relation to

Introduction

9

the long term processes and impact of TVET there is no foreseeable prospect of our knowing everything. Nevertheless, decisions have to be made in the here and now. In seeking to provide an account of how such decisions are, in fact, likely to be made this book will argue for the particular significance and importance of the role of institutions. In this, it draws extensively, though not uncritically, upon the intellectual traditions of Cultural Theory (e.g. Thompson et al., 1990) and Institutional Economics (e.g. Hodgson, 2004a). Second, it is analytically helpful to distinguish between the practices and the literacies that individuals and groups may bring to bear in their thinking about TVET. These categories have their origin in the works of Popkewitz (1982; 1983) and MacIntyre (1981). They have been further developed in relation to curriculum studies by Kemmis and Fitzclarence (1986) and Gough and Scott (2001). Teaching, policy-making, stonemasonry, economics, floristry and being a student are all examples of practices. They are likely to be attached to particular kinds of institutions (for example, further education colleges, professional associations, student unions) and these, in turn, may well embody particular accounts of what each practice should be like, and engage in competition for real resources the better to promote that view. One important feature of practices is that they are often resistant to change. As Lundgren (1991) has noted, this is, on the whole, very much the case with the practice of teaching. If one focuses upon educational systems or policy then one might certainly say that, for at least the last 40 years, change has been frequent and extensive. However, the more one directs one’s attention instead to classroom processes, the more one encounters enduring, substantially-unaltered forms of behaviour. The notion of multiple ‘literacies’ builds on the work of Stables and Bishop (2001) to suggest that different groups (who are likely to be linked through shared membership of institutions and shared practices) will often ‘read’ their environment in different ways. Such literacies are likely to be distinguished by the terminology they employ, the aspects of any given situation that they identify as being significant or unimportant, their criteria for the evaluation of success and failure, and their assumptions about the causal mechanisms that are at work. For example, an instance of business education provision in a further education college is likely to be described and evaluated in quite different terms by an economist, a sociologist, the college principal, a local business leader, a national politician and a student – though each of these accounts will surely have at least some validity. It should be stressed once more that this is not to argue for some sort of overarching relativism – that any view is as good as any other and

10


all views are valid. Rather, the claim being made is that under conditions of complexity and uncertainty there is likely to be benefit in being open to different, and even incompatible and competing perspectives until matters can be firmly resolved one way or the other. A scientific approach is our best hope, but there is nothing scientific about simply assuming uncertainties away.

The Structure of the Book This is both a theoretical book, and a practical one. TVET often concerns itself with practical matters, but this does not mean that in can be theoryfree. It is true that theory divorced from practice is inert, and also that theory – particularly economic theory – often affects practice in ways that the original theoreticians would never approve (Krugman, 1994). Even so, practice is inseparable from theory, even if the underlying theory is tacit. TVET is concerned with the most fundamental of human activities, and, in consequence, raises the most fundamental theoretical and philosophical questions. These are considered, alongside contemporary and influential examples. In Chapter 2, a framework for analysis is set out. This identifies key dimensions along which TVET provision may vary, and serves as a point of reference throughout the book. Next, Chapter 3 explores a number of questions relating to the idea of investment and its associated concept of capital. In particular, it notes that different usages of these terms have tended to proliferate, creating a good deal of confusion about what they really mean. Chapters 4 to 6 present broad case studies of TVET in relation to water education, higher education and sustainable development and management education and training.

Chapter 2


The Nature and Purpose of Analysis The purpose of this chapter is to set out an analytical framework that will be used as a point of reference throughout the book. It will provide structure for the argument. This quite necessarily involves a development of a set of categories across which different examples of TVET may differ. It will be useful at this point to make it clear in general terms what ‘analysis’ should be taken to mean, since we live in times in which ideas and actions are sometimes judged not only by their intellectual robustness, but also by how fashionable they happen to be. Thus, while ‘analysis’ seems, for the most part, still to have quite positive connotations in contemporary usage, ‘reductionism’, for example, does not. Rather, terms like ‘holism’ and ‘systems-thinking’ enjoy more contemporary appeal through their (apparent) emphasis on the cohesion, rather that the granularity, of social phenomena. Yet a (Collins) dictionary definition of ‘analysis’ is: ‘the division of a physical or abstract whole into its constituent parts to examine or determine their relationship’; and the entry for ‘reductionism’ reads: ‘the analysis of complex things, data etc., into less complex constituents’. In fact, the real issue here is not whether the comprehension of complex phenomena such as TVET requires that they be separated somehow into component parts. This, as we shall see, is actually unavoidable at pretty much any level of comprehension below the purely spiritual. Rather, what is at stake is the nature of the relationship that the whole is taken to have with those of its component parts that analysis identifies. In a strict reductionist view this relationship is unidirectional and deterministic. The whole is the sum of its parts, and can be entirely explained in terms of the behaviour of those parts. So, for example, on such an account social institutions like examination boards, colleges and trades unions are made up of individual persons who are in turn made up of cells made up of atoms. Each ‘higher’ level is explained by the properties of phenomena at a ‘lower’ level. Institutions

12


may in principle be explained psychologically; psychology may be explained physiologically. However, physiology (for example) may not be (finally) explained as a product of the behaviour of institutions. Clearly such a view is highly analytic: but it is not a necessary corollary of an analytic approach. One can equally well hold that wholes are more than the sum of their parts. So, for example, it can be argued that social institutions may develop ‘emergent’ properties that are not explicable as a straightforward aggregation of factors from the individual level, and that such properties may then lead in some way to alteration of the attributes that individuals originally brought to the situation. From an educational perspective the possibility of such processes – which may termed ‘reconstitutive downward causation’ (Hodgson, 2006) – is crucial in determining the true potentialities that exist for learning. However, their existence in no way obviates the need for analysis at other levels, such as that of the individual. Nor, in fact, does a commitment to methodological holism or systems thinking do so – a point readily illustrated from a systems perspective by Gregory Bateson’s (1972, pp. 115–16) famous observation that: ‘No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.’ Indeed, and for the sake of completeness, we might note that even a strict methodological collectivist – for whom individual characteristics are determined wholly by system-level factors – cannot dispense with analysis, since this is needed to disaggregate system effects at lower levels. The view taken in this book is that wholes may indeed amount to more than the sum of their parts. Further, properties unique to the whole may in certain circumstances exercise downward influence (but not absolute determination) over the parts that comprise them. Arguments in favour of this position will be brought to bear in due course, but for now the task is to set out, as fully as possible, those analytical elements that seem significant for our understanding of TVET.

Analysis by Beneficiary and by Content As noted in Chapter 1, there is more than one possible answer to the question: ‘who is the customer for TVET?’ Any discussion is likely to be unproductive if it is unclear who the beneficiary of vocational educational activity is expected to be, or if it is too readily assumed that all possible beneficiaries have identical or broadly similar interests. Among the possible beneficiaries of TVET are, z

Students. The following list does not exhaust all the ways in which students of TVET may be sub-classified: gender, age, level of prior achievement or


z

z

z

z

13

training, political status (e.g. citizen, asylum-seeker, recent migrant), socio-economic background, possession of particular skills (e.g. fluency in English, numeracy, driving licence), domestic status (e.g. married, married-with-children, single, living with parents, carer), employment history (e.g. school leaver, recently made redundant, long-term unemployed). Employers. These may be sub-classified by industry/sector, size, key technologies employed, form of ownership, and attitude to workplacebased and other forms of vocational learning. Society as a whole. The most prevalent narrative in this respect continues to be of the ‘upskill-to-compete’ variety, usually in conjunction with particular assumptions about things like globalization, the rate of social change (which is often asserted to be happening at an unprecedentedly rapid rate), the skills and challenges ‘of the future’ (an issue that is of great significance for the investment-based approach of this book), and human nature. However, there also exist a number of quite influential alternatives that focus on notions of, for example, community or sustainability. Quite unsurprisingly, perhaps, the view that TVET has a role to play for the good of society seems to be more widely shared than is any particular understanding of what ‘the good of society’ actually means. Particular regions or constituencies within society, for example sites of relatively high unemployment, or groups such as white working-class boys. The possibilities are almost infinitely variable. Headings may also be combined to create an educational focus (e.g. ‘white working-class boys in the north-east of England’). Future generations. It is widely held that TVET has a bearing on the prospects for subsequent generations, whether in terms of prosperity versus poverty, environmental sustainability versus environmental catastrophe, justice versus injustice, social inclusion versus exclusion, national independence versus dependence, or something else. Each of these oppositions is a source of controversy, not only about preferred courses of action, but also about the meanings of basic terms.

Proposed benefits of TVET may also be expressed in more abstract terms. For example, it may from time to time be argued that particular educational initiatives are likely to: z z

Improve the education system in general. Enhance national pride. Or, alternatively, bring an end to a state of affairs deemed to be cause for national shame.

14 z z z z

Technical and Vocational Education and Training Serve the interests of social justice. Serve the interests of individual freedom. Enhance competitiveness. Exemplify and conserve an admired tradition. Or, alternatively, sweep away antiquated practices and replace them with that which is new, fresh and modern. We should note that clever compromises are also possible. For example, at the time of writing the UK ‘Jobs4U’ careers database encourages young people thinking of taking up the traditional craft of thatching to acquire information technology skills to help them, in due course, to deploy this traditional craft within a modern, competitive business.

The content of TVET programmes may be described in terms of the transmission of particular values or skills. Skills may be subdivided along a spectrum from the highly specific (for example, recording a sale or changing a car exhaust) through to the highly generic (for example, ‘learning to learn’). Alternatively, one may speak of the acquisition by students of particular personal characteristics, or of specified competencies. In a somewhat different but nevertheless clearly related sense, one may also discuss content in terms of a balance between theoretical and practical knowledge. In some circumstances discussions of the content of training may also entail decisions about the treatment of prior experience, or prior learning of various kinds. Distinguishing possible variations in both the targeted beneficiaries and the content of TVET in this way provides an analytical tool. We might ask, either in general terms or in a particular case: how are different forms of content matched to the requirements of different beneficiaries? What are the important values that contemporary TVET should embody, from the varied perspectives of students (of different kinds), employers (of different kinds), or society as a whole? What are the crucial vocational competencies that are needed to serve particular interests? If social phenomena exhibited the regularity of physical nature, and if the language we use to describe them exhibited (or was even capable of exhibiting) the precision to which the language of the natural sciences aspires, then these questions might yield firm answers. As a result, we might be able to separately itemize the key values and skills required within particular forms of training, the better to serve the distinct interests of the student, employers and society over time. In reality, however, such regularity and linguistic precision is lacking. Words and concepts often have confused or conflated meanings. Categories such as ‘student’ and ‘employer’


15

are treated as homogenous when, as we have seen, in reality they are highly heterogeneous in important ways. ‘Skills’ and ‘values’ sometimes turn out to be implicit in each other. The following example illustrates some of these difficulties. Kakavelakis et al. (2008) used techniques of participant observation to study the training of sales staff within a chain of fitness clubs. A preliminary point revealed by their work is that the complexities already discussed here are reinforced by a further set of issues about how we perceive and report the ‘facts’ of any particular case. What one sees depends in large part on the methodology one uses to look. Hence, these researchers note, there has been a tendency in the past for survey-based research into vocational learning to pre-define its topic in terms of the acquisition of knowledge through formal training, and so to neglect issues both of the nature of training, and of informal learning that occurs outside any structured setting. At the same time, interview and case study based research have often seen learning as primarily a product of participation in the workplace, so tending to understate and under-represent the significance of formal instruction. Observational techniques, these researchers argue, provide a way to address these difficulties. A key skill forming a focus of training within the Kakavelakis et al. study was the deployment of ‘instrumental empathy’. This refers to the establishment of a relationship of trust between sales staff and potential customers, focused on an understanding of the latter’s particular needs, the better to secure their custom. As Kakavelakis et al. (2008, p. 211) note: ‘These programmes tend to conceive the sales process in paradoxical terms, as they simultaneously employ two conflicting idioms: the commercial and the service idiom.’ In a service idiom it is the needs of the customer that are paramount. In a commercial idiom the dominant purpose is the achievement of a sale. While one might debate whether, in principle, these idioms are always and everywhere contradictory, the researchers were in no doubt that in this particular case it was the commercial idiom that dominated within training, through the instruction of staff in the use of sales scripts. Such scripts sought to achieve instrumental empathy through a number of devices. These included, z z

‘matching and mirroring’: the salesperson adopts similar mannerisms and language to the customer ‘hurting and rescuing’: any problems the customer may have are identified and emphasized, with the product then being proposed as a solution

16 z z

Technical and Vocational Education and Training handling objections according to a procedure designed to make them difficult to sustain presenting prices in the most attractive ways

However (and happily), the researchers found a very strong tendency for sales staff to ignore or modify this training in their place of work. This they did for two main classes of reasons. First, some believed that the approaches they had been trained in were unethical. Second, some held that those approaches were actually unworkable and inappropriate in their own particular working environment. A number of interesting points arise from this case. The training received by sales staff was conceived and delivered by the employers in terms of acquisition of particular skills. Yet these skills turned out to be inseparable from questions of value. Further, although the skills in question were defined for the purposes of training in a highly specific fashion, yet sales staff often modified them in the workplace in line with wider, more generic skills set that they already possessed. For example, one sales person adjusted her approach to ‘presenting prices’ from that laid down in training in the light of her own knowledge of the likely preferences and spending power of potential customers in her particular area of Birmingham. She was showing considerable skill at judging the wider context of the business. Finally, therefore, and as Kakavelakis et al. note, these were training processes that greatly underestimated the agency of trainees. In light of the foregoing, it might reasonably asked whether the declared aim of this chapter – to develop an analytical framework the better to understand TVET – is a waste of time. Regularities are scarce, apparent facts turn out to be contested and words prove slippery. However, the answer to this question is ‘no’. In fact, the point at issue has been well-understood since at least the time of John Stuart Mill (1836/1994, 57), who wrote, The conclusions of Political Economy, consequently, like those of geometry, are only true, as the common phrase is, in the abstract … That which is true in the abstract, is always true in the concrete with proper allowances. When a certain cause really exists, and if left to itself would infallibly produce a certain effect, that same effect, modified by all the other concurrent causes, will correctly correspond to the result really produced. (Emphasis in original) The subject matter of social enquiry is always complex, but that means neither that we should abandon the search for evidence of cause and effect,


17

nor that we should hide behind unquestioned and overly-simplistic assumptions. Causes are many, effects are contingent on the interplay of causes, simple causal inter-relationships are scarce: we simply have to deal with it. This is just as well, as there are a number of other dimensions along which TVET may be analysed.

Analysis by Mode of Delivery The most appropriate choice of mode of delivery will depend, among other things, on the intended content of learning, and on the intended beneficiary. At a general level, education and training may take place through formal, non-formal or informal modes. For present purposes these terms are defined following Fien et al. (1999): z z

z

‘Formal education’ takes place within systems operated by schools, colleges and universities. ‘Non-formal’ education takes place outside the formal school system but within other settings organized specifically for the purpose. Those who may provide it include businesses, public-sector organizations, government agencies, not-for-profit organizations and trades unions. ‘Informal education’ takes place outside organized settings. It may involve, for example, the acquisition of attitudes, beliefs and expectations from mass media, or the development of tacit knowledge through learning-bydoing, whether individually or in a social workplace context.

Once again, while this is certainly a useful classificatory framework, the boundaries between these categories are often blurred in practice, and are probably becoming more so with the passage of time. It has long been common for businesses to accept students, as part of their formal education, on work placement schemes of a variety of kinds. Businesses and public bodies also commonly make use of higher education staff for training purposes, and such arrangements may take on a high degree of formality. For example, the Higher Educational Funding Council for England (HEFCE), a body that distributes public money for teaching and research to more than 130 institutions, issued the following statement on 27 November 2008: HEFCE will no longer provide fully-funded additional student numbers (ASNs) for provision that responds to employers’ workforce development needs. Growth in provision that facilitates employer engagement will now

18


be on a co-funded basis. Co-funding means employers contribute a proportion of the full-time equivalent grant (25 per cent to 50 per cent) in addition to any fees (which may be paid by employer or employee). www.hefce.ac.uk/econsoc/employer/cofund/ HEFCE’s intention is to develop, within the formal sector, provision that is non-formal to the extent that it is partly owned by, and meets the specific needs of, commercial organizations. Similarly, informal education is at best imperfectly distinguished from other kinds, a point illustrated by Farrar and Trorey’s (2008) fascinating study of learning by exponents of the craft of dry stone walling. Findings from some respondents in this study suggested that formal, rule-focused instruction achieved little or no educative purchase until it was reflectively examined in an informal, workplace context. These authors are cautious in their conclusions, noting that dry stone walling is in many ways an unusual skill, and that the methodology of their research may have tended to overstate the significance of certain kinds of responses. Nevertheless they are clear that emotional factors, as these relate both to students’ self-perceptions and the social context of learning, are of major importance. We might conclude that a formal description of an educational process is likely never to be complete by itself. Students do not simply learn what they are taught. Still less do they necessarily learn that which is set out in curriculum documents or prescribed in policy texts: and even if they do learn these things, that is not all they learn. Across the dimensions of formal, non-formal and informal education, mode of delivery may also vary according to whether learning is full-time or part-time, whether it occurs face-to-face or at a distance, and what technologies it employs. A great many permutations and techniques are possible. On the one hand, particular teaching arrangements may tend to indicate the use of particular forms of technology: for example, it may seem natural for anyone designing a part-time distance-learning course for international students to consider making use of an online virtual learning environment (VLE). On the other hand, information technologies also create opportunities, in terms of both pedagogy and course design. Hence, for example, the acquisition of new learning and teaching technologies may lead to modifications in the design of formal, full-time programmes. Further, ICT has benefits in terms of both teaching and administration that may enhance the possibilities for economically-viable flexibility in delivery, and for a corresponding customization of training. As one instance of this among many, the author is currently involved with a foundation degree in sports performance that incorporates an entirely discrete and dedicated mode of block delivery designed exclusively for judo practitioners.


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If we approach this aspect of mode of delivery from a technological perspective, we might identify the following possibilities (UIITE, 2003): z

z

z

ICT may be: the focus of the curriculum; a delivery mechanism for the curriculum; an instructional tool within the curriculum; or, a complement to instruction by other means. ICT may be used in specialized ways for: the development of particular attitudes; the development of particular skills; workplace training; study-at-home training; assessment and evaluation; informal skills development; prior learning assessment; and, virtual internship. ICT may facilitate programme support in terms of: programme administration; programme design and development; careers guidance; provision of labour market information; placement activities; information search and retrieval; and, communication.

Finally, an example which well illustrates both the interconnections between mode of delivery and technology, and the potentialities that can arise, is that of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s ‘Flexible Learning Toolboxes Project’. This provides ICT-based resources within that country’s Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. The resources are designed for use by training providers, industry and business. They make recognized training packages available to the vocational education and training sector, and can be customized to meet the particular requirements of users. Toolbox materials are available either in CD format or in smaller, downloadable units or learning objects. Hence they can readily be employed within almost any mode of delivery. Alternatively, they might provide a starting point from which a course designer with a particular brief might begin. The following is a description of just one of these toolboxes: Panel Beating The Toolbox has been designed to be highly graphical and interactive to meet the hands-on approach to apprentice training. The content of the Toolbox is organised by the competencies. Each competency has a number of simulated tasks supported by a number of informative “Teach Me About…” resources. The arrangement of the content has been specifically designed to be easily imported into an online learning management platform. Learners are able to navigate through the competencies by selecting the jobs and tasks associated with them from the Jobs sheets for each competency. (http://toolboxes.flexiblelearning.net.au/series5/503.htm)

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This focus on ‘competencies’ brings us naturally to our next set of categories.

Analysis by Methods of Evaluation and Assessment Evaluation happens to courses, programmes, units of study, modules, curricula and innovations. It involves the making of judgements about whether a particular activity has achieved its objectives. In a perfect world, perhaps, it would be possible to report that educational interventions were always evaluated against the aims and objectives they began with: but it is not a perfect world, and it is not at all unknown for the focus of final evaluation to differ quite radically from the intentions that everyone had when they started. This is simply a fact of educational change and change management (Fullan, 2001). It may happen because circumstances alter in one way or another. It may happen because there was confusion in the first place about, either: exactly what outcomes were desired; or, the compatibility of particular desired outcomes with each other. For example, courses in ‘travel and tourism’ are found in TVET institutions all over the world. The individual student studying such a course is likely to be looking for returns in the form of future employment and income. However, the government may have invested in the TVET tourism sector for the subtly different reason that it wants to see, in years to come, an adequate supply of labour to a growing and competitive tourism industry. There is a significant possibility that success for the government in these terms (plenty of labour available at competitive rates) will be at odds with success on the individual’s terms (plenty of well-paid jobs available). Further, the tourism industry may see the purpose of TVET as the provision of a ‘trained workforce’, possessing those skills most needed in the business context at the moment they graduate, rather than at the time when training is instigated. Given the rapid pace of change in technology and other business parameters, this is likely to seem unfair to TVET practitioners, who may think it unreasonable if they are held to account, in effect, for failing to predict labour-market futures that are, in fact, largely unforeseeable. Each of these different perspectives suggests an alternative focus and approach to evaluation. Further, and so to speak, it is also possible for the evaluation tail to wag the educational dog (Gough, 2000). This can happen where a desire to produce clear cut evaluation results leads to inappropriate requirements (for example, for the identification of ‘measurable objectives’) being imposed in advance on curriculum design. There is nothing whatever


21

wrong with measurable objectives as such. But it is possible, in a field such as TVET, to have objectives that are very difficult to measure. This applies, for example, to recent work on learning cultures (Hodkinson et al., 2007). That culture is resistant to quantification is not a reason for ignoring it when it is clearly of importance. Nor, we should note, is lack of quantification the same thing as lack of evidence (Katayama, 2009). In short, sensible evaluation requires a robust answer to the question: ‘evaluation of what?’ This, in turn, requires clarity about who the desired beneficiaries are. Assessment happens to students. It involves the making of judgements about their knowledge, progress, skills, potentialities and so on. Clearly, what is assessed should correspond quite closely to what has been taught. This does not always happen, however, and anyone with experience of examining is likely to have encountered the kind of situation in which, for example, students have been taught how to perform a particular task but assessed on their ability to design a presentation about it. Assessment may take many forms, and generates a great many issues of a technical nature concerning the design, operationalization, administration, ability to discriminate and fairness of procedures. It may be summative or formative, and may employ feedback from teachers, employers, public bodies or other students in various formats. What is appropriate in any given circumstances is likely to depend upon the particular configuration of beneficiaries, content, and mode of delivery that is present. Although assessment and evaluation are related to each other, they should not be confused. They are related because assessment outcomes provide a source of data for evaluation purposes. How well the students did is an important question in establishing how good the programme was. But it is not the only question, and designing a good assessment is not the same as designing an informative and objective evaluation. There are, it is true, TVET approaches of a particular kind that appear to align assessment and evaluation criteria in large part, and so to render most of the foregoing, if not irrelevant, then at least excessively fussy. These take as their focus the acquisition by students of particular skills or competences. Assessment procedures test whether these have been learned and if, in the aggregate, they have, the programme is evaluated to be a success. As we have already noted, skills not only continue to be a major policy focus, but the reach of skills-oriented policy-making is now extending into educational areas from which it was previously largely absent. Competence is a somewhat wider concept concerned with the functionality of individuals in employment situations.

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The history of skills and competence discourse in the UK has been extensively documented. A concise and informative summary is provided by Winch and Hyland (2007), who present a carefully-argued case that the appeal these conceptions have for policy makers lies in their apparent ability to provide quick and convincingly justifiable solutions to an entrenched and complex problem. This problem is: how should we best educate for a future that is not only difficult, but actually impossible to foretell with certainty, since it depends on variables that are many, interrelated, capricious and incompletely specified? Rather ironically, the problem itself remains constant over time, but is caused by the propensity of a great many other things to change continuously. Of course, no one is saying that skills are a bad thing. Nor is it being suggested that we should regard with indifference, the difference between competence and incompetence. What is at issue is whether these notions provide suitable foundations for TVET. One difficulty is that already mentioned, of knowing what the future holds. Pick any date in the last hundred years and ask yourself what courses would best have been provided, on that date, to enable a young person who was then eighteen years of age to be ideally skilled and competent twenty years later. The correct answer may be apparent with hindsight, but probably was not without it. It is not clear why we should think we can do better today. One response to this is to insist that adaptability to uncertainty be itself included as a skill – in the form, for example, of ‘learning to learn’. Again, being a good learner is clearly advantageous. However, as Winch and Hyland (2007) note, there are problems if we try to classify this aptitude as a ‘skill’ alongside, for example: the ability to perform particular occupational tasks; abilities of an (arguably) generic nature such as problem-solving or planning; and, value and personality orientations such as ‘considering others views’ or ‘being proactive’. The word ‘skill’ has too much work to do: or, to put it the other way about, the word ‘skill’ may appear extremely attractive because it offers to do work that cannot, in fact, be done. If there was a common-denominator linking all the desirable attributes of an ideal workforce then TVET planning would be rendered much easier: but, notwithstanding the facility with which the word ‘skill’ suggests itself in both cases, and even though they are certainly not mutually-exclusive, ‘being proactive’ and ‘being able to hang wallpaper’ are just not the same sort of thing. Further, there is no very convincing reason to think that a person who is proactive in one sort of setting will be similarly inclined in all other settings. The foregoing suggests that the word ‘skill’ will not serve a commondenominator across all those human attributes that are of significance for the


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world of work. However, it seems that sometimes an even stronger claim is being made – that all such attributes are a form of skill, and that the essence of a skill is the ability to perform particular, specifiable actions. Such a behaviourist view accords knowledge and understanding an entirely instrumental role in relation to the world of work. This is inconsistent with contemporary research evidence on TVET (Winch and Hyland, 2007; Hodkinson et al., 2007; Kakavelakis et al., 2008 ). It is also – in a foundational sense, and as we shall see – anti-educational. For these reasons, therefore, we retain here the expectation that a full classification of TVET according to methods of evaluation and assessment has the potential to be complex.

Analysis by Context Mention has already been made of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre, which exists to assist UNESCO’s member states strengthen and upgrade their TVET systems. However, while UNESCO’s total membership numbers, at the time of writing, 191 countries across the globe; and while this book has as its focus TVET provision in general; UNEVOC retains a primary focus on developing countries, countries in transition, and countries in conflict or post-conflict situations. Some contextual issues arise for TVET almost everywhere, some are very specific to particular sets of circumstances. Some generally-occurring issues take radically different forms in different settings. The following message, sent to the UNEVOC online forum in 2008, illustrates one such set of concerns, relating to business education and national development: Just a general observation based on a 25 year career as a US Foreign Service Science Officer: It’s the societal and governmental infrastructure that is absolutely the key. A working, reasonably honest government; a trustworthy banking and finance system; no great societal distortions in income equality; caste oppression; crime; corruption; tyrannical external restrictions (from culture or religion or repressive governments or local gangs or . . . etc) – these make all the difference. It doesn’t have to be perfect and the history of the Asian tigers after the 50’s shows how having the right soil allowed the economic plant to grow. (Message quoted by permission of Teresa Chin Jones) Quite clearly, the design of TVET in terms of beneficiary, content, mode of delivery, assessment and evaluation will need to take account of relative

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societal strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas. On the other hand, if all the required infrastructure is present another set of design issues arise which, while they may in some senses be less extreme, nevertheless require careful treatment. Another 2008 message to the UNEVOC forum provides an insight into the complexity of partnership working between specialized institutions in Ireland. In Ireland we have a Standards Based Apprenticeship System in operation, the curriculum for this system was developed utilising a partnership model which involves the participation of the educations (Institutes of Technology), Training (FAS national training authority) representatives from industry, trade unions and other professional organisations. This system is delivered, assessed and accredited by the Institutes of Technology, FAS and the Further Education and Training Awards Council (FETAC). (Message quoted by permission of Aidan Kenny, Dublin Institute of Technology) We should also note that contextual factors operate at a number of different social levels. We have, for example, just noted an aspect of the context of TVET in Ireland. This takes place within a wider context of European Union policy, and one important aspect of that is the Lisbon Agenda, which follows from an agreement of March 2000 between EU heads of state and government, and aims to make the EU the world-leading knowledgebased economy, characterized by both improved social cohesion and sustainable economic growth. These goals remain in place, notwithstanding the recent economic downturn. On the 4 February 2009, the European Commission website noted that: Significant reforms in initial education and training in several Member States are improving opportunities for young people and over time will help provide employers with a highly skilled and adaptable future work force. But there is not enough progress yet on increasing lifelong learning for adults. The continuing wide gender pay gap is unacceptable. Many Member States also need to do more to put environmental protection and environmental technologies at the centre of their reform agendas and in particular to cut emissions. [http://ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs/ faqs/developments/index_en.htm] This very focused set of interventions at the policy level has a number of implications that the Irish partnership-model (or any other approach used


25

within an EU country) must, at the very least, acknowledge. First, it prioritizes particular educational content, for example skills relating to information and environmental technologies. Second, it identifies desired economic and social benefits at the European level as the basis of educational design. Third, it employs a range of terminologies that are both contestable and open to varied interpretation. These include, for example, ‘sustainability’, ‘globalization’, and ‘solidarity’. Further, both ‘competitiveness’ and ‘cooperation’ are highly valued, raising the question of the circumstances under which one might be preferred to the other, and how the ideal employee within the knowledge-based economy should best decide this in any given case. Finally, and in consequence of all this, it extends the requirement for partnerships upwards. TVET design, within Europe at least, not only involves a range of institutions at roughly the same organizational level within states, it also involves collaborations across national boundaries, and up and down the policy-making and implementation hierarchy. In summary, we might say that the context in which any particular instance of TVET occurs requires, and is amenable to analysis. However, such analysis is also likely to be complex, and to invite confusion where it is incomplete or imperfect.

Other Dimensions of Analysis: Management Style; Pedagogy; Disciplinary Orientation There are, finally, a number of other parameters along which TVET provision may be analysed. These are discussed in a summary way here, but this is not because they are unimportant or simple. On the contrary, they are so fundamental that each is associated with a very extensive literature (or more than one literature). They will be touched upon in the rest of the book where this is appropriate, but a full review lies beyond its scope. In the briefest of outlines, therefore, there is an analytic concern with, z

Management of people, resources, curriculum, and educational processes. Management be: inclusive, participatory and collegial; hierarchical and directive; or, a mixture of these. It may incorporate, either explicitly or tacitly, a number of metaphors, for example: TVET organizations may be thought of as being like machines or like organisms; change may be thought of as a journey from A to B, or as an exploratory adventure; interactions between organization members may be described in family, sporting, or even military terminology.

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Possible Content Possible Beneficiaries

Specific skills: Generic skills: Personal characteristics: Specific competencies: Practical knowledge Theoretical knowledge

•Employers: Sub-classified by: Industry; Sector; Size; Key technologies; Form of ownership; Attitude to workbased learning. •Society

Possible Modes of Delivery •Formal, Non-Formal, Informal or Mixed •Full-time or Part-time •Through simple or complex technologies

TVET Form of Evaluation and Assessment

•Favoured social constituencies •Future generations

Social, economic, political, environmental and historical context

Possible Ends to be Served

•Management approach

Social justice: Individual freedom: National pride: Competitiveness: Education system improvement: Conservation of tradition: Modernization.

•Pedagogic approach

Figure 2.1 Analytical categories for TVET

•Disciplinary approach


•Students: Sub-classified by: Gender; Age; Level of prior achievement; Political status; Socio-economic background; Skills on entry; Domestic status; Employment history .

A Framework for Analysis z

z

27

Pedagogy. Inter alia this may be didactic, interactive, emancipatory, learner-focused, subject-focused, communication-based, mediation-based, or reflexive. It may or may not involve peer learning, distance learning or e-learning. Disciplinary orientations. Those who must make decisions about TVET tend to see it from the perspective of their own training. What seems important is very different, depending on whether one’s overall view is that of an economist, a sociologist, a psychologist, an anthropologist, an educationalist, or an expert in management, politics, international development or international relations.

An overall, summary picture of the dimensions of TVET analysis identified in this chapter will be found in Figure 2.1.

Chapter 3


The subtitle of this book promises an investment-based approach to TVET. In Chapter 1 fulfilment of that promise was, effectively, placed in abeyance by means of the suggestion that investment could for the time being be thought of as involving a sacrifice of some sort in the present for the sake of expected future returns. However, it is no longer possible to proceed without further elaboration of the concept. That process of elaboration necessarily involves discussion of the related concept ‘capital’ which, as we shall see, has historically been an engine of both highly creative and extremely confused thinking, sometimes simultaneously. The overall intention is to use the terms ‘investment’ and ‘capital’ to enhance our understanding of TVET. The present chapter seeks to make clear how those terms will be used to that end, what limitations will be applied to their use, how they have been used by others and, in outline, why it is believed that the present approach is likely to be a productive one.

Investment and Capital: Basics Two simple but important ideas are implicit in notions of investment and capital. First, there is a distinction between stocks and flows. A stock may be measured at a point in time. For example, the number of qualified teachers of automotive mechanics or hairdressers available in a particular setting is a stock. This stock may remain constant while its composition changes over time if, for example, new teachers qualify as other retire. Qualification rates and retirement rates are flows. They are measured over time, as a number of teachers per year or per term. If the relevant flows do not counterbalance each other, then the associated stock will change. So if more teachers qualify than retire, and if there are no other significant flows affecting teacher numbers (such as immigration and emigration, for instance), then the total stock of qualified teachers will rise.


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Second, thinking about investment and capital entails a conception of time-preference. At its most simple, this is the idea that sooner is better than later; that under normal circumstances a benefit in the present will be preferred to the same benefit in one year’s time, while waiting two years will be still less preferred, and so on. This is not intended to be a value-concept. What is being claimed is not that there should be a preference for present over future gratification, but that there is, verifiably, such a preference. It may be possible to imagine instances in which time preference does not apply – that is, cases where persons prefer a future benefit to a present one – though attempts to do this often turn out to involve extremely improbable assumptions about human motivation and behaviour. For present purposes it is sufficient to say that time-preference provides a pretty robust explanatory and predictive tool for understanding much of what people actually do. Of course, the degree of time preference may vary very considerably, depending not only on the nature of the benefit itself but also on a wide range of other contextual parameters. Readers with even the most basic training in economics will by now be struggling to contain their impatience at this apparently laboured exposition. However, it is important for what follows that the meanings here attached to the terms investment and capital are set out in the simplest possible terms. These are that, z z

Investment is a process or act that leads to the creation of capital in some form. Capital is a stock of something that creates flows of benefits in future time periods.

The ‘sacrifice in the present’ identified earlier as being characteristic of investment occurs because the capital is what you get now, while its benefits – the things that are really valued or desired – are what you get later. Before the value of those benefits can be compared to the value of other alternatives available in the present, they must be discounted to take account of time preference, and also possibly of other factors such as any uncertainty about whether they will, in fact, ever materialize. Only if the discounted value of the expected benefits is greater than the opportunity cost of the investment – that is, the present value of the best possible alternative to it – will the investment be worthwhile. To illustrate this as starkly as possible, consider the case of a (completely hypothetical) developing country in which malnutrition is rife. It might be argued that establishing a TVET college in such a country was the best use

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of available national resources or international donations of aid. Such a case would only make sense if the expected future benefits, in terms of a cadre of trained persons able to deploy their skills over a number of years to address the country’s problems and educate others, were valued more highly than the use of the funds to purchase food supplies for immediate distribution to the hungry. We might note that, z

z z z

z

the choice here is between investment (in the college, which will produce a flow of graduates in the future) and consumption (of available resources in the present to stave off hunger); in making this decision, the rate of time preference is crucial; the problem cannot be solved by a simple appeal to moral principle. Neither available option is very good. But, at the same time; neither can the problem be fully solved through the application of some kind of ‘value-free’ algorithm. Judgements of time-preference and opportunity cost are certain to vary between, for example, a person (however well-meaning) who enjoys a relatively comfortable lifestyle as a government strategic planner, and another whose children are at the point of starvation; therefore, while values and facts are clearly not the same thing, they are equally clearly incapable of complete separation within the context of the problem. Facts can helpfully be identified and, if possible, quantified. Facts that really are facts only if certain value-assumptions hold belong in a different category. Clarification of values can only take place within institutional arrangements of one sort or another (democratic elections, for example), while respecting relevant facts.

At its most foundational, the case advanced here for an investment-based approach to TVET is that it provides a framework for thinking about these kinds of complex issues in a clear way. To summarize this initial discussion of investment and capital, we might say that investment involves a decision to forego present satisfaction to create capital. Formally described, capital takes the form of: a stock of assets used, but not used up, in the process of producing a flow of benefits to human beings over time. The value of this stock at any time t is taken to be the net present value (NPV) of the total flow of benefits as at t – that is, the value of the benefits actually flowing from the stock at t, plus the value (appropriately discounted) ascribed at t to the benefits which it is expected to provide in the future, less the corresponding


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values of any present or future costs associated with maintaining the stock in being. (Gough, 2005, p. 94) These calculations are usually referred to as the NPV or ‘discounted cash flow’ (DCF) technique. It will be argued later that the approach is not adequate by itself to evaluate TVET within an investment-based approach. However, let it be noted, it is rigorous, sophisticated, and perfectly adequate for a great many important and useful purposes. The intention is to argue that TVET has special characteristics, not to rubbish tried and tested economic methodologies.

Capital, Skills and Growth There is a history of the use of the word ‘capital’ in relation to TVET. One of the largely unquestioned political certainties of our time is that there is a clear, positive relationship between education and economic growth. This invites the conceptualization that education is a form of investment, and may be taken as grounds to consider education routinely, in exactly the same way as other investment – or ‘capital’ – goods might be considered. Hence, Becker (2006, p. 293) writes, The modern economic environment places more of a premium on education, training, and other sources of knowledge than was true even fifty years ago ... The global economy cannot succeed without considerable investment in human capital by all nations Becker concludes, inter alia, that: human capital is crucially important; much unrecorded adult learning can and does take place; it is in the self-interest of individuals to invest in themselves through learning; and, learning and the development of ‘human capital’ are particularly significant because of their potential to promote technological innovation at a high level. These beliefs continue to be prevalent, both in the world’s mature economies and in the developing world. However, they do merit closer examination. That a relationship exists between education and growth may well be beyond question, but whether it is always and everywhere both clear,

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or strongly positive, is an entirely different matter. In some quarters there are grave doubts. For example, following a review of the evidence Wolf (2002, pp. xii–xiii) has written, The simple one-way relationship which so entrances our politicians and commentators – education spending in, economic growth out – simply doesn’t exist. Among the complicating possibilities that arise here are that, perhaps: only particular kinds of education are consistently effective in raising economic growth; education is only effective at raising economic growth under particular kinds of social and/or economic and/or political circumstances; and, the particular circumstances that matter here are not those that exist now – that is, at the time the education is delivered – but those that eventually turn out to be present in an uncertain and unpredictable future. That only particular kinds of education are associated with higher economic growth seems to be something that most commentators do believe. The issue is really how far we can be sure just what those ‘particular kinds’ of education should be. Even sceptics such as Wolf (2002) do not doubt that basic numeracy and literacy are very important, and it also seems broadly clear that labour markets usually tend to place a high value on more advanced numerical skills. Where attempts have been made to specify the vocational content of the curriculum in great detail the results have sometimes been extremely disappointing, as illustrated in Britain, for example, by the ten-year history of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) after 1986, which consumed much time, effort and money even as increasing proportions of young people opted to remain in full time education, so substantially marginalizing the approach to technical and vocational training it had created. However, this has not been the case everywhere. The example most frequently celebrated as a success story is probably the ‘Dual System’ in Germany, which combines theoretical instruction with practical, workplace-based experience. A particular feature of this system is its orientation towards change in the future. Vocational training should prepare people for specific occupations, to be pursued immediately after the completion of training, but it should also prepare people for further learning. Vocational training must build «bridges to further training ». For this reason, two of its important components include promoting willingness to learn and fostering personality development. To work


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in the knowledge society, people must be able to plan, carry out and check their work independently. Vocational training within the dual system should be oriented to this aim. (BMBF, 2003, original emphasis) One very influential theoretical treatment of this issue involves a distinction between ‘high-skill’ and ‘low-skill’ routes to national economic growth (Ashton and Green, 1996). This work is particularly pertinent to the above examples, because it cites the UK as an example of a country that has followed the low-skill route, and Germany as an example of the high-skill route. However, matters are not as simple as they might seem. First, it is important to note that to conflate the significance of ‘highskills’ in Ashton and Green’s work with Becker’s (2006, p. 294) emphasis on ‘technological innovation and the high-tech sector’ would be to ignore very significant differences between them. It is true that Ashton and Green identify the Germany of the time as a country with high skill levels, high wages, and high productivity arising from the use of leading-edge technologies in high value-added industries, and also that they contrast these characteristics with those then present in the UK. However, they are cautious about the nature of the relationships between these characteristics, noting the incompleteness of the evidence and the imperfections of the underlying measurements. They point to further sources of possible confusion, for example the error of assuming that new technology always creates new skills requirements, when in fact it may simply replace some workers, and/or reduce the skills required by others. Most significantly, Ashton and Green emphasize the crucial importance of the role of institutions in determining growth outcomes. In short, they offer a far more measured, variegated, sociological analysis than does Becker. Secondly, though much has changed since Ashton and Green’s analysis was first published, it is far too glib to dismiss their analysis by reference to the relative fortunes of (among others) the British, German, American and Japanese economies since that time. Ashton and Green themselves are quite explicit in stating that their analysis should not be thought of as free of all time constraints. They do not say that a high skills approach will ensure growth for ever, referring rather to a timeframe of ‘at least a decade’ (Ashton and Green, 1996, p. 6). Further, they are clear that, as institutions change, so will the conditions of growth. So, on the one hand, Wolf (2002) is quite right to point out that problems in the German Dual System mean that it is no longer everywhere regarded with the unqualified admiration that it once was, and that the US economy was already booming by the time Ashton and Green’s book appeared in print to describe it a low-skills-route

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country. But, on the other hand, these points cause only superficial damage to their overall argument, because they do not fully engage with the conceptual depth of the work that underpins it. Notwithstanding the above, we may say that, in policy terms, the notion that high skills are essential continues to dominate. In 2008, the view of the UK Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education quoted in Chapter 1 – that high skills equate to prosperity – is widely accepted. That education only raises economic growth under particular kinds of circumstances is also uncontroversial to some degree. It seems beyond doubt that social, economic and political conditions affect the relationship between education and growth. Beyond that, however, difficulties and doubts quickly arise. First, at any given moment in time, there is never (and, it will be argued below, can never be) a universal consensus about what social, economic and political conditions actually are. Of course, there is an increasing availability of ever more sophisticated statistics, and these are undoubtedly often useful: more knowledge is better than less. However, whether these statistics measure the ‘right’ variables, how those variables are causally related to each other, and at what social, geographical and temporal scales they should best be measured and compared, are questions that necessarily involve judgements both of value, and of fact in the absence of full information. Failure to acknowledge these inconvenient uncertainties can result in sloppy thinking and/or methodological absurdity. Examples of sloppiness include glib assertions about the contemporary rate of change (which is often declared to be unusually rapid – but perhaps people have always believed that? And how could you know?) and the effects of globalization (which can be seen as anything from catastrophically bad to almost universally good). To illustrate the methodological pitfalls: the author recently heard an internationally eminent economist tell a distinguished audience, first, that future planning in a particular policy area was constrained by the existence of ‘unknown unknowns’, and secondly that it would be an appropriate target to reduce the resulting uncertainties by 30 per cent over the coming time period. How it might be possible to produce quantifiable changes in unspecifiable, undetectable and unpredictably-significant variables was not explained, but this objective will undoubtedly have been incorporated into somebody’s ‘strategy’. Furthermore, particular accounts of the relationship between social, economic and political circumstances on the one hand, and growth on the other, are regularly challenged not only by the arguments of those who hold different underlying assumptions, but also by unfolding events. For example, accounts of the distinctive policy context of education and growth


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in ‘Asian Tiger Economies’ (see, for example, Ashton and Sung, 1997) were ambushed by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. This should not be taken to mean that those analyses were wrong or devoid of insight. It simply means that the future can never be fully foreseeable, however thorough we may be. At the time of writing, we must wait to see how the developing international credit crisis of 2008–09 impacts upon the credibility of current theories. For example, one view that has received much recent attention is that education and training now take place in the context of a global marketplace for jobs, leading to an international division of labour as high-skill jobs concentrate in ‘magnet economies’ (Reich, 1991; Brown and Lauder, 2006). In their critique of this perspective, Brown and Lauder (2006, p. 333) note: The focus on individual employability (supply side) rather than a political commitment to job creation (demand side) is a political sleight of hand that shifts the responsibility for employment firmly onto the shoulders of individuals rather than the state. In 2008 many of those champions of personal responsibility became advocates of massive intervention by the state. Robert Reich himself wrote in his online blog of 20 October 2008, as follows: taxpayers are financing a massive effort to save Wall Street’s balance sheets from Wall Street’s previous off-balance-sheet excesses. It won’t work. It can’t work. The entire effort is merely saving the asses of lots of executives and traders who got us into this mess in the first place, and whose asses should not be saved at taxpayer risk and expense. What to do? Immediately require the Treasury to stop the broad Wall Street recapitalization, and require Wall Street to lend the money directly to Main Street. At the same time, force Wall Street to write down its true balance sheets: Let the executives and traders take the hit. Let their shareholders and even their creditors take the hit for Wall Street’s colossal irresponsibility. This is the only true way to restore trust. It’s also the only way to save Main Street’s small businesses, homeowners, students, and everyone else. [http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/10/meltdown-part-iv.html] But the more things change, the more they stay the same. When markets fail some conclude that markets do not work, others that they have been prevented from working properly. On the first account the scope of market forces should be reduced; on the second account markets should be enabled

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to work more fully. Reich may be advocating state intervention and direction, but this is to be in the service of properly operating markets. No doubt the future holds many further surprises, but we may be reasonably certain that this particular underlying controversy, about the nature of markets and their proper role, will continue unresolved. Without such a resolution, the actual nature of ‘social, economic and political circumstances’ will remain a matter of dispute. Talk of uncertainty leads logically to a discussion of the claims that the future may have on the present. It is widely accepted that a legitimate purpose of education is to help society meet its skills-needs for the future. From the point of view of the individual student, education is about learning that is expected to be in demand in years to come. Hence, from an economic perspective, it can be argued that, An investment in education is tantamount to an investment in a machine which can be fitted on to the human body and which improves one’s performance in the workplace. (Johnes, 1993) One obvious problem with this is that future skills-needs may be, to a significant degree, unknown in the present. The ‘machine’ may become obsolete – sometimes even before it is fully fitted. To the extent that education has an influence on the future preferences of individuals (for goods and services, for leisure versus work, for self-interested versus altruistic behaviour, and so on), and on their capacities (for example, for innovation and creativity) it even seems quite possible that such skills-needs will be partly a consequence of education in the present. One possible response to this situation involves a commitment to the notion of ‘learning to learn’. Fredricksson and Hoskins (2007, p. 129) offer the following analysis of the definition of this term adopted by the European Council (2006) – a body that sets general political guidelines across the European Union: It contains what have been referred to as affective and cognitive dimensions. The affective dimension refers to social skills, which can be seen in the definition when references are made to ‘learning relationships’, ‘motivation’, ‘confidence’, ‘learning strategies’ and the ‘ability to overcome obstacles’. The cognitive dimensions are referenced in the definition in relationship to the ‘capacity to gain’, ‘process and assimilate new knowledge’ and ‘students organizing their own learning’ . . . The definition emphasizes that the combined skills should be able to be used in multiple different contexts by the individual who has them.


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This idea is linked to that of ‘lifelong learning’, and might described as a form of human capital. It is to the idea of capital that we now return.

Capital Confusion This book insists on a very basic underlying definition of capital, because the term has, in fact, been put to extraordinarily prolific use across a wide range of fields. Many of these usages (in addition to that of ‘human capital’) have a bearing on TVET. The problem is that using a single word to describe a great many different things may create an entirely false perception that they can all be treated in the same way. In Chapter 1 it was mentioned that the term may be employed either literally or metaphorically. Sometimes this distinction is fairly clear. For example, capital is literally what is at stake when contemporary banks are said to be under-capitalized. They do not have a sufficient stock of assets to support the further lending that would generate a flow of returns for themselves while simultaneously facilitating productive activity in the wider economy. On the other hand, and for example, when environmental conservationists describe biodiversity as ‘natural capital’, it is clearly a metaphorical usage. Biodiversity is not really a stock. Nor, in fact, is it measureable with presently available techniques – it can be estimated at a point in time, but that is not the same thing. Clearly there are net benefits to human beings that derive from biodiversity. However, ‘human beings’ is not an homogenous category. That which creates a benefit for one person may create a cost for another, and it may be that neither is measureable without an appeal to value-judgements that may not be shared by everyone. Further, ‘a source of a flow of future benefits to humans’ hardly amounts to an adequate description of biodiversity, or of the status of humans within it. Nevertheless, and in keeping with the nature of metaphor, capital is a powerful way of thinking about biodiversity because, although it is not the same thing, there are suggestive parallels to be drawn. If you sell your house and spend the proceeds on a holiday you will have nowhere to live afterwards. Something similar applies if you eradicate (however profitably) the organisms that provide food for yourself, and for each other, and which also maintain the services of the ecosystem you inhabit. One question that suggests itself, therefore, is whether TVET amounts to an investment in actual or metaphorical capital. We can already say that, given the very large number of possible beneficiaries for TVET, this is potentially not one single question, but several separate ones. And to

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address them, even then, requires yet a further round of preliminary clarification because it turns out that the literal meaning of capital is far from universally agreed upon. In a recent paper Hodgson (2008) notes the many aspects of this problem. Within economic philosophy itself capital has variously been taken to signify physical assets, forms of finance, or specific kinds of social relationships. For Adam Smith and David Ricardo it was a stock of physical assets, while for Karl Marx it was primarily and essentially a type of relationship within particular, historically-contextualized forms of society. Thorstein Veblen emphasized the importance to production of accumulated, socially-transmitted knowledge. Alfred Marshall distinguished individual from social capital. However, by social capital he meant the stock of goods collectively held by a society, and this is very different from more contemporary usage. Coleman (1997/1988) influentially defined social capital in terms of those characteristics of social structures that facilitate the actions of individual and corporate actors, and so distinguished it, not only from physical capital, but also from ‘human capital’ (Becker, 1964). Human capital describes the skills and knowledge possessed by individuals. It has been particularly influential on thinking about the economics of education (Woodhall, 1997). Also influential in educational thought has been Bourdieu (1977; 1990) who further distinguishes cultural capital and symbolic capital. Interestingly, in this account machines are described as an objectified state of cultural capital, so apparently closing a rather laborious terminological circle. Whatever the merits of all this, it is hard to dissent from Hodgson’s (2008, p.130) observation that the associations of the word capital are now ‘promiscuous’. As he also (p. 129) remarks: ‘If you are not confused by all this, then you are under-informed’. Finally, and as Hodgson (2008) also points out, the apparently wanton proliferation of capital concepts has had an important consequence. If education (including, of course, TVET), communities of practitioners, family relationships, cultural traditions, social institutions and more or less anything else useful can be thought of as one form or another of capital, then no one should be surprised if it is widely assumed that all these phenomena can be valued using conventional capital-valuation tools. That this monetarization of social value may be at odds with the intentions of some of the originators of particular capital concepts is beside the point. It is at this point that the notion of ‘capital as metaphor’ is useful. The view taken in this book is that TVET is not capital literally – either as such, or in any adjectival form. At the same time, however, capital provides a powerful metaphor for thinking about TVET, just as, for example, military strategy can sometimes be a metaphorical source of effective thinking about competitive


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team sports, though no sensible person imagines that they are really the same thing. We can therefore usefully ask whether techniques of capital valuation are useful in thinking about TVET, but at the same time retain our capacity for qualitative, moral and educational judgements that may in certain circumstances lead us to qualify the answers those techniques reveal. This is what is meant, in this book, by ‘an investment-based approach’.

Investing in TVET To recap, if we think of TVET as being analogous to a process that creates a stock of financial or physical capital, but as creating instead a stock of skills, knowledge and dispositions that are expected to generate future returns, then we are likely to think about it using the rules of thinking which economists employ to study such financial and physical assets. Indeed, that this can be done is precisely the attraction of the approach. A technique which appears to work in one domain is suddenly made available, and warranted, in another. Experience and expertise can be transferred wholesale from problems that are very well understood (such as pricing industrial equipment) to the erstwhile slippery, qualitative terrain of educational planning, design, delivery and evaluation. Very useful results may be produced. For example, we have noted already that one issue for TVET provision is that of identifying (and subsequently perhaps targeting) the intended beneficiaries. These might be students, businesses or society. Work using the concept of human capital enables us better to understand how benefits might actually be allocated between these different constituencies. For example, Bowman and Swart (2007, p. 497) write, Two key conditions give the providers of human capital greater influence over the value capture process. Firstly, where their skills are difficult to replicate, and secondly, if they can choose to apply their skills elsewhere, that is, if their skills are mobile. We might possibly conclude from this that, z

z

Where TVET is supplied in the workplace employers may have an interest in customizing its skills-content to a degree that makes it difficult for the recipients of training to take their skills elsewhere Students are likely to obtain the greatest benefit from training that develops high-order skills with uses in multiple contexts

40 z

Technical and Vocational Education and Training Societies facing a ‘brain-drain’ of the most highly skilled TVET graduates might counter this to the extent that TVET can be made locally specific

Nevertheless, the point remains that TVET is not the same thing as other, more traditional forms of capital. This leads necessarily to two further questions. The first has already been touched upon. It is: are there aspects of TVET that cannot, or should not, be thought of using investment and capital concepts at all? Any educator’s answer to this is likely to be a straightforward ‘yes’. Education has intrinsic as well as instrumental value. It is more than just a device for solving social problems in line with political and economic forecasts that are, experience teaches us, not only highly unlikely to be accurate over anything other than the very short term, but also very likely indeed to be confounded by surprise and novelty. However, for the purposes of developing an investment-based approach to TVET it is the second question that is more suggestive: Do routine approaches to the valuation of capital assets give the greatest traction when thinking about TVET? Or are there other, more specialized techniques to which appeal might be made for insight and inspiration?

Valuing Options A problem arises when one tries to apply the standard NPV approach (whether literally or metaphorically) to TVET. This is that future benefits can only be envisaged and calculated using present knowledge. As noted, it would be simply unprecedented for forecasts across the range of variables bearing on an individual’s employment to be accurate over anything remotely approaching the span of a person’s working life. We know that our knowledge is fatally incomplete. This is not as bad as it sounds, because we also know that we can learn. Human history normally proceeds, not through the exact implementation of a previously finalized plan, but through adaptive responses to emerging circumstances. This does not mean that planning is redundant, but that implementation is almost always contingent. As Napoleon put it, in his own military context: In forming the plan of a campaign, it is requisite to foresee everything the enemy may do, and be prepared with the necessary means to counteract it. Plans of the campaign may be modified ad infinitum according to the circumstances, the genius of the general, the character of the troops, and the features of the country. (quoted by US Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1995, II-18)


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However, the net present value approach to capital evaluation is unable to incorporate the possibility of learning. It deals with what we know, and always regards uncertainty as a problem, never as an opportunity. It locks us into a way of thinking about TVET that is deeply conservative. Ironically, it does so even as TVET advocates and policy-makers stress the importance of future innovation, creativity and enterprise. The following quotation from a contemporary UK Government policy document is quite unremarkable in itself, but illustrates rather well how well-chosen words can anaesthetize us both to the problem of planning necessarily slow educational processes in response to rapid and unpredictable change, and, by the way, to the problem that there is room for disagreement about who the primary beneficiaries of TVET should be. Apprenticeships will help build a workforce fit for the future, and in turn we will all benefit, because this country needs better and more relevant skills to compete in the global economy. Apprenticeships are both a significant benefit to the economy, and a valuable qualification for the individual who trains in this way. (DCSF/DIUS, 2008, 1) It is not intended to suggest that this statement and others like it are absurd. No doubt apprenticeships are, and will continue to be, an important aspect of TVET. And, as already noted, plans have to be made even if they are going to be lightly held. Emphatically, it is not being suggested either that conventional economic analysis is somehow flawed or nonsensical. It is very good at doing what it does. Rather, the claim is these approaches are incomplete in relation to TVET, because TVET has additional elements that they do not well describe. These issues have been recently explored from a related educational perspective through a UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project on natural capital and learning (Foster and Gough, 2005). This drew the conclusion that there was value in retaining a focus on investment and capital, but introducing a further approach derived from the literatures of management and economics (Moore, 2001; Mun, 2002; Pannell and Schilizzi, 2006). This depends on the idea that, under uncertainty, investment decisions create or close off particular options. To put it very simply, NPV analysis usefully tells us what the expected future benefits of a possible investment are worth now. Options (or ‘real options’) analysis insists that the total present worth of the investment should further take account of future options maintained, created or closed off by making it.

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The approach first originated in financial markets, and has also been used in relation to physical assets (Amram and Kulatilaka, 1999). A number of examples of this alertness to the value of options in business practice have been recorded by Mun (2002). These include, z

z

z

z

The maintenance of a less-than-optimum distribution of capacity to assemble finished computers by HP-Compaq, so that extra demand in particular countries can be swiftly met by product assembly in those countries. The value of the option of flexible assembly was judged to outweigh possible savings from the rationalization of product assembly facilities. The laying of surplus fibre optic cable by Sprint and AT&T in order to create an option to respond rapidly to future, presently uncertain increases in demand. The maintenance by General Motors of contracts for raw materials supplies in excess of actual requirements. In this way an option is created to switch suppliers in response to regional price fluctuations. The development of multiple simultaneous designs for new aircraft by Boeing in the full knowledge that only one will ever actually be built. The cost is justified by the option to switch designs at a late stage in response to presently unknowable market data.

Mun (2002, p. 10) goes on to argue that, Some of the answers generated through the use of the traditional discounted cash flow model are flawed because the model assumes a static, one-time decision-making process while the real options approach takes into consideration the strategic management options certain projects create under uncertainty . . . the real options approach incorporates a learning model such that management makes better and more informed strategic decisions when some levels of uncertainty are resolved through the passage of time. So, we might continue to think about TVET as a rather complicated form of investment. We might (with or without trying to quantify anything) ask ourselves whether the benefits we predict from it in the future are worth whatever outlays of time and resources will be required now. But we might, at the same time, ask ourselves what future options might be implicated in our decisions, and whether this changes our overall evaluation of the alternatives before us.


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For example, we might face a situation in which the development of a new technology raises fears that a particular future skills shortage will occur. Governments are likely to encourage TVET in relation to that skill in order to avert the perceived threat of a loss of national competitiveness. Students may be persuaded that there will be high labour-market demand for those skills, accompanied by high wages. They may therefore enrol in large numbers. The private sector may also contribute to a climate of crisis and shortage as they try to recruit suitable skilled staff before there has been time for much training to happen. TVET institutions will be under pressure to develop appropriate curricula, recruit appropriate teaching staff, and make appropriate resources of space and materials available – though it is likely that these will be sourced in large part by taking them away from other uses. All this is perfectly reasonable, and based on quite rational judgements about the future costs and benefits of present actions. But all sorts of things may then happen. Labour-market shortages may be greater even that expected. Or, perhaps, there may be oversupply of skilled labour as students graduate in large numbers and opportunities turn out to be more modest than forecasters anticipated. Other, even more attractive opportunities may appear, perhaps in the same broad skills area. The technology that started it all may turn out to be more expensive than expected, or defective in some vital way. Older, established skills may become the focus of retro-fashion just as the last lecturer able to teach them signs an early-retirement deal, and the last teaching space devoted to them is refitted. If the TVET institution in question was guided by options-thinking it would still need to respond to the situation using the best knowledge and forecasts available at the time. However, it might also consider, z z z

z

z

Maintaining a breadth of skills and talents across the staff in order to keep options to switch provision open. Maximizing the amount of multiple-use or generic space for the same reason. Avoiding rushing into associated capital development projects, while budgeting for the extra cost of very rapid development should this prove necessary. Maintaining minimum expertise in apparently marginal areas of provision rather than shutting them down completely. This creates the option to expand them again later. Developing parallel strategies, delaying the necessity to choose between them where reasonably possible.

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Finally, we should note the addition of an options element to our thinking about TVET may be useful for descriptive as well as prescriptive reasons, that is, it may help us to understand what has happened in the past even as it provides a new perspective on what might be done next. For instance, there is at least circumstantial evidence that young people take account of future options when making choices in relation to vocational provision. Winch and Hyland (2007, p. 29) write that, The history of VET in England in the twentieth century can be viewed as a series of short-lived and unsatisfactory attempts to reform the system in the light of a number of persistent problems . . . which, at the time of writing, seem to be worsening. Wolf (2002) has suggested that one reason young people have often tended to reject vocational provision is because they see quite well that other routes offer them greater employment flexibility in the future. That is, they have placed a decisive value on the availability of options under uncertainty.

Theory and Practice: Realism and Instrumentalism In Chapter 1, we noted that TVET can be considered at a number of distinct levels: as a system of training; as an element within educational policy; or, an aspect of globalized social change. There are people working at all three of these levels whose concerns are first and foremost of a practical nature. They may ask, respectively, and for example: how is training in the construction industry best evaluated? What balance between development and conservation will best support growth in the tourism industry? What are the implications for TVET of the international migration of labour? Finding answers to questions of this sort may well be urgent, and may seem to have very little to do with theoretical reflections upon, for example, the nature of capital, the use of metaphor or the valuation of options. Objections of this sort are understandable, and deserve a serious response. However, that response can only begin by pointing out that there is, in fact, no such thing as ‘theory-free practice’ in TVET – or, at least, if there is then it is indistinguishable from random guesswork. Further, even if such practice proved to be one hundred percent successful in a particular case, some sort of (at least tacit) theory would be needed to enable the replication of that success on subsequent occasions. In fact, evidence suggests that, far from


45

having no theory, practitioners may often have (at least) two (Argyris and Schön, 1978; 1996). Their ‘espoused’ beliefs – those which they say, and perhaps believe, they have – may diverge markedly from their ‘theories in use’, that is, those which appear observably to guide what they actually do. If theory is always present in some way, then we need to understand exactly what, in applied area such as the study of TVET, its proper relationship to practice might be. In turn, this requires a brief reflection upon the nature and purposes of (social) scientific enquiry. Broadly speaking, there have historically been two schools of thought on this point (Hausman, 1994). The first is that of ‘scientific realism’, for which science should not only seek to make predictions that prove to be accurate and dependable, but also to reveal underlying truths than make it possible to explain why those predictions were correct. The second, termed ‘instrumentalism’, focuses exclusively on developing the means by which correct and useful predictions may be made. Both positions accept that science may engage with theories that relate to properties and concepts that cannot be directly observed. For the instrumentalists, however, it is not the proper business of science to make truth-claims about such properties. A good theory is useful: whether it is ultimately in some sense ‘true’ or not is neither here nor there. An example of this difference of views as it plays itself out in thinking about economic issues will both clarify this point, and also illustrate the relationship of theory to practice that underpins the application of ideas about investment and capital to TVET in this book. A common criticism of modern, mainstream, ‘neoclassical’ economics, arising from both outside and within the profession of economics, is that its modelling of economic interactions is unrealistic. In particular, criticism has been directed at the theoretical notion of ‘perfect competition’. This is accorded great predictive significance by some, even though it would appear that many of its foundational assumptions – such as the availability of perfect information to market actors, the homogeneity of units of output, the inability of individual firms to influence price, and, more broadly, the self-interested motivation of persons – are at the very least contestable in almost all particular cases. Protagonists on this point often have almost nothing to say to each other. On one side the argument is, ‘these assumptions are manifestly false’: on the other side comes the response, ‘so what?’. The difference rests on nothing less than competing views of the purpose of science. Making the case for an ‘instrumentalist’ view, Milton Friedman (1953/ 1994), in a famous essay, addresses precisely this ‘perfect competition’ controversy. He argues that the only proper focus in evaluating a theory is the

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accuracy of the predictions that arise from it, and not the verity of its assumptions. This position derives from a view of theory as having two aspects. The first is that any theory develops a kind of language, which enables the classification of elements of a problem into usefully-discrete categories. Such a language, says Friedman, has no intrinsic content of its own. Rather it is, like a filing-cabinet, simply a means of bringing order to complexity in relation to those aspects of reality under examination. In relation to TVET, the development of such a classificatory tool was attempted in Chapter 2. The second aspect of theory is a set of hypotheses which abstract from reality in particular ways, the better to make predictions about those aspects of that reality that are its focus. The theory as a whole then stands or falls according to whether those predictions prove consistent with actual outturns across the relevant range of phenomena. As for a theory’s underlying assumptions, Friedman (1953/1994, p. 188) writes, The relevant question to ask about the ‘assumptions’ of a theory is not whether they are descriptively ‘realistic’, for they never are, but whether they are sufficiently good approximations for the purpose in hand. And this question can be answered only by seeing whether the theory works, which means whether it yields sufficiently accurate predictions. All of this bears on the present discussion of TVET. We have noted that, although the approach taken here is one that draws heavily on conceptions of investment and capital, the literal identification of TVET with some form of capital concept is resisted. Rather, TVET is considered to have metaphorical equivalence to investment, because this provides a perspective that is useful, even though ultimately unrealistic. It is then further argued that traditional NPV approaches to capital, though useful and suggestive, do not ‘yield sufficiently accurate predictions’ by themselves. It is therefore proposed to supplement them with ideas derived from thinking within the economics and management literature about special cases of capital valuation, that is, with ideas about options and their value. There is a final twist. In the foregoing paragraphs Friedman’s analysis performs for the present argument, in part, the ‘filing-cabinet’ function he himself describes. It makes possible clarity about the ways in which theory is being used to inform practice in relation to TVET. However, turning to Friedman’s second aspect of theory: it remains a hypothesis of this book that assumptions can and should be tested, where necessary by philosophical rather than empirical means. This is because, in the social sciences, any knowledge claim has a degree of specificity in time and place. The complex


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reality that theory ‘abstracts from’ changes, perhaps, in part, because of the effect of human practices upon it. The following observation by Frank Knight (1924, p. 262–3), at one time Friedman’s tutor at the University of Chicago, illustrates this in relation to economic thinking at the most fundamental level: Wants are usually treated as the fundamental data, the ultimate driving force in economic activity, and in the short-run view of problems this is scientifically legitimate. But in the long run it is just as clear that wants are dependent variables, that they are largely caused and formed by economic activity. The case is somewhat like that of a river and its channel; for the time being the channel locates the river, but in the long run it is the other way round. Later chapters will return to this matter of questioning assumptions, most particularly with regard to the question of whether, over time, TVET can so impact upon society as to alter the fundamental conditions of its own operation. These matters do have great significance – in the end, and to use Friedman’s words – on whether our theories are ‘sufficiently good approximations for the purpose in hand’.

Chapter 4


This case study draws extensively on the resources made available by the author’s membership of the UNESCO Working Group on Water Education and Capacity Building for Sustainable Development (GWESD). This body was established by the science and education sectors of UNESCO. Its meetings took place in Paris, and its discussions were initially focused by a specially prepared issues paper of 3 April 2007. It should be noted that the purpose of GWESD was to provide expert guidance and advice to UNESCO, the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) and their partners on a range of issues relating to water education, not to formulate policy. Therefore, this chapter represents the author’s own views, and not necessarily those of UNESCO-IHP, even though it unashamedly seeks to draw attention to the excellent work those organizations do. IHP is an international scientific programme in water research, water resources management, education and capacity-building, operating under the auspices of UNESCO. It seeks to develop and disseminate knowledge on hydrology and hydrology-related issues in order to achieve applied benefits in water management at both global and local levels. Also within UNESCO’s portfolio of water-education-related activities is its Institute for Water Education (IHE), which has its headquarters in Delft, the Netherlands. This provides an integrated suite of courses and knowledge-sharing initiatives for a wide range of learners. Courses can be custom-designed for particular clients using a range of pedagogic techniques such as workshops, groupwork, lectures, presentations, role-play, case-studies, visits and so on. A similar range of approaches is also used in the provision of short courses, of one to four weeks in length, in particular aspects of: water management; municipal water and infrastructure; water science and engineering; and, environmental science. These same four broad headings are also addressed through IHE’s Online Learning Environment, in the form of online courses. Postgraduate study at masters and doctoral levels is also available, and alumni are able to remain part of a ‘Virtual Alumni Community’.


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To sample just one aspect of this provision in slightly more detail, at the time of writing UNESCO-IHE was advertising the following online courses: water and climate change; cleaner production and the water cycle; constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment; decision support systems in river basin management; ecological sanitation; flood modelling for management; integrated coastal zone management; integrated river basin management; public and private partnerships in the water sector; sanitationrelated urban groundwater pollution; service oriented management for irrigation systems; solid waste management and engineering; water and environmental law and policy; water quality assessment; water transport and distribution; and, wetlands management [see: www.unesco-ihe.org/ Education/Short-courses/Online-courses/(offset)/15]. These headings are significant at levels of study from the training of technicians all the way through to original doctoral research. The vertical integration of provision achieved by UNESCO-IHE recognizes this. To see the substantive area of TVET in relation to water as integrated in this way is consistent with the defined central concern of this book with ‘the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work.’ It is also very much at odds with the view expressed by Wolf (2002), and noted in Chapter 1, that TVET is merely a poor second-best option for relatively unsuccessful, or otherwise disadvantaged learners.

Water and TVET: Some Basic Considerations Of the world’s population, 20 per cent have no permanent natural supply of freshwater (World Water Assessment Programme, 2006). Only 15 per cent has a plentiful supply. Around the world, supply is further threatened by factors such as groundwater depletion and the retreat of glaciers. It is, of course, essential that freshwater remains uncontaminated, and yet in developing countries as a whole sanitation coverage is less than 50 per cent. Beyond its role in the direct satisfaction of one of the most basic of human needs, water is also centrally implicated in a complex web of cause and effect that explains the widespread incidence of hunger and poverty in the world. Education and the development of skills are therefore important at a number of levels. First, they may relate to the direct accessing of the water resource. Second, they may concern the utilization of that resource for economic purposes, for example through irrigation. A key issue here is that water supply systems – and the institutions that are responsible for their oversight – are often designed in ways that do not respond to the integrated

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lifestyle needs of users. For example, if the focus is too closely on water for drinking then small-scale economic activity may be choked off. On the other hand, an exclusive focus on irrigation may impair drinking water provision, or neglect non-crop uses such as the keeping of cattle. Third, education may enable activities in which water is not directly implicated, but which render particular uses of water resources viable. For example, skills of marketing or financial management may make it possible to use water successfully in production processes that would otherwise be economically non-viable. Fourth, as Wood (1999, p. 731) notes in a study of water issues in Bangladesh: ‘Water management is a democratic not a technocratic issue’. Hence skills of participation and conflict resolution may be of great significance. The term ‘Integrated Water Resources Management’ (IWRM) has been coined to describe approaches that attempt to manage this complex of inter-related elements in a co-ordinated way. The interlinking and potential significance of water issues and education is further apparent across a wider range of policy concerns. These include, z z

z

z

z

Hydropower. While Europe exploits roughly three quarters of its hydropower potential, the figure for Africa is less than 10 per cent. Risk and disaster management. Droughts and floods occur naturally but are affected by both quantitative and qualitative aspects of human actions. Factors include the exploitation of forests, the management of soil erosion and deposition, urban development and saltwater intrusion into groundwater reserves. Water sharing arrangements. These are particularly problematical when the resource in question crosses national boundaries. As already noted, civic-society participation skills are likely to be important. So too are a range of technical and management skills, knowledge of a wider geographical and temporal context than individuals might normally require, and, on the part of experts and policy-makers, a grasp of the fact that important local, traditional and experiential knowledge that is likely to be diffused among communities. Water valuation. In anything other than the simplest and most idyllic of societies, water is not and cannot be free. Unless institutional arrangements respect the opportunity costs of water in different uses, and allocate those costs appropriately, the result will be distortion of one sort or another, in everything from social justice to international trade. International targets. One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDCs) is to halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015 and to end unsustainable exploitation of water resources.

Case Study One: Water Education z

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Capacity building. For example, primary education in basic hygiene may generate a multiplier effect as knowledge is passed on within the family. This may then lead to improved health, productivity and economic security. Similarly, it is true around the world that girls are less likely to participate in education than boys, yet in most developing countries women produce the greatest part of the food while often being excluded from decision-making in relation to water use. Education, of both men and women, may be a necessary condition for the unlocking of benefits that existing institutional arrangements render unachievable.

While many of the foregoing issues are clearly matters of life or death in less-developed countries, they are hardly less serious in the developed world. Quite apart from headline-making events such as floods and wildfires, the enduring and generic significance of water education in rich countries may be seen in the wide range of resources devoted to it. For example, although water education does not appear as such in the National Curriculum, many UK public bodies produce web-based and other non-formal materials, and many of these are specifically linked to that curriculum. Others are relevant to the TVET sector more widely. So, for instance, Office of Government Commerce (OGC) through its ‘Watermark’ scheme [www. ogcbuyingsolutions.gov.uk/energy/watermark] offers help to businesses in managing their water usage. The national Environment Agency [www. environment-agency.gov.uk] has publications available both online and as hard copy relating to, inter alia: water conservation in buildings; water management planning in businesses and on farms; domestic cost benefit analysis; the retro-fitting of variable flush mechanisms in toilets; water efficiency case studies; the coordination of different groups of water-users; how to save water in schools; and, how to introduce water issues within the National Curriculum across its various ‘Key Stages’. Outside the public sector, many other organizations also produce a wide range of water-related educational materials. To take just two examples: Wessex Water [www. wessexwater.co.uk/education], a regional water and sewage treatment business serving an area of the south west of England, operates eight education centres within its region to which school visits may be arranged; and, the charity Oxfam [www.oxfam.org.uk/education] provides, through its innovatively-designed and attractive ‘Water for All’ resource, activities and case studies on a range of water-related issues and their impacts. Connections to the mainstream curriculum are clearly signposted and elaborated. Although these are both primarily examples of school-related provision they are linked both to skills acquisition and to subsequent technical and vocational

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training issues. The education they support feeds in to subsequent learning through the TVET sector. As the above shows clearly, materials for water education are plentiful. A search of the internet quickly reveals a range of organizations that offer resources for water education around the world. Indeed, a point emphasized repeatedly at the Program Water and Education Workshop for Europe and North America – held in February 2009 at UNESCO-IHE headquarters in Delft – was that the production of additional materials was very unlikely, by itself, to be a helpful response to the unquestioned need for more water education at all levels. One reason to doubt the usefulness of generic water education materials is that not only the content, but also the significance, of water-related issues in TVET varies according to the context of provision. Water is central to the studies of some TVET students, for example those training to be water technicians of one sort or another. For many others it is incidental to some extent. However, the proportion of a particular curriculum explicitly devoted to water issues bears no necessary relation to the significance that graduates’ actions may subsequently have. For example: students of fashion and clothing, catering; construction, engineering, floristry; hairdressing, sports, and tourism are all likely to have some degree of water-related responsibility in their future employment. Under certain circumstances, for instance where a tension exists between public responsibility and organizational cost-efficiency, they may well have conflicting responsibilities. None of these students is studying water first and foremost. A distinction can be made between what they need to know for their own, personal vocational purposes, and what they should know according to external criteria which, in the particular case of water, might concern broad goals relating to health, environmental conservation, conflict avoidance or justice. In short, water may sometimes be a topic in itself, but it is integral to almost everything else in one way or another, and this creates the particular problem of achieving parallel integration in educational design and delivery. The problem is compounded by the fact that water does not respect political boundaries, though it sometimes constitutes them. An example of a particularly innovative training response to these complexities is the Nile Basin Initiative Transboundary Environmental Action Project (NTEAP) [http://nteap. nilebasin.org/index.php]. The Nile Basin Initiative is a partnership of states that border the River Nile that, through NTEAP, has produced a framework for environmental education and training in the Nile Basin. This identifies four key environmental threats to the region, all of which are in a significant degree water-related: land degradation; water quality


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degradation; disaster preparedness and remediation; and, loss of biodiversity, habitat and wetlands. ‘Water quality degradation’ is further subdivided as: pollution (point and non-point source); sanitation concerns (rural and urban sanitation); eutrophication; waterweed infestation; and, siltation. The framework emphasizes the leveraging of knowledge through collaborations between educators in the region, and emphasizes the importance of learning processes rather than content (though the range of suggested content and thoroughness with which it has been catalogued is impressive). In particular, emphasis is placed on ‘The Open Process Framework’ or ‘action learning’ (UNEP, 2004), that is, on an approach to learning that is inclusive and adaptive to context. The project has also produced a toolkit that helps practitioners in the design of water education projects, and the fitting of these to particular local contexts.

Two Further Examples Two further examples will serve to illustrate both the range, and the TVETrelatedness, of water education initiatives. Hydroaid [www.hydroaid.it/] is an Italian not-for-profit organization that is supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Cooperation and Development, and many other donors and sponsors. It exists in order to provide vocational education for water resource management in developing countries. Between 30 and 40 students annually, of whom more than 25 per cent are typically women, attend courses held at the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (ITC-ILO) in Turin. These students are employed in the water sector in developing countries around the world. To date, nationals of more than 60 such countries have taken part. Courses last between seven and nine weeks. Content includes: management and governance of the integrated water service cycle; management of water resources for soil conservation and agricultural development; and, supply systems for drinking water, irrigation and sanitation. Hydroaid also conducts cooperative projects in developing countries, for example, z

In Brazil, it has worked with the Ministério das Cidades on a training project that aims to enhance the work of public agencies by integrating environmental protection with the pursuit of economic growth. This has also involved cultural and technical exchanges between Brazil and Italy.

54 z z z

Technical and Vocational Education and Training In the Middle East it has provided multi-partner collaborative training for improved water resources management in Palestine. In Cambodia it has participated in a multi-agency collaboration to enhance the supply of clean drinking water. In Sierra Leone, Hydroaid has been responsible for the design of training for managers and technicians to improve water management and governance, sanitation and drinking water supply.

The International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC) [www.igrac.nl/] has its headquarters in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Its purpose is to share knowledge and experience on groundwater around the world. Relative to surface water, groundwater considerations are often under-considered in decision-making processes. Groundwater constitutes the world’s largest supply of freshwater that is readily available. IGRAC operates in three main ways. First, it is developing an internet based information portal on groundwater, called the Global Groundwater Information System (GGIS), which takes account of the needs of different groups of water users and decision-makers. Second, it is developing standard approaches to groundwater assessment. Collaborative international working groups are being established to develop these in relation to a number of themes. Third, it seeks opportunities to provide inputs of knowledge or expertise on groundwater wherever these are required. IGRAC is clearly a major resource and source of support for both learners and teachers in the vocational sector in relation to water.

Applying the Framework for Analysis If the framework for analysis set out in Chapter 2 and summarized in Figure 2.1 is applied to the foregoing account of water education and its relationship to TVET, a number of interesting points and issues arise. In terms of the beneficiaries of water education, it tends to be assumed that what is good for society is also good for the learner, and vice versa. As we have already seen, this may often be the case, but it is not necessarily so. For example, students can learn how to conserve of wetlands and rivers, or how to exploit them for productive purposes. Of course, integrated approaches can also be developed that take account of both these priorities, and the work of Hydroaid in Brazil provides an instance of this. We should note, however, that arriving at the best balance between conservation and exploitation cannot be solely a technical matter, any more than the best interests


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of either the learner or society as a whole can somehow be established objectively. If a newly trained water technician earns the money she needs – right now – for her children’s education by applying her skills in the construction industry then, on the face of it, TVET has been a success. If she contributes to the competitiveness of her firm, so that its profits rise and it employs more people, so much the better. But what if the expanding firm is able to automate her function and declare her redundant in three years time? Or if the firm’s competitive edge is achieved by setting minimum standards of quality, durability and environmental compliance (or worse)? It is not impossible to imagine answers to these questions, but they deserve attention. So too does the possibility that future generations should be considered as possible beneficiaries. During Britain’s industrialization the interest of (then) future generations in clean waterways was neglected almost entirely in the name of competitiveness and growth. Today, those ‘future’ generations have become present generations, and can claim considerable success in cleaning up the mess. This has caused them to incur costs, but they have also benefited from the wealth that industrialization created. The tension between conservation and exploitation may be managed with greater foresight and transparency nowadays than was the case in the nineteenth century, but it has not gone away. Given all this, it seems clear that the content of water-related TVET will very often include both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills. Training in the skilful application of techniques and technologies is essential, and this is why the activities of organizations such as IGRAC are so important: but abilities such as learning-by-doing, balancing different interests, conflict resolution and researching, implementing and evaluating innovations may also be indispensible. To some extent, this simply reflects the need to be both efficient and effective, where ‘efficiency’ refers to the completion of a task in the best way possible, and ‘effectiveness’ entails additional reflection on whether the task itself is appropriate to the situation (Argyris and Schön, 1996). Recognition of this point can be seen, for example, both in the work of UNESCO-IHE and NTEAP, both of which routinely link instruction in technical concepts to activities such as data-collection, decision-making and planning by students. If it so happened that a TVET system delivered a supply of graduates who were an exact match with employer demand at that precise moment in time, that would be very good – though it would also be evidence of an almost clairvoyant piece of forward planning. However, it would still not be good enough, because the nature of employment would soon change both in its overall structure and its detailed requirements. The well trained TVET graduate needs to be employable and stay employable.

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One popular concept that seeks to capture and institutionalize this need for TVET-trained professionals who possess both the skills of the present, and the ability quickly to acquire the skills of the future, is ‘lifelong learning’. Although this notion has enjoyed a good deal of popularity among policy makers it also faces difficulties, and has tended to disappoint in practice (Field, 2000). It is not, and in fact cannot, be clear in advance how the bulk of any long-term benefits of lifelong learning will be distributed between employers and employees (this is not to rule out the possibility that there may also be synergistic benefits). As already noted, this depends in large part open the subsequent opportunities for mobility that the employee trained in lifelong learning skills (whatever they are) is able to enjoy. There may perhaps also be unambiguous benefits to society at large, and to this extent lifelong learning is a legitimate policy objective. But, as Field (2000) notes, it is an objective that lies beyond the power of state agencies to achieve by themselves, entailing, as it does, changes in dimensions such as ‘culture’ and ‘values’ that are unresponsive to legislation, unquantifiable and almost impossible to evaluate. We should also note that there is competition for whatever intellectual territory and real resources lifelong learning can command. It might be important to TVET, but it can also be pressed into the service of any number of other ends relating to, for example, sustainability, security, health, citizenship, communities, inclusion, democracy and so on. These may then intrude (for better of worse) into the content of TVET provision that also uses the concept. At all possible levels, water education provides examples of the matching of modes of delivery to the social, economic, historical and environmental context of the learner. This is particularly striking in the way that UNESCO-IHE has used mixtures of pedagogical technologies to make programmes available in a manner that maximizes accessibility, in the employment of action learning by NTEAP, in the extensive collaborative frameworks developed by Hydroaid, and in IGRAC’s consideration of stakeholder needs in the design of the GGIS. It seems that the best training starts from where the learner is in two senses. First, there are the arrangements for the physical accessing of courses. These may require provision, online, at a central location, at dispersed locations, or a mixture of all of these. Second, there are the understandings, concerns and abilities that the student brings to the programme. These may require teaching through the use of particular concepts, the acceptance of particular assumptions and (a point we shall return to later) the simultaneous tolerance, at least in the short to medium term, of apparently incompatible or competing perspectives.


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The great variety of these examples is given emphasis by their different implications for assessment and evaluation. IGRAC has no systematic concern with assessment, and might evaluate its work simply in terms of the completeness of the information it provides, and the use that is subsequently made of it. At the other extreme, UNESCO-IHE has formal assessments underwritten by quality assurance procedures, and evaluates the success of programmes in terms of learning by students. Hydroaid lies between these extremes. Its primary concern is with the application in practice of the learning it promotes, rather than its structured accreditation; and its evaluation focus is on contributions to the achievement of development objectives. These different priorities are reflected, in turn, in the approaches taken, with NTEAP and UNESCO-IHE tending strongly towards pedagogic processes that are flexible, innovative and interdisciplinary, while IGRAC particular strength lies more in a focused disciplinary orientation and the provision of information in accessible forms. A useful heuristic for thinking and describing these kinds of processes (Scott and Gough, 2003) is that they may involve, z

z

z

Information provision through a one-way process such as a lecture or a read-only webpage. Providing information in this way is educationally unfashionable (with good reason for the most part), but it can be both effective and relatively inexpensive when it is limited to the transmission of uncontroversial facts, and when the value of those facts is clear to learners. IGRAC does this to the extent that it provides pertinent scientific data that might otherwise be overlooked. Communication through a two-way exchange that enable the learners to establish the relevance of the taught content to their own particular contextual requirements. The UK Office of Government Commerce ‘Watermark’ scheme is an example of this, since particular principles of good water management may have somewhat different applications in different business settings. Mediation that brings together stakeholders with different perspectives and understandings relating to an initially unclear or contested problem to create new knowledge. Hydroaid might be said to be doing this through its extensive collaborative networks in post-conflict settings such as Cambodia and Sierra Leone.

What this makes clear is that decisions in a particular educational context about the range of relevant disciplines, the appropriate pedagogies to use, and the most suitable management approaches are inter-related.

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Finally, and for the time being, we should note that the wider goals of social justice, individual freedom, national pride, competitiveness, education system improvement, conservation of tradition and modernization are all, to some extent, implicated across the foregoing examples. The attempt to untangle them is a task best reserved for later chapters.

Water Education, TVET and Investment This chapter concludes with a small number of general observations about the applicability of the concept of investment to water education. First, we may say that the concept of investment does seem applicable, in that it is clear that water education involves actions, in the present, that may generate a flow of future returns. However, it is questionable whether our understanding of a phenomenon as complex and diverse as water education is really enhanced by seeking to separate its outcomes into multiple subsets of ‘capital’. For example, how far do Hydroaid’s activities in Brazil, or NTEAP’s in the Nile Basin, add to the stock of human, social, cultural and other adjectival forms of capital? How are these to be disentangled, both from each other, and from changes in the stocks of physical and even financial capital which may also result over time? Is it not possible that increases in, say, human capital may lead to increases, or decreases, or no change at all in cultural capital, depending on the values of the person making the judgement? On the other hand, any definition of capital that is too exclusive or limiting is unlikely to capture all the benefits of education (as we have seen, such approaches may be perfectly adequate for other uses). At the same time, if TVET in the water sector is treated as producing a single (if internally very varied) stream of returns, and these are then considered from an NPV perspective, they will be discounted for time preference and risk in the normal way. Since TVET may take many years to produce its full benefits, and the element of risk may be high – particularly those settings that involve, for example, post-conflict countries or fragile international collaborations – the present value may turn out to be very low. Whether our thinking up to this point has been narrow and quantitative, or broadly metaphoric and qualitative, or a combination of the two, the result will be the same. If alternatives to TVET exist that offer a higher present value they will be preferred. However, it is also at this point that errors of the kind noted in Chapter 3 may enter the picture, because it is clear that water education has a bearing on the future options available to individuals,


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businesses, and society as a whole. If no account is taken of these, then the picture is not complete. Further, future options are more valuable the longer the time period in question, and the greater the overall degree of risk. Of course, it may prove to be the case that, even when all these factors are considered in a particular case, investment in TVET is not the preferred solution. However, the process of decision-making will have been more complete, and, hopefully, more transparent in its balancing of quantitative analysis and human judgement.

Chapter 5

Case Study Two: Higher Education and Sustainable Development

Higher Education and TVET There is a traditional view according to which higher education has nothing to do with TVET. They are two different things and they belong in different worlds. In an extreme version of this view TVET is the second-class dumping ground characterized by Wolf (2002) and discussed in Chapter 1, while universities are places of cloistered – or at least tenured – seclusion in which cutting-edge researchers and thinkers enjoy academic freedom, exercise control over their institutions, and disseminate insights to the brightest and best students. If this account seems to stray into the realms of parody, the following quotation from the philosopher Michael Oakeshott makes the point more eloquently: This, then, to the undergraduate, is the distinctive mark of a university; it is a place where he has the opportunity of education in conversation with his teachers, his fellows and himself, and where he is not encouraged to confuse education with training for a profession, with learning the tricks of a trade, with preparation for future particular service in society, or with the acquisition of a kind of moral or intellectual outfit to see him through life. Whenever an ulterior purpose of this sort makes its appearance, education (which is concerned with persons, not functions) steals out of the back door with noiseless steps. (Fuller, 1989, p. 101) Perhaps there are places where this continues to be the dominant model, but around the world, state systems of higher education have been changing in recent years in a context of increasing globalization of academic activity, marketization, accountability and managerialism (Ramsden, 1998a;

Case Study Two: Sustainable Development

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Nixon et al., 2001; Mulford, 2002; Milliken and Colohan, 2004). Kelsey (1998, p. 51) argues that these trends amount to, a coherent policy agenda which is promoted through interlocking networks of international actors and agencies, which cross-fertilize with the officials, politicians, entrepreneurs and commentators who influence policy at the national level. Yielder and Codling (2004), writing from an Australasian perspective, do not go quite this far down the conspiracy-theory route, but still characterize the change process as a struggle between forces associated with competition and the market on the one hand, and traditions of intellectual autonomy, collegiality and academic freedom on the other. Whatever the merits of these analyses, the extent of change is certainly striking. Even though it is not at all easy to disentangle cause and effect, in the British case changes have included: a more than fourfold increase in the number of universities in a 50 year period; changes in the model of state financial support that link it increasingly to measured outcomes of one sort or another, and require universities to raise funds from other activities and (except in Scotland) from student fees; and, a 25 fold increase in student numbers, again over a 50 year period (Leighton-Kelly, 2009). An important recent development that reflects these broad trends, and illustrates their significance for TVET, is the 2006 Leitch Review of Skills in the UK (HMSO, 2006). Lord Leitch was commissioned by the British Government in 2004 to undertake an independent review of long term skills needs in the UK. He produced an Interim Report (HMSO, 2005) in 2005 and his final report a year later. His recommendations included ambitious targets requiring that national attainment at most skill levels be doubled. The proposed means to this end included, z z z z z z z

A stronger voice for employers through a new Commission for Employment and Skills Increased employer engagement with and investment in skills training Reforming Sector Skills Councils to approve vocational training Launching a new ‘pledge’ for employers to voluntarily provide more training in the workplace Increasing employer investment in higher level qualifications Raising public awareness of skills and their value Establishing an adult careers service

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At the time of writing, this has led universities to respond in a variety of ways to the need to offer ‘demand led’ training that: is responsive to the needs of businesses and practitioners in a range of fields; permits a ‘mix and match’ approach to combining elements from traditionally separate disciplines; permits the accumulation of credit over-time and through a range of learning experiences; alternatively, can be studied without seeking academic credit and, therefore, without taking part in assessment procedures; is able to attract ‘co-funding’ by employers and HEFCE; permits customization of provision; is open to students applying through non-conventional routes such as further education (FE) colleges; links to sub-honours-level provision, such as foundation degrees; and, locates the intellectual coherence of the final award in the experience of the learner rather than its disciplinary content. It is true that, in many institutions, staff are still grappling with some of the issues that this widening of universities’ traditional focus demands, for example in terms of student records, the division of work between different disciplinary Boards of Studies, modular credit structures, accreditation of prior achievement, admissions procedures, fee setting and so on. However, other innovations, such as the foundation degree/top up degree route, are already well established. Such degrees typically have a structure that permits admission at the foundation degree level on the basis of a range of alternative qualifications, including appropriate work experience. They may be linked to the work of further education colleges in a number of ways, and offered in modes that best suit students – for example through delivery full-time, part-time, online and/or in blocks of time. There is often an emphasis on work-based learning, and this may continue for those students who, on completing a foundation degree, are able to move on to a ‘top-up’ programme that enables them to achieve honours-degree status. In short, the ‘traditional view’ described at the outset of this chapter does not really bear scrutiny any more.

Higher Education, TVET and Change The growing emphasis on skills and employment across the higher education sector raises interesting questions about the relationship between education and social change. Chapter 3 discussed the linkage that is usually made between education, skills and economic growth. The point was made that this linkage is, by its nature, subject to a good deal of uncertainty. The way that different individuals and groups understand it is therefore to an important degree a result of the way in which they habitually respond to


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uncertainty. The spread of the skills agenda in higher education illustrates this very well. Educational institutions feature among both the causes of social change and its consequences. The inter-relationship between cause and consequence is clearly a very complex one that operates at a range of levels from the sub-institutional to the global. For example, the teaching of a single department in a particular university might conceivably inspire an individual to make innovations in public service or private enterprise that have consequences for the employment and happiness of thousands of individuals worldwide. This effect might not emerge for many years after the teaching took place. At the same time, a policy move in one part of the world (say, a decision by a developing country to reduce state funding for overseas study by its citizens) might lead to the closure of that same department through the loss of its principal market. This complexity, and the uncertainty that accompanies it, means that discussion of the relationship between education and change can only realistically take place through the use of simplifying narratives. For example, we have seen that, at the present time, the ‘upskill-for-national-survival-in-a-world-of-globalized-competition’ narrative is particularly powerful. So, in the UK, is another that states that part of the country’s competitive advantage is the historic quality of its higher education institutions. Tension then arises from the fact that this ‘historic quality’ did not particularly result from a focus on vocational skills delivery in universities, and this tension plays itself out in a variety of ways. A way of thinking about this situation – both in relation to higher education specifically, and the wider context of TVET – is offered by the work of Michael Thompson and others (Thompson and Warburton, 1985; James and Thompson, 1989; Schwarz and Thompson, 1990; Thompson et al., 1990; Gough, 1995; Thompson, 1997; Scott and Gough, 2003). What is important about this work in the present context is that it treats uncertainty as integral to problems, rather than as an unfortunate imperfection that has to be eliminated in some way before the true problem can be addressed. Building on a tradition of work in cultural anthropology (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982), Thompson argues that individuals and organisations tend to deal with uncertainty by framing explanations and developing understanding through four alternative ways of sense-making, or ‘rationalities’. These rationalities derive from possible alternative answers to the questions: ‘who am I?’ and ‘how should I behave?’ In summary, they are: the fatalistic, the hierarchical, the individualistic, and the egalitarian rationalities. The fatalistic rationality is distinguished from the other three by virtue of the fact that it is passive. It tends to be adopted by those who both face

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restrictions on their freedom of choice, and do not belong to a strong group that is able to make collective decisions. For them, what will be will be, and there is likely to be very little they can do about it. They make sense of the world by concluding that it does not, in fact, make much sense. If they work in TVET they are probably disillusioned, sad and keen for early retirement. In an individualistic rationality, TVET is likely to be seen as an opportunity – but only to the extent that it inculcates marketable skills which the learner can then freely take to market. If, by contrast, such TVET is a product of the machinations of educationalist ‘do-gooders’ who are trying to promote goals such as social equality, international development, environmental awareness or community cohesion, then the individualist is likely to condemn it as a useless waste of money. Like the fatalists, individualists do not feel bound to any strong collective: but neither are they constrained in their freedom of choice and action. In their view, things make sense if they work; if they produce results. Those results can be measured (and to the individualist this will seem perfectly obvious) in terms of substantive benefits that can be shown to accrue to individuals. Hierarchists, however, have an entirely different view. They combine a strong sense of collective group membership with an expectation that individual choice will be constrained. Therefore, for them, things make sense when they follow rules. Progress will be evidenced by improvements in compliance. Inequality is acceptable provided it follows a rational ordering derived from logical first principles. Entrepreneurship is also acceptable within a regulatory framework. Indeed, it is only possible within such a framework because rules, in this view, are what distinguishes market competition from banditry and anarchy. TVET, therefore, requires a clear structure of qualification and regulation. Finally, for those espousing an egalitarian rationality, things make sense if they are equitable. We are free to choose what actions we take, but only within the context of the community of human beings to which we belong. Promoting goals such as social equality, international development or community cohesion is likely to be, in this view, exactly – and obviously – what TVET should concern itself with. If individuals are permitted to capture the benefits for their own personal advantage then that will be a waste of money. Inequities arising from hierarchical rule-making or individualistic competition are to be despised and contested, while the world’s fatalists are to be empowered. Education is a means by which these things might be achieved. The foregoing is a very partial, and personal, summary of a very large body of work. It may be sufficient, however, to illustrate the claim that is


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being made here. This is that there certainly are examples, under conditions of uncertainty, of individuals and organizations developing and defending approaches to education that have at their core hierarchical, egalitarian or individualistic assumptions. Further, this ‘cultural theory’ approach is comfortable with circumstances in which individuals and institutions seem to behave in contradictory ways, since the operative rationality they use at any moment will vary according to the loyalties that then happen to be dominant. The skills agenda in higher education is very much about competition, excellence and success; but it is also often about inclusion, diversity and equality of opportunity. It calls for adaptiveness and the customization of course provision, and at the same time insists on modularization, standarization and quality control. It is true that these things are not wholly exclusive of each other, but neither are they wholly compatible. The confusion they sometimes engender is not evidence of stupidity, incompetence or mendacity, but rather an inescapable corollary of complexity and uncertainty. To conclude, this conception of ‘plural rationalities’ is useful in three ways. It serves a classificatory function, enabling us to group together opinions and actions relating to TVET in useful, informative, and sometimes surprising ways. It teaches us to expect, and enables us to explain, inconsistent behaviours. Perhaps most importantly, it suggests that, where uncertainty is present and cannot for the time being be resolved, it may be best to proceed with a range of responses even if these appear inconsistent with each other. Thompson himself commends this, referring to it as ‘clumsy’ approach. Under such circumstances none of the four rationalities is likely to have captured the whole truth: rather each of them will contain a bit of it. Until matters can be clarified (or until they clarify themselves) the best alternative that is actually available may be to proceed cautiously on a number of different fronts. It should be clear that this is not inconsistent with the approach to valuing options discussed in Chapter 3.

Higher Education, TVET and Sustainable Development As already noted in Chapter 1, sustainable development provides a focus that proves instructive in relation to many issues that affect TVET, across a range of contexts. Quite clearly, it is an important concept in its own right. However, the intention here is not to evaluate, promote or refute it, but rather to engage with it to the extent that this helps enhance our understanding of TVET. This requires a brief overview of the term, and of how it has been used in education.

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Any account of the provenance of sustainable development should probably begin with the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, which brought the issue of environmental management to the attention of the global policy community for the first time. The term ‘sustainable development’ itself is usually associated with the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987) – or ‘Brundtland Report’, though it had been used as early as 1980 (Rao, 2000). Although the term has been defined in many different ways during the last 20 years, it is the Brundtland definition that continues to be most used in practice. This emphasizes needs and methods. Present needs are to be met in such a way that future generations are not consequently denied the opportunity to meet their own needs. Vague as it is, this prescription clearly does involve a synthesis of social, economic and environmental dimensions. However, much subsequent work has sought to disaggregate sustainable development into these, and other, elements. This has not always led to greater clarity or increased traction on policy issues (Scott and Gough, 2003). One particular approach that should be mentioned in the context of the present argument describes sustainable development in terms of the management and maintenance of four kinds of capital (Ekins, 1992; Ekins et al., 2008). These are: manufactured; human; social; and, natural capital. This approach is discussed further below. In 1992 the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), or ‘Earth Summit’ was held in Rio de Janeiro. This resulted in a ‘work plan’ known as Agenda 21, of which Chapter 36 has a focus on education and training. Progress was reviewed in 1997, at the ‘Earth Summit Plus Five’, after which steps to promote Chapter 36 continued. In August 2002, the UN ‘Rio + 10’ World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg. Subsequently, 2005–2014 was declared the ‘United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development’, with UNESCO as the lead agency. The objective of the decade is,

To integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning. This educational effort will encourage changes in behaviour that will create a more sustainable future in terms of environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society for present and future generations. [http://portal.unesco.org/ education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=27234&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_ SECTION=201.html]


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This international policy initiative has been influential both in TVET and in higher education. UNESCO-UNEVOC has recently commissioned a major book in the area (Fien et al., 2009), and expresses its commitment to principles of sustainable development on its webpage as follows: TVET affects attitudes towards sustainability held by future workers. The changing nature of the world of work, especially due to globalisation and technological change, demands that TVET develop a skilled, committed and motivated workforce that understands how global changes impact upon local opportunities for business and industry and how these changes impact upon the quality of local social, economic and environmental conditions. [www.unevoc.unesco.org/wiki.0.html?&no_cache=1&tx_drwiki_ pi1[keyword]=more_about_tvet_for_sd] Examples of sustainable development in higher education can be found across the globe (Gough and Scott, 2007). In England, the body which oversees public funding of the higher education sector, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has a long history of positive engagement with the concept. In a policy update published in 2009 [www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_03/] it declares: We want to make sustainable development a central part of our strategy for the future development of the HE sector. Our vision is that: ‘Within the next 10 years, the higher education sector in this country will be recognised as a major contributor to society’s efforts to achieve sustainability – through the skills and knowledge that its graduates learn and put into practice, its research and exchange of knowledge through business, community and public policy engagement, and through its own strategies and operations’. It may well be that one reason sustainable development has such widespread and enduring appeal is that it is capable of appealing to all the active rationalities identified by the cultural theory model. Climate change, biodiversity loss, famines, droughts, floods, migrations, poverty and a host of other difficulties are all apparently interconnected to some degree, and subject to uncertainty and surprise. Faced with this situation: hierarchists seek to establish the underlying rules that determine the course of events; egalitarians emphasize the links between these events and perceived travesties of social and environmental justice; and, individualists pursue opportunities

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to exploit new technologies, and initiatives that promise to mitigate the difficulties. People may favour different rationalities in different segments of their lives, depending on whether they are primarily acting as, for example, a parent, a citizen, an employer or an employee. This may lead them to hold what appear to be – and perhaps actually are – self-contradictory views. As should already be clear, there is nothing in the least absurd about this, since all three approaches are clearly likely to be of some value, even though they are not fully compatible with each other. However, it does suggest that attempts to identify and change people’s ‘attitudes’, on the assumption that they do in fact have these in a very consistent way, is likely to fail: and, indeed, this is what the evidence shows (Kollmuss and Aygeman, 2002). At the same time, it is also true that all three active rationalities can support positions opposed to sustainable development. Hierarchists might see it as a vainglorious contradiction of natural rules of environmental and biological change, or as an oxymoronic flouting of logical syntax: either way, the argument goes, something that has been developed has not been sustained. Egalitarians might note that sustainable development sometimes turns out to be yet another excuse that rich countries use to justify themselves when they are telling poor ones what to do. Individualists may see it as a potential obstruction to the very economic growth that will provide for technological developments capable of solving the various crises we face. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find that there is an extraordinarily wide range of claims about sustainable development that bear on its significance for education. To take just three contrasting examples: z

z

z

According to Jucker (2002) the set of knowledge necessary for the implementation of the sustainability agenda is already complete. The problem is one of the recognition and dissemination of this knowledge. Bhagwati (2004, p. 156, original emphasis) takes a very different view. He writes: ‘Even God does not know what sustainable development means. It has become the nonsensical, anything-you-want-it-to mean term today that socialism was in the 1960s and 1970s.’ In a recent book Foster (2008) refers to sustainability as a ‘mirage’, by which he means that, as now typical conceived, it provides us with a device for deluding ourselves that we are addressing our most pressing problems, when in fact we are not.

In the light of all this, we now turn to an example of research into what is actually happening in relation to these issues in higher education and TVET.


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TVET, Higher Education and Sustainable Development in England HEFCE occupies a role as intermediary between government and universities in England. It monitors the overall financial condition of higher education institutions, plays a part in quality assurance and lays down broad policy guidelines. Money is disbursed as a block grant, which universities then spend according to their own priorities. The resulting situation is characterized by both cooperation and tension. On the one hand there are issues of fidelity to government policy; and on the other concerns about, for example, the maintenance of academic freedom. Similarly, government promotes a number of policies favourable to sustainable development, but different institutions respond to these in different ways, and so do individual academics within them. In 2006 HEFCE established a research programme, with the following objectives: z

z z z z

Establish a baseline of sustainable development in the sector, against which HEFCE can measure progress and publicize what the sector is already doing Learn from institutions’ experience about the conditions for embedding sustainable development, including barriers and drivers Identify key issues which present opportunities and challenges for the sector and investigate possible policy responses Evaluate HEFCE’s approach and refine HEFCE’s priorities Raise the profile of sustainable development in the sector.

The task of conducting this research was put out to competitive tender, and won by a consortium that included the Policy Studies Institute (PSI), PA Consulting and the Centre for Research in Education and the Environment (CREE) of the University of Bath. The research considered university actions under three headings: estates management; research and teaching. The present discussion relates primarily to the last of these, and in particular to the significance of sustainable development policy to TVET-related university education. A letter was first sent to the Head of each of the 132 higher education institutions in England. These were followed by a mixture of visits, interviews, case studies and web-searches. For the purposes of the research, activity in universities was considered to be relevant to sustainable development if it contained: ‘a significant element related to either or both of the

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natural environment and natural resources, plus a significant element related to either or both of economic or social issues’. It followed therefore that, as one might expect, not every example of teaching relevant to sustainable development was also of significance to ‘the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work’ – that is, to our definition of TVET: but many were. As a result of the research, a database of sustainable development-related teaching was developed, using software that permitted the archiving and storage of large quantities of detailed qualitative information. This database is searchable by institution, by discipline and by academic level. It contains over 1650 documents, relating to a very wide range of disciplines and skills. Disciplinary areas are identified using headings derived from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). Among these the most strongly represented are ‘Earth, Marine and Environmental Science’, ‘Architecture, Built Environment and Planning’, ‘Social Studies’, ‘Business and Management’ and ‘Geography’. No includable courses were found in ‘Clinical Dentistry’, ‘Pharmacy and Pharmacology’ and ‘Anatomy and Physiology’. It is important to note that the status accorded to sustainable development in teaching in different institutions is almost certainly not just (or, sometimes, at all) a result of strategic thinking about the merits of the concept. It is one dimension of institutions’ efforts to position themselves appropriately in the marketplace for students. Some universities and/or departments place sustainable development in a central position. For example, Writtle College has ‘School of Sustainable Environment’ and the Engineering and Architecture Department in the University of Bournemouth has embedded sustainable development within all its courses. On the other hand, some teaching that clearly qualifies for inclusion, in terms of the definition of sustainable development used in the research, deliberately avoids the term in course titles because it is seen as a handicap in student recruitment. Initial analysis of the database’s contents (Katayama and Gough, 2008) suggests that a great proportion of courses within it might usefully be classified under the following headings, though they are both loosely-defined and, to some degree, overlapping. Problem-oriented. Examples include, z

A certificate-level programme in Chemistry, Pollution and Human Health at the University of Lancaster. This aims: ‘To introduce students


z

z z z

z

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to the sources, fate and behaviour of environmental pollutants, the issues that can arise in managing pollution and the effects they can have on ecosystems and human health’. An interdisciplinary suite of courses at the University of Sunderland, offered at certificate, intermediate and honours levels, in Sustainability, Health and Community Studies. This sets out specific work-related outcomes as follows: ‘students will have: developed and demonstrated their research, group working, communication and reflection skills while contributing to a project with a real world orientation’. An intermediate-level course in Climatic and Environmental Change at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. An intermediate-level course in Environmental Risk and Society at the University of Birmingham. An honours degree at the University of Leeds in Environment and Transport Planning. Course publicity notes that: ‘Transport issues are a major cause of environmental impact, including congestion and air pollution in cities (health effects, infrastructure damage), intrusive development in rural areas, and significant contributions to global warming’. The MSc in Contaminated Land at the University of Portsmouth, which is ‘designed to provide the relevant training and knowledge required to enable students to tackle the increasingly important problem of contaminated land’.

Responsibility-oriented. For example: z

z z z

A course at certificate level at London Metropolitan University entitled Business in Society: Leisure and Tourism. This focuses on sustainability and corporate social responsibility issues in these industries. A work-based training programme accredited by Middlesex University: Waste Matters – Certificate in Recycling for Sustainability. An intermediate-to-honours level course in Business Ethics at Heythrop College. An Open University intermediate level course: Living in a Globalised World. This asks the prospective student: ‘how should we react to calls to build global relationships with people living far from us? And it isn’t only other human beings with whom we have to negotiate our position in the world. We also have responsibilities to other living creatures that share the planet, and to the world itself, with all its potential resources and dangers’.

72 z

z

Technical and Vocational Education and Training Aston University’s BSc (Honours) in Sustainable Product Design. ‘Sustainability in the design, manufacture, usage and eventual disposal of products is becoming a legal and ethical requirement in twenty-first century industry and this programme aims to reflect these issues within a design framework’. The MA Ethical Fashion at the University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone, and Rochester explores, ‘The current ethical dilemmas that surround the multi-billion pound global business in Fashion . . . Eco-fashion and sustainable strategies for fashion production, fur and sustainable farming, new technologies for fashion materials, recycling and the use of natural resources, issues surrounding body image and the current sizing debate, production and consumption, supply-chain issues in the developing world, global branding’.

Creativity-oriented. Some courses explore the connection between sustainable development and creativity. z

z

z

z

At University College Falmouth, the BA (Hons) Garden Design, informs prospective students: ‘you’ll learn about organic practice, conservation, soil and plants at the same time as developing your design skills, creativity and fully-rounded knowledge of garden making . . . also spend time working with the local community, designing rural estates, urban spaces, sculpture parks and show gardens, and on live projects’. London Metropolitan University has a certificate level course entitled The Designer as Author. This states: ‘You will be encouraged to recognize, understand and debate your central role as a creative individual and professional, that both uses and shapes current and future practice, within the context of art and design. The module will require you to begin to evaluate and reflect on the notion of individual practice for example, creative, ethical, technical, sustainable and legal, within the context of gaining the relevant skills’. At the University of Cumbria, students study for a foundation degree in Furniture Crafts. ‘You can even source the timber you’ll use – we’ll take you into sustainable woodland, where you’ll select, fell and replant’. The Interior Design foundation degree at De Montfort University has a focus on ‘responsible and sustainable design’.

Skills-oriented. A number of course descriptions propose particular skillbased job or career opportunities for potential students. In particular,


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these focus on: 1. Skills related to manufacturing. In this category, energy efficiency and innovation are key skills for many courses. For example: z

z

z

z

z

City University, London offers Mechanical and Automotive Engineering programmes from intermediate through to masters level. Course details state: ‘Some of the important tasks of mechanical engineers are generating electricity, supplying clean drinking water, harnessing energy for transport, designing engines. They need to do this in a sustainable way which protects or enhances the environment’. The honours-level course in Innovation: Design for a Sustainable Future at the Open University looks at questions such as: ‘how innovation comes about. How do designers, technologists and others create and develop new ideas, designs and inventions and how are these ideas translated into marketable products? However, the course is not just concerned with innovation for commercial advantage. You’ll also explore whether and how design and innovation can be directed towards ensuring a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable future.’ Queen Mary, University of London has an intermediate level BEng in Environmental Materials Technology. The course description begins with the words: ‘The achievement of a truly sustainable society requires fundamental changes in the way we live, including the development of new environmentally safe materials and processing technologies’. The BSc (Hons) in Sustainable Technology at the University of Birmingham introduces ‘the quantitative principles and technology associated with renewable energy sources primarily driven by the sun, the moon and the earth’s geology’. The MSc Energy Efficient Building at Oxford Brookes University focuses on ‘how to design for: Minimum energy use; Minimum environmental impacts; Maximum comfort and healthiness; Use renewable energy to power buildings; Optimizing the performance effectiveness of building technologies; and to actually create real low energy buildings and understand how they work’.

2. Skills related to environmental management. z

An intermediate-level course at Liverpool Hope University in Sustainable Sports Management explains its offering as follows: ‘A wide range of employers in the sport, leisure and outdoor sectors acknowledge that they need employees who have practical experience


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z

z

z

z

and understanding of the environment and how to manage environmental resources’. Loughborough University has programmes in Water and Environmental Management that range from certificate to masters level. ‘The programme focuses on water supply and sanitation but also includes water resources and environmental issues in an international context’. The MSc in Aquatic Resource Management at King’s College London covers ‘field techniques and monitoring; river management; aquatic chemistry and pollution; quantitative environmental analysis; freshwater, estuarine and marine resource management’. The University of Bedfordshire’s foundation degree in Aviation Management includes an element on ‘Environmental Sustainability and Aviation’. The BA (Hons) in Environmental Management at the University of Leeds promises the following skills on the completion: understand the typically complex nature of contemporary environmental issues; exercise skills in selecting decision options and in utilising related management tools and approaches; economic, legal, organisational, impact assessment; critically evaluate the roles and responsibilities of different groups and organizations in the environmental arena; recognize threats to environmental sustainability and identify possible alternatives; and, contribute to critical debate on environmental issues.

3. Skills related to society and social skills. Focal areas include community involvement, participation, communication and management. Examples include: z z z z

The University of Chichester has a module in Citizenship: Global and Local that focuses on the promotion of social justice and sustainability. At the University of Northumbria students can study a course at certificate level in Housing Sustainable Communities. Students at the College of St Mark and St John study social responsibility and sustainability within a BA (Hons) in Outdoor Recreation. The MA Participatory Design at the University of Lincoln: ‘responds to the growing awareness of the social and environmental benefits that accrue from involving in the design process those who are most affected by its outcomes. Community involvement is now recognized by many as a vitally important factor in the creation of socially sustainable designed environments. The concept of participation in architectural design implies a change in the conventional role of professional designers who are expected to demonstrate their “expertise”’.


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The examples given here are only the tip of a very large iceberg, but they do illustrate the range of skills-related tertiary education and training, in just one country, that has developed some aspect of its provision in relation to the important, but also contested, policy-objective of sustainable development. If this set of courses is then cross-referenced, within the database, to the water-related issues examined in the previous chapter, the resulting combined set is itself extensive. It includes, inter alia, courses in: Countryside and Coastal Zone Management; Environmental Biology; Earth Science; Environmental Management; Biodiversity and Conservation; Environmental Archaeology; Ecology; Environmental Science with Business Management; Environmental Hazards; Science Communication; Wildlife Conservation; Civil and Transport Engineering; Surveying Engineering; Environmental Law; Disaster Management; Environmental Forensics; Golf Course Management; Environmental Policy and Regulation; Environmental Quality; Flood Risk Management; Adventure Sports Management; Wildlife Illustration; Consumption, Markets and Culture; Design; Sustainable Resource Management; Cities, Culture and Social Change; System Engineering (Renewable Energy); Sustainable Infrastructure Services Management; Water and Waste Engineering; Town and Country Planning; Sustainable Management of Natural Resources; Environmental Informatics; Water and Environmental Management; Water, Energy and the Environment; Natural Resource Development with Management Studies; Pollution Management; Water and Society; Environmental, Social and Sustainability Performance; Community Water Supply; Water for Sustainable Agricultural Development; Sustainable Drainage and River Catchment Management; Urban Water Systems; and, Technology Policy.

Applying the Framework for Analysis The higher education provision described in this chapter is clearly related to provision for the world of work, whether primarily in relation to personal and social responsibility, creativity, or specific skills. As with water education, such provision tends to assume that there is an automatic correspondence of interests between students and society as a whole, and, of course, this will often prove to be so. The particular interests that are taken to be at stake in any particular case vary along lines that broadly correspond with the three ‘active rationalities’ discussed above. Of course, the fatalistic rationality is excluded here, since both taking and providing a course seem to constitute evidence of something more positive than fatalism.

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Eventual outcomes, both for students and for society, are ultimately uncertain, and one can see across the courses described the emergence of a loose, but interesting set of categories. Some courses focus on technology, innovation and remediation (individualistic rationality); some are primarily concerned with social justice, the rights of living things, spirituality and meaning (egalitarian rationality); and, others concern themselves with the limits imposed by natural laws, the significance of human law, and principles of governance and management (hierarchical rationality). These classifications are certainly not impermeable, and nor are they permanent. Both overlapping of, and switching between them is possible. In fact, the purpose here is not even to establish the truth of the broad cultural theory hypothesis. It may be, for example, that other rationalities will be identified in due course through further work. Rather, the insight that these three categories highlight is as that all three are indispensible to any kind of social progress under uncertainty. It is in the interactions between them that progress is generated. The need is for innovation and conservation, equality and freedom, rules and rule-breakers. If we are lucky and clever these tensions may play themselves out for the general good at the level of society as a whole. But at the level of the individual, enrolling for a course, things look quite different. To take one example: flooding of areas used for domestic housing may be addressed through engineering-based solutions, through policies to encourage changes in understandings and lifestyles over time, and through regulation. In general terms, all three are useful. In any particular case, each is likely to have its advocates, trained in particular professional skills and habits of thought. They are likely to compete for influence and resources. This competition may be productive for society. But from the points of view of the individuals involved there may well be winners and losers, and they can hardly be expected cheerfully to attribute their personal victory or defeat to the rough-and-tumble of normal social progress. The situation is complicated further in the case of a social policy issue such as sustainable development, which explicitly includes future generations among its intended beneficiaries. There is certainly no necessary correlation between what is best for us now, and what might be best for our great-grandchildren. In terms of content, even though the courses described here amount to only a small sample of the total, they do illustrate the very great range of skills, personal characteristics, competencies and knowledge that can be relevant to just a single broad social issue. At the very least, this is cause for doubt as to whether attempts by governments and others to predict future skills-needs have any chance of success at all. If not, then the alternative is to


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leave things to the market, perhaps with intervention of some kind to ensure that markets work as they should. This point is discussed in the next section. The very great range of courses indicated here also means that we can find among them evidence of almost every kind of mode of delivery, assessment, evaluation, context, pedagogic style, discipline and ultimate educational end. In the matter of management style, however, there is something more to say. We began this chapter by noting the rapid changes that have been taking place in higher education systems around the world, particularly in relation to the skills agenda and processes of vocationalization. An important corollary of this is a shift away from a system driven by the professional judgements of academics, and towards a quite conventionally customer satisfaction-driven model. One instance of this in the UK context is the increased importance attached to the National Student Survey in higher education, which assesses student satisfaction against a range of criteria, and feeds into university league tables and other data resources available to potential course applicants. There may be a tendency to see all this as straightforwardly as a contest between old and new alternatives, between the professionally-autonomous past and the marketized present, but that would be an oversimplification since, as Ramsden (1998b, p. 266) argues, change is really a constant feature of education management, not an option within it. He identifies leadership at the head of department level as vitally important in seizing opportunities that arise in consequence of contemporary changes, because of their role in: . . . the critical coupling between conventional academic culture and the needs of the innovative university. It will not be satisfactory for these leaders to focus on their own disciplines or their own staff; they will need to integrate their work units’ goals with the wider vision of the institution and link their local decisions to the environment beyond it. It is too early to say, but there is at least some anecdotal evidence to suggest that it is indeed middle managers who are best placed to facilitate responses by universities to new initiatives in workplace learning and the like, and that without their involvement little of enduring value may be possible.

TVET, Higher Education, Investment There is no doubt that the internationally-growing skills agenda in higher education is fuelled by a conception of investment in the future. We have

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also noted that attempts to plan for future skills needs have met with little success in the past. In this chapter it has been suggested that one reason for this may be that, even in relation to one particular policy objective, the variety and interconnectedness of the skills involved is simply too complex to be managed by any group. This touches on debates around the possible and actual role of markets in education, since the alternative to planning, broadly speaking, is market forces. There is a strong tradition in economics, associated most particularly with the work of Friedrich Hayek, that states that planning can never be superior to the workings of the market – even if the market is not working particularly well (Pennington, 2008). This is not a view that has ever enjoyed much popularity among educationalists, although there have been at least partial exceptions such as James Tooley (2000; 2003). First of all, we should note that although it is quite common to hear references to ‘market values’ or ‘the values of the marketplace’, markets do not actually have values. Only people have values. According to the philosopher Robert Nozick, (2001, 284): ‘The market is an institutional process whereby individual actions and plans are coordinated’. It is the ‘actions and plans’ that demonstrate values, and it is sadly true that, as so demonstrated, our values sometimes do depart from the values that we might elsewhere claim allegiance to. However, the real point at issue is that this process of ‘coordinating actions and plans’ turns out to be extraordinarily complicated, because even apparently simple goods involve long and complicated supply chains, multiple choices between different alternatives by many different people, and the matching of various quantities to each other at different moments in time. For a service such as TVET the situation is very much worse, since the value of the education and training may not be clear until many years after the training has been delivered, and even then may be impossible to quantify. Inputs during the provision of training are often also hard to associate clearly and uniquely with specific outcomes, and also to value; for example, what is a smile and a kind word worth? Further, we might ask, in relation to TVET, whether, z

z z

the market can be trusted to do the coordinating? Might it be manipulated, for example in the interests of nepotism? Can it cope with inequalities of power, influence and information across society? all the ‘actions and plans’ that matter are individual ones? What about collective actions and plans? our actions and plans, even if suitably coordinated, are consistent with aspirational goals that we might have, such social justice, greater wealth, peace, sustainable development and so on. (Gough, 2009a)


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Given all this, it is possible to come to a very wide range of judgements about the practical worth of markets, and people do so. Some want nothing to do with them. Others attribute to them an almost theistic infallibility. Between these extreme positions it can be argued that the right thing to do is any of the following: trust markets but attempt to remove imperfections so that they work better; distrust them as a necessary evil and subject them to close regulation; accept them because they make the best of a bad job; and, accept them because under almost impossible circumstances they do a rather good job. Disagreement about the role of markets does not necessarily correlate to disagreement about underlying values. For example, James Tooley (2003) and Harry Brighouse (2004) have debated whether equality of opportunity in education would be enhanced or reduced through marketization. Universal harmony on this issue is not about to break out. As we have noted, the record of planners in predicting skills-needs in society is not good, but it can be argued also that the market has shown little sign of doing better. All sides of the case can point to instances that seem to support their position. The view taken here is that what is at stake in these debates can usefully be seen as a conflict between competing rationalities under uncertainty. Therefore, a range of positions deserve to be taken seriously, and none can be declared the repository of final truth. The extraordinary power of markets to coordinate individual actions and plans, and to almost instantly simplify incredibly complex information-sets through the price mechanism, deserves serious recognition. So too, however, do arguments to the effect that, even where markets perform their function efficiently: z z

z

They do not necessarily produce the best result; That the nature of ‘the best result’ is a legitimate, and possibly prior question that may be resolved without reference to markets. As we noted in Chapter 3, it is not true that underlying assumptions – including the assumptions of economic theory – cannot usefully be tested; and, Regulation of markets (as distinct from interventions designed to facilitate their operation) may therefore be legitimate.

In concluding this chapter we can say that the two case studies presented thus far help us to clarify a number of issues that will form the basis of further, detailed discussion in later chapters. First, the question of the nature of ‘the best result’, of how it might be determined, and how, perhaps, a person’s view of it might change over time, is ultimately a question of the

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nature of rationality. It depends on whether, for example, it is more rational to maximize self-interest in all circumstances, or to pursue other priorities. Second, the nature of ‘the best’ is also a question of freedom. Markets capture the interplay of human wants. To say that the outcomes people want should be secondary to ‘best’ outcomes, arrived at through some other formulation, implies a limitation of freedom. At the very least, such limitation requires justification. Third, non-market accounts of what is best often draw on the idea of equality. Can TVET enhance individual freedom and equality at the same time? As we shall see, there is work, particularly that of Ronald Dworkin (2000; 2002; 2004), that can be interpreted to suggest that this is possible – by making use of both philosophical insights into the nature of ‘the best’ and the coordinating power of the market. Fourth, and as was remarked in Chapter 1, TVET is the main focus of this book but a subsidiary focus of many who have other priorities. The work of Paul Ekins and his colleagues on the ‘four capitals’ model (mentioned above) is a case in point. For Ekins, education for the world of work is important as a possible source of human, and perhaps social capital. Society should invest in it to the extent that it will promote the goal of sustainable development. This book treats both TVET and investment in a different way. Our question is: Does using investment as a frame of reference help us in understanding and developing TVET? Issues concerning sustainable development or any other social policy goal might well be significant in this: but they are secondary. Finally, there is the question of the usefulness of quantification in considering the costs and benefits of TVET. By appealing to the idea of investment, even metaphorically, as a basis for evaluating TVET, we invite attempts to quantify its costs and benefits in line with normal investment decision-making practices. Further, invoking the idea of option-value makes this more complicated, since the mathematics of valuing options in financial markets can be intricate in the extreme. However, it might be suggested that, given the extreme complexity of valuing TVET over time, this is just what is needed. Certainly, anything that can be reliably quantified, should be quantified: and the ability of markets to place a quantified value on things is an important reason for reserving a key place for them in our considerations. We should not be resistant to precise thought, where precision is possible. However, we should resist the idea that any quantification, however particular or exclusive the assumptions on which it is based, is better than none. Nor should we lose sight of the fact that financial calculations in the real world can normally be verified using market valuations, and that where that


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is not the case the results can be grave. There is little doubt, for example, that the financial crisis of 2008–09 was in large part caused by institutions holding assets at computer-generated valuations that were never tested in the market. These valuations subsequently proved to be wildly exaggerated (Tett, 2009). We should make use of quantities, and of markets; but we should not lose sight of the inescapable importance of judgement.

Chapter 6


Initial Considerations Management education is a potentially vast and sprawling topic. Its particular importance in the context of TVET lies in its pervasiveness. It is a form of vocational education that some students choose to study at school. Its provision is widespread in colleges. Even those approaching retirement may sometimes receive it in the workplace. Between these extremes of age, it is not uncommon for employees to be encouraged or required to receive elements of management education. Such education is often very much sought after, perhaps most particularly because many persons, at a given moment in their lives, wish to advance from performing a workplace role to managing others who are performing it. Some initial clarification of terms will be found useful. First, this chapter focuses upon management education – that is, education that has management skills of one sort or another as its primary content. It is not about the management of educational institutions or systems, although to a significant degree the book as a whole is. Second, the field of management is one in which terminology comes and goes, and at the time of writing much is made in some quarters of a distinction between management and leadership. No doubt the separation of these two terms is a matter of considerable theoretical and practical importance, but it is not of major significance to the present argument. Hence, in what follows, the term ‘management education’ may be taken to include ‘leadership education’, and also other possibilities such as ‘entrepreneurship education’. Any necessary exemptions or exclusions will be noted along the way. Third, the ‘management skills of one sort or another’ referred to above take a very wide variety of forms but are quite enduring in nature. Even though the following list of ‘ten principles of modern management’ is now more than 15 years old, it is probably still, for the most part at least, defensible – though the penultimate point on the list is questionable on both intellectual and empirical grounds.


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Ten Principles of Modern Management z z z z z z z z z z

Human organizations are complex systems Organizations consist of both technical and social sub-systems Organizations are open systems The key resource of the modern business organization is knowledge Management’s key task is to secure the future survival of the organization by means of appropriate and timely innovation Management is the process of getting things done by other people Management is a universal activity, but it does not take the same form in all situations There is no one best way to organize a business Small is beautiful Management is a process involving a mix of rational, logical decisionmaking and problem-solving activities and intuitive, judgemental activities. (Sadler, 1993, pp. 9–12)

Finally, we should note that the distinction that we have maintained throughout, between the different possible beneficiaries of TVET, has special resonance in the case of management education. This is not so much because the interests of the learner and her employer diverge – although they may – but because management in all its forms is widely seen as being very heavily implicated in almost everything that happens. It seems that society’s expectation of the practice of management is that it should simultaneously be, z

z z

ruthlessly competitive, so that survival can be ensured in a competitive, globalized world. This requires that free rein be given to adventurous spirits within a culture of risk and reward. compliant to local, national and international systems of regulation that seek to manage risk, globalization and competition. socially and environmental responsible, so that rewards are shared and costs are justly distributed.

Three specific sub-case studies are examined in this chapter. Taken together, they illustrate possible educational responses to this eclectic range of expectations. First, however, the chapter considers a number of issues relevant to the pedagogy of management education.

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Individual and Collective Learning in Management Education One intellectual tradition relating to individual learning that has been particularly influential in management education is that associated with the work of David Kolb (1984). Kolb uses the term ‘experiential learning’ to describes a process through which experience results in reflection, conceptualization, action and experimentation in a cyclical or spiral way. As the learner moves from one particular stage to the next a given ‘learning style’ is brought into play. These learning styles follow the sequence, ‘diverging’, ‘assimilating’, ‘converging’ and ‘accommodating’. This approach has subsequently been developed in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most significant of these for the present discussion relates to the notion of ‘reflective practice’, which continues to be a source of inspiration in the literatures of both management and education. Recent work by Hedberg (2009) begins from a consideration of Kolb and goes on to offer a ‘taxonomy of management reflection’, which draws attention to the different ways in which the notion of reflection has been reconceptualized, within both the management and education literatures. She then further distinguishes three possible foci, and three dimensions of reflective learning, as follows: z

z

z

A subject reflective learning focus is primarily concerned with the content that is being addressed, and the theories, classificatory systems and methods of application associated with it. In terms of the classification of pedagogic processes identified in Chapter 4 of this book, it is mostly concerned with information and communication. A personal reflective learning focus prioritizes the learner, and seeks to develop self-awareness, self-improvement, personal performance or self-critique. Pedagogical practice with this focus concentrates on the intersection of established knowledge with the learner’s personal circumstances, priorities and understandings. It is therefore likely to be particularly valuable under conditions where mediation is the appropriate pedagogic form. A critical reflective learning focus seeks to challenge accepted ways of being, doing and thinking. It has been influential both in education (Freire, 1971; Carr and Kemmis, 1986) and in management (Dehler, 2009). Central to its intention is that, through carefully considered actions, students should be prompted to question social and political arrangements that normally remain unexamined.

Case Study Three: Management Education z

z

z

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One dimension of reflective learning is the level of analysis at which it takes place. For example, reflection might focus on the actions and attributes of the individual, a group, an organization, inter-organizational networks (Knight and Pye, 2005) or society as a whole. A second possible dimension is method of discovery. For example, reflection may be individual and personal, collective and collaborative or collective and confrontational. Learners can learn on their own, learn by working together with others, and/or learn by competing or challenging others. The final dimension is timing. Reflection might occur while action is being taken, or after it has been wholly or partly completed.

As Hedberg’s analysis shows, the tradition associated with Kolb’s work tends to lead to the perception that successful learning and teaching will be associated with the selection of the most suitable pedagogical arrangements by educators, coupled with the motivated participation of learners. In the workplace, people are expected to adapt their ways of thinking and acting in response to feedback. Training designed in conformance to this model provides opportunities for such feedback to be received in a structured and deliberate way. It is a model that continues to be popular in a wide variety of forms. For example, universities are increasingly offering work-based learning solutions for corporate bodies (Gustavs and Clegg, 2005) and, as we have seen, the contemporary policy environment favours this. There is also evidence of a growth of project-based learning in organizations (Scarbrough et al., 2004). However, Kolbian-derived approaches do not have the field of management education pedagogy to themselves. As Cullingford and Crowther (2005, pp. 33–4) observe, In research on learning styles of pupils in schools . . . another tradition prevails. This is the more ancient notion of learning styles as manifestations of different approaches and abilities in terms of subjects . . . and the possibility of matching subject matter to the particular bent of individual pupils. This alternative tradition derives from the work of Hudson (1968) on ‘frames of mind’ and, more recently, of Gardner (1993) on ‘multiple intelligences’. In this view learning styles are a consequence of the psychological characteristics of the learner rather than the nature of the process through which learning takes place. Learning styles might include, for

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example: Visual-spatial; Bodily-kinesthetic; Musical; Interpersonal; Intrapersonal; Linguistic; and, Logical–mathematical. According to Coffield et al. (2004) there is very little empirical evidence as to the effectiveness of such formulations in pedagogic design. In expanding this critical view Nixon et al. (2007) remark on the intuitive appeal of ‘learning styles’, and also on its inherent attractiveness to policy-makers within a policy context, in post-compulsory education, that increasingly promotes standardization, monitoring, target-setting and a centrally-prescribed skills agenda. This attractiveness derives, they argue, from the way in which the approach creates a ‘fixed landscape’ (p. 46) of human potentialities in which planners can operationally their designs. This is not, perhaps, so much ‘conspiracy theory’ as ‘convenience theory’. The idea that learners are distributed across a finite set of psychologically-given dispositions is not intuitively ridiculous, and provides a convenient justification for policy-makers and managers who are predisposed to go about things in a particular way. We should note also that approaches of this kind are also broadly compatible with human capital theory. For example, Schwarz and Murphy (2008, pp. 169–70), in a paper that strongly advocates the place in management education of ‘human capital metrics’ or HCM, cite, in favour of this highly quantitative technique, its contribution to the cause of those who wish to, seek managerial decisions based on hard facts while avoiding . . . dangerous half-truths and total nonsense that result from managers relying on past experience, casual benchmarking, untested commonsense notions, or solutions hyped by management consultants. Schwarz and Murphy’s paper is original, careful and rigorous. There is no intention here to suggest otherwise. Rather, it simply seems appropriate to raise the possibility that the idea that ‘hard facts’ actually exist in any systematic-enough way to capture fully the inter-relationships between human beings, work, the concept of capital, and learning might still prove, itself, to be an ‘untested commonsense notion’. What is ultimately at stake here is whether human potentialities in the workplace have an objective existence that can be extrinsically verified, or, rather, are subjective and contingent upon unfolding circumstances. The answer is probably ‘both’. There is a huge literature in relation to these questions. It would not be possible to properly review even a fraction of it here, and in any case to do so would miss the main point, which is that there is deep-seated contestation both about the pedagogical parameters of management education, and about the best ways of responding to them. The two approaches outlined


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so far are certainly not mutually-exclusive, and there are taxonomies that appear to include characteristics from both (see, for example, D’Andrea, 1999). Similar considerations apply if we move our focus from learning by individuals to learning at a social level. The term ‘collective learning’ is used here as a blanket term to include any phenomena of this second kind. There are many conceptualisations that might fit within it. These include organizational learning, social learning and network learning, all of which have extensive literatures. All of them propose that it is meaningful to talk about learning by an entity consisting of, minimally, more than one individual. This claim points to something that goes significantly beyond the straightforward aggregation of individual learning that might be expected to take place in any work-related team. Collective learning implies that the organizational whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts, in the sense of exhibiting properties that cannot be explained through its reduction to its constituent elements. Further, the idea of collective learning seems to suggest that the whole is capable of exercising causal influence over those constituent elements: that is, new understanding at the organizational level leads to modifications in the thinking and behaviour of individuals. This point was touched upon in Chapter 2, and will be further developed later. At the general level it is philosophically controversial. It is also absolutely crucial in determining the potentialities and limitations of TVET. For now it will suffice to say that, if such collective learning is indeed possible, then the implications for a complex organization such as a modern TVET or FE college are extensive. Such learning might be expected to happen across a range of nested structures, such as departments, centres, course teams, and workplaces. It might be understood, promoted or resisted in a variety of ways, some informed by learning theory and some not, and each having its own champions and claims to credibility. However, comprehension of the whole theoretical canon would be a major undertaking for a full-time research academic, and simply out of the question for anyone with an institution to run or a series of classes to teach. Among the key ideas of collective learning likely to be invoked in any particular setting are: communities of practice; organisational learning; network learning; e-learning; mediated learning; and, network design (e.g. Argyris and Schön, 1978, 1996; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Senge, 1992; Tidd, 1997; Tsang, 1997; Hayes and Allison, 1998; Tagliaventi, 2006). A further complication is that, as Laurillard (2002) points out, individuals may acquire and carry away experiential knowledge which is ‘situated’ by

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virtue of its development within a collective. It may, therefore be highly contextualized. Outsiders may find it almost impossible to understand (Brown and Duguid, 1998). Yet such understanding may be exactly what is needed in, say, a cooperative work situation. Under such circumstances it would seem that one element of any successful TVET project would be continuous, creative facilitation so that knowledge generated in a variety of collective settings can be shared across different work groups. A number of theoretical devices exist for thinking about situations of this kind, and some of them will be explored in more detail at a later stage. Some, such as cultural-historical activity theory (Kerosuo and Engeström, 2003), are wellestablished bodies of knowledge with a literature rich in evidence, insight and debate (for example, in relation to activity theory, Avis, 2007; Blackler and Regan, 2009). Others, such as semiotic learning theory (Stables and Gough, 2006), are more recent and developmental, at least as they bear on education for the world of work.

The Work of UNESCO-UNEVOC in Management Education The first of the three sub-cases discussed here concerns the work of UNESCO-UNEVOC. The focus is on the organization’s work to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) through TVET, but it should be emphasized that this is not the only management-education-related activity in which it engages. To give just one example of other work in the area, training materials have been developed to assist in the teaching of entrepreneurship in Africa (UNEVOC, 2007). A workshop held in Kampala, Uganda in 2006 brought together TVET educators from four African countries to promote the use of these materials, focusing on such skills as business planning, price-setting, market research, and financial management. In relation to CSR, UNESCO hosted a meeting of international experts in Bonn in October 2004 to discuss issues linking learning to work, citizenship and sustainability. A series of follow-up meetings in 2005 and 2006 were held in Thailand, Bahrain and Vietnam. These discussed the role of national TVET systems in this regard. In May 2007 a group of UN-linked bodies including UNEVOC took matters forward through an international consultation process organized in collaboration with InWent. InWent, also known as Capacity Building International, Germany, is a not-for-profit organization committed to advancing human resource development worldwide through training that seeks to develop both corporate competitiveness and sustainability. Its Sustainable Business Development Department has six divisions,


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five of which are focused as follows: technological cooperation, system development and management in vocational education; modern media and curriculum development in vocational education; business development and infrastructure; sustainable technologies, industrial and urban development; and, economic, environmental and social statistics. The sixth is the organization’s International Training Centre in Mannheim. The May 2007 consultation had as its theme ‘Education for Sustainable Development: Engaging the Corporate Sector’. Companies with a strong CSR record were invited to attend and present case studies. A number of recommendations resulted, and a further international experts meeting took place in Bonn in November 2007 to develop a strategy for their implementation. Two priorities for this meeting of particular significance in the present context were as follows: z

z

The development of guidelines, briefing materials and prototype capacity building programmes that could be used to broaden the use of learning-based approaches to sustainable development within and by the corporate sector, especially in developing countries. Establishment of learning networks within and across countries to provide capacity-building for integrating the use of learning-based approaches to sustainable development into core business strategy.

The notion of ‘learning networks’ and their possible significance in management education is further discussed in the third case study presented in this chapter. This work on TVET and CSR continues on a number of international fronts. It sheds particularly interesting light on the different conceptions that can exist simultaneously, from both managerial and educational perspectives, about the ways in which management, and management education, can service broad social goals. First among the different management-based conceptions, there is a view that socially responsible business is, quite simply, good business. Therefore, sustainable development and other CSR-related content has an unproblematic place in mainstream management education. This is the position, for example, of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a worldwide association, at a very senior level, of approximately two hundred companies [www.wbcsd.org/]. The Council aims to develop and disseminate knowledge and best practice in relation to sustainable development, working with governments, inter-governmental organizations, NGOs and national and regional bodies. Perhaps the most famous

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academic presentation of the general case that business and environmental conservation are naturally compatible is that made by John Elkington (1987) in his book ‘The Green Capitalists’, though much else has been written since. Indeed, there is enough interest in both the environmental and social dimensions of CSR to support at least one publisher’s entire catalogue [www.greenleaf-publishing.com/]. At the opposite extreme, there are those who believe that the whole idea of CSR is a piece of misconceived nonsense. Most famous among these perhaps is Milton Friedman, who in a 1970 article in the New York Times Magazine entitled ‘A Friedman doctrine – The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits’ argued that competing effectively in the marketplace is the most, and only, socially-responsible course for businesses to take. An example of this broad position relating to a more specific and topical issue is that of climate scientist Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute think tank, who writes of climate change: The stark reality is that if we really want to alter the warming trajectory of the planet significantly, we have to cut emissions by an extremely large amount, and – a truth that everyone must know – we simply do not have the technology to do so. We would fritter away billions in precious investment capital in a futile attempt to curtail warming. Consequently, the best policy is to live with some modest climate change now and encourage economic development, which will generate the capital necessary for investment in the more efficient technologies of the future. (Michaels, 2007, A8) The point to notice about these arguments is that they are not merely saying that CSR is pointless. They are saying that it is damaging – although Friedman does believe that it is justifiable to profess CSR if market conditions are such as to make this a competitiveness-enhancing course of action. The implication for management education would seem to be, not so much that it should ignore CSR, but that it should promote active cynicism towards it. From an educational point of view, it is possible to argue that there is value in encouraging management students to explore the tensions between business activity and the achievement of the social and environmental goals that CSR represents. Broadly speaking this can be done from either, z z

a liberal perspective, pursuing rough and necessarily imperfect compromises that respect competing interests and priorities; or, a critical perspective that ultimately aims to subvert capitalistic business and emancipate the learner.


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Because of their essentially investigative pedogogic orientation, both liberal and critical alternatives lie within a broadly Kolbian, reflection-oriented pedagogic tradition. An early example of the (perhaps creative) tension between them occurs in a response by Gough (1997) to a very influential study by Greenall Gough and Robottom (1993). This original study took a critical perspective. It involved an action-learning project with five coastal schools in Australia, and involved three linked elements: a computer conference between schools; the taking of scientific measurements across local freshwater resources; and, collaborative engagement of students and teachers with issues that arose during the project. One such issue that did arise concerned the attitude of the local water board. Concerns were raised by the project about the appropriateness of its management priorities and actions, and this became a focus of student learning. In his subsequent commentary on this work, Gough (1997) noted that the water board at that time could have benefited, in its own terms, from in-house management education that emphasized the following issues in relation to its CSR position: z z z z z

Compliance with environmental legislation and issues of liability Quality assurance procedures Management of customer sensitivities Efficient resource management Commercial opportunities arising from environmental legislation

At the same time, however, he also pointed out that educational opportunities were missed within the action-learning project, through which students might have engaged with the day-to-day realities of managing a public resource. Among the matters that might have been considered in this way were: the opportunity costs of marginal improvements in water quality; the social distribution of the costs and benefits of amended water board policy; technical and managerial constraints and opportunities; and, the characteristics of the regulatory environment at that time and available responses to them. It is perhaps not too much of a caricature to say that the original, critical, study found evidence of practice that it considered inexcusable, and presented this as a justification for radical change. The subsequent, liberal, commentary conceived this same practice as an unsurprising consequence of a messy and complex set of interactions, and proposed an iterative response through which those involved might come to understand each other better.

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These tensions have not been resolved in the intervening years. Dehler (2009) provides an account of contemporary thinking in relation to what he terms ‘critical management education’. Elsewhere, McFalls (2007) provides an interesting, cautious empirical account that makes it clear why these critical ideas continue to attract support. In this work, she examines the notion of ‘inclusive capitalism’, as developed by Prahalad (2004) and Hart (2005), through a case study. Inclusive capitalism is a concept which proposes that meeting the needs of the four billion people in the world who live in poverty represents an unparalled business opportunity. Hence, private sector corporations can both increase profits, and demonstrate impeccable social responsibility, by servicing this new consumer group. The terminology of the inclusive capitalism approach was extensively referenced by the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) in relation to its showcase Mogalakwena i-Community Project, and this provides the focus of McFalls’ study. The Mogalakwena HP i-community project was launched by Thabo Mbeki and the then CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina in 2002 at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. It was designed as a public-private partnership that would use information technology to bring sustainable economic and social benfits to a region of South Africa. Despite this apparently promising prospectus, many unambiguously good intentions and some successes, the project was gradually wound down following the completion of its original three-year time frame. McFalls (2007, p. 95) notes, HP reverted to top-down implementation methods with an expectation of quick returns, ultimately handing down social development responsibilities to the local authorities. As a business model, the project’s financial sustainability was dependent on the sale of the social services to the state (or other potential donors). Consequently, the responsibility for economic and sustainable development is not transferred to private enterprise, but remains with the state. The arguments of this book are for the most part oriented towards the liberal, incremental approach to management education described above. However, critical perspectives are not dismissed. These argue that liberal educational approaches to management education are likely to be less than fully satisfactory in terms of the achievement of broad social goals such as CSR – and they are quite correct to do so, as McFalls study seems to suggest.


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The question, however, is whether the proposed alternatives are worse. This is because a central difference between the liberal and critical positions lies in their subtly different understandings of the nature of human freedom. This important general point is one we shall return to in Chapter 9. In the meantime we should note that the work of UNESCO-UNEVOC continues to juxtapose a wide range of competing positions (including that of critical theory) in precisely the manner that the liberal case proposes. For example, a recent publication bearing the organization’s imprint (Fien et al., 2009a) contains the following passages in successive chapters, both relating specifically to the purposes and practices of TVET: People need to adjust to acquire skills that cannot be automated if they wish to remain marketable and productive; else they will vanish together with the traditional jobs they currently undertake. To survive, workers need to create hyperjobs by identifying problems to be solved th their hyper-human skills, such as discovery, creativity and influence. (Man-Gon Park, 2009, p. 16) The transition to a sustainable society will involve an historically unprecedented revolution in institutions, systems, lifestyles and values. Much of Western culture has to be reversed in a few decades . . . all such changes require a skilled and committed workforce that appreciates the important roles it plays in either continuing ‘business as usual’ without heed to the future, or living and working in ways that advance the transition that is required. (Fien et al., 2009b, p. 31) Readers will note the strong individualism of the former quote, and the collectivism of the latter. In the former individuals must accommodate themselves to the relentless march of market-based globalization. In the latter, necessary changes by society ‘require’ a collectively-conceived ‘workforce’ to possess particular characteristics.

Management Education for Post-16 Students in Borneo No apology is made for including here a description of this work, which was conducted between 1996 and 1998. Although clearly quite dated now, it has been influential in the development of theory (Scott and Gough, 2003; Gough and Scott; 2007). Further, many of the issues it addresses, in relation

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to education, CSR and development, continue to be important. As noted at the outset of this chapter, core problems of management also tend to be enduring in nature. Finally, the project was strongly grounded in the cultural theory account of competing rationalities that has already been presented and discussed. The processes and events described were presented to all those involved at the time as being simultaneously a research project and a piece of curriculum innovation. The work was carried out in Brunei, a small country in northern Borneo. Brunei is heavily forested and oil- and gas-rich. It is a Malay Islamic Sultanate, though it has a large minority population of ethnic Chinese. The project involved up to eight teachers of the Cambridge A-level programme ‘Management of Business’, and two cohorts of more 150 students, aged 17–22. One cohort participated in two case-study events, the other in only one. These events each lasted for one full week, plus pre- and post-case activities. Two prior requirements of the project were: first, that all activities should, without exception, promote the best interests of participating students (including through the enhancement of their performance in final examinations); and, second, those activities should also be consistent with the policy imperatives of the national government. These unambiguously required both rapid economic development and the conservation of crucial aspects of the country’s social and environmental heritage. One case study focused on the notion of quality in business, and was undertaken by both cohorts of students, in consecutive years. They were asked to complete four activities, working collaboratively in groups of two, three or four. These activities related to a fictional proposal by a local/foreign joint venture company called ‘Progressive Plastics’ to establish an industrial plant for the manufacture of plasic bags at a prime location close to where the Brunei River discharges into the South China Sea. Though fictional, the proposal itself was in all respects realistic. Brunei is a significant producer of oil and gas, and plastic bags are manufactured from ethane gas, which is a waste product from that industry. In addition, chemical industries at that time enjoyed a preferred status in the taxation regime of central government. The four tasks related directly to quality as it would be understood in realtion to the Progressive Plastics enterprise, but addressed this from four different perspectives. These were those of: z

a local manager hired by the company to report to head office on the in-country policy context, particularly with regard to CSR-related issues. This would be the kind of position to which students on the course might ultimately aspire.

Case Study Three: Management Education z

z

z

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a Ministry official responsible for the monitoring and regulation of the new Progressive Plastics plant. Again, a senior position in government service would be a very common ambition among students. a member of the public responding to a debate in the local paper about the possible implications of the plastics industry for quality of life in the country. Students tended to have a strong sense of civic pride and citizen-identity, and the national daily paper, the Borneo Bulletin, regularly carried letters debating development-related issues. a scenario-writer for the multi-national joint venture partner in Progressive Plastics. To work for such a company would be a desirable and prestigious outcome for any student. Such a post did in fact exist at this time in one major multi-national investor in the country – Shell. Its holder had addressed students in the recent past.

To help them to complete these tasks, students were provided with a booklet of current information relating to the problem. This included technical, legal and theoretical information, government policy documents and a selection of relevant material from the local press and from magazines. A second case study was undertaken with only one cohort of students. Its focus was the design of an appropriate tourism development strategy for the country. This was a particular priority for the national government at the time, and the work attracted the support and participation of the very senior government official who had precisely that responsibility in reality. On this occasion students were again asked to work in small groups, and, as before, one week of timetabled lessons, plus homework and pre- and post-case study activities were available to them. They had only two tasks to complete in this case. The first was to produce a five-year development plan for the Brunei coastline. This time limit was consistent with actual central government targets to transform the country into a regional tourism hub. The second was the design of an appropriate ‘marketing mix’ for the country’s overall tourism product. Again, a range of information was made available to the students and their teachers. Also as before, they were encouraged to explore these tasks from a range of perspectives that were likely to be of significance in their own working lives. These three case studies together generated a very large quantity of data in the form of documents written by students, interview transcripts, observational notes, and questionnaire responses by both students and teachers. These were analysed using a two stage process. First, they were sorted into ‘loose networks’, a process that revealed links in the thinking of students and teachers between different ideas and concepts. Second, they were

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re-presented to students in the form of a ‘dilemma analysis’ that highlighted apparent contradictions and tensions within the views and ideas they had previously reported (Gough and Scott, 2000). One surprising aspect of this work was the very extensive interest and support that it attracted among the local community. Not only were students and teachers keen to participate, but so were local business figures, officials of more than one government ministry and local educational administrators. It seemed clear from anecdotal evidence that this external interest arose from the way in which the students’ tasks juxtaposed enthusiasm for change, development and growth on the one hand, with an equal enthusiasm for stability, tradition, heritage and conservation on the other. That this was a major concern for students was demonstrated conclusively through the dilemma analysis process. To give just a few of many possible examples, very many students agreed strongly with both statements in the each of the following pairs. Note that all statements originated with the students themselves. 1. It is important that businesses are truthful. 2. Businesses may need to conceal information for competitive reasons. 1. Development can make life safer. 2. Development can lead to more crime and the black market. 1. Brunei must avoid following the West. 2. Brunei must catch up with the West. 1. Growth will improve the quality of life. 2. Growth will increase the cost of living. 1. Brunei will become wealthier. 2. More individuals will get into debt. 1. Urbanization destroys the landscape. 2. Urbanization can improve the landscape. We might ask which is the more rational position here: to assume that one or other statement in each pair must ultimately, or mostly, be correct? Or, to see in the tension between them the real uncertainties that govern the students’ lives and prospects? The claim made for this particular project is that, in a small way, it assisted students and teachers in understanding how their management knowledge could help them think about ongoing, intractable issues of direct significance for their own lives. In so doing, we should note, it avoided the stark dichotomy presented above by the juxtapositioning of quotes from Man-Gon Park (2009) and Fien et al. (2009b). Yes, individuals sometimes have to sink or swim by their own efforts in a wild


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and uncaring world. And, yes, individuals sometimes need to contribute, selflessly and collaboratively, to collective welfare. As James and Thompson (1989) and Schwarz and Thompson (1990) show, this is an enduring human dilemma that will not go away. It is not something that we should, or even can, settle once and for all. By way of a footnote, it is interesting that these apparent contradictions were illustrated in wider events at the time the project was underway. On the one hand, economic development was producing enhanced life-chances for the young students of management – perhaps most particularly for girls. At the same time, corrupt developers in neighbouring Kalimantan (a part of Indonesia that shares the island of Borneo with Brunei and East Malaysia) started fires that shrouded the college where the students studied in thick yellow woodsmoke for three months, closing the airport and, sadly, impacting on their health in ways that have probably not yet played themselves out.

Online Workplace Learning for Health Sector Procurement Officers The UK National Health Service (NHS) is one of the largest employers in Europe, with a total staff of 1.3 million people. Its expenditure is correspondingly large at approximately £19 billion each year. This spending covers an extremely wide range of goods and services, including surgical equipment, buildings, food, energy, transport, garments, and pharmaceuticals. It is very significant in maintaining the commercial health of communities at the local and regional levels. Further, NHS spending has significant social and environmental impacts along the supply chain. The organization has a special kind of responsibility for its own actions. To the extent that these lead to positive or negative effects on health, they have direct consequences for subsequent NHS provision. For example, if a restructuring or ‘rationalization’ of spending to cut costs leads to reduced demand for the products of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at the local level, and if this then results in redundancies that lead to a rise in stress-related illness, it is the NHS itself that must provide treatment. Sustainable development is therefore an idea that is readily incorporated, at least at a broad policy level, into NHS planning. A joint statement from the Public Health Minister and the Permanent Secretary (Department of Health, 2006), notes that, A number of existing Department of Health policies contribute to sustainable development; our health focus on communities (eg. action

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on health inequalities), our health focus on the environment (eg. encouraging choice of good food, and enjoyment of an active lifestyle) and our health focus on the economy (eg. recognising the link between poverty and ill health). The body responsible for enhancing procurement managers’ competence in relation to sustainable development is the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA). During 2004–05 PASA commissioned a research and development project to develop an innovative and effective training approach to this task. An inter-disciplinary team of practitioners and academics was formed to oversee the project (Walker et al., 2009). The director of policy at PASA recruited 35 NHS supplies managers to participate in the project. At the same time, an advisory committee was formed including representation from PASA itself, and from government departments with overlapping concerns in the area of purchasing. Training took place through two courses, each lasting approximately eight weeks in total. These were separated by a period of one month to allow for an evaluation of the first course to be completed. Both courses were designed in the same way. They began with an intensive meeting of participants lasting two days. This was followed by six weeks of facilitated e-learning using the Blackboard virtual learning environment, during which time participants were also expected to attend to their normal professional duties. In the fourth of these six weeks, they were required to report by means of a video conference to the PASA’s Chief Executive. Finally, a further, formal face-to-face meeting of all participants was held, together with policy makers, PASA senior managers, and representatives of the private, not-for-profit and public sectors. Participants presented the outcomes of their learning as a basis for wider discussion of key issues. During the six week period of engagement through the virtual learning environment, participants collaborated in fixed teams of four to six people called ‘Aspect Groups’. Each of these was allocated a particular key aspect of health sector procurement and sustainable development to explore. These aspects had been identified by PASA’s Head of Policy, and were: development of sustainable supply chains; sustainable innovation; sustainable food chains; and, social enterprise. Evaluation of the courses focused on two main issues: the extent to which participants’ understanding and skills had been enhanced; and, lessons for course design. Regarding skills enhancement, participants did report that there had been benefits. However, many of them also reported the existence of barriers that were likely to prevent them from fully applying their learning


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in the workplace. In particular, it was noted that sustainable development, as an example of a rather ill-defined objective with uncertain and long-term payoffs, was likely often to be given a lower priority than more measurable, short-term measures. Immediately after the completion of the courses there were few who identified the costs of implementing sustainable development policy as a barrier. However, when they were interviewed again three months later, the number doing so had increased significantly. Some participants were able to report examples of how they had put their learning into practice. This had usually worked best in projects that were small and manageable. For example, it had proved possible to rationalize deliveries of medical consumable products to five hospitals in the city of Birmingham through improved coordination of those involved. This reduced journeys, fuel consumption, costs and pollution. One important assumption underlying the course was confirmed – participants were not primarily interested in learning more about sustainable development. Rather, they simply wanted to be better at their jobs. Sustainable development could sometimes provide an opportunity to improve professional performance in this way, through skilful contextspecific action that satisfied not just a set of abstract criteria, but the real concerns of those involved, including NHS finance officers, patients and consultants. A particular strength of the courses from this point of view was, therefore, the way they actively involved specialists from across professional levels, including policy-makers, those making purchasing decisions on the ground, and everyone between. A number of lessons for course design also emerged. Most participants felt the mix of personalities within groups was important, and had something to say, whether positive or negative, about the composition of their own Aspect Group. It was not possible to arrive at a firm conclusion about the extent to which participant activities should be pre-specified in detail. Some said they had been unsure what was expected of them, others that minimum structure was conducive to creativity and original thinking. It might be added that, in any case, a degree of challenge, and even discomfort, is not always pedagogically inappropriate, particularly when working with adult professionals for whom managed conflict is a normal feature of the working environment. A further lesson that emerged clearly was the need to take the pre-existing, contextually-grounded understandings of participants seriously, and to characterize academic inputs as a contribution to a process of shared learning, rather than a set of answers. Finally, it was also clear that there is a need to keep online learning technologies for busy professionals as technologically simple as possible.

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Applying the Framework for Analysis We noted earlier the requirements that variously exist for management to be competitive, compliant to regulations, and responsible. These play out rather differently in our three examples of UNEVOC work on management and CSR, college-based management education in Borneo, and training for serving procurement officers in the UK Health Service. Nevertheless, the tensions between them are evident in all three cases. UNEVOC is primarily focused on providing support to developing countries, and so its commitment to CSR needs to be seen in a context of concern about the impacts of globalization on the poor. This is particularly the case at the time of writing, as the global financial crisis threatens to force even more people around the world into poverty. There is no doubt that the intended beneficiaries of management education that promotes CSR are, above all, those same poor people: but, as we have seen, a dilemma remains. Is the priority to provide individuals with the means to make themselves useful in the capitalist marketplace? Or is it, rather, to serve some higher ideal that might someday supersede that marketplace? Should, therefore, employers figure unconditionally among beneficiaries of training? Or is such training properly – and/or realistically – a means of prompting change to business practices from within? One can ask a similar set of questions in relation to management education and the nation state. Should poor countries emphasize a model of training that promotes collaborative alternatives to capitalism, and local alternatives to participation in the globalized economy? Or should they accept the evidence that entrepreneurial skill is the handmaiden of prosperity, and seek to develop it among the most disadvantaged of society (Mahmood, 2009)? This may raise a further question, which is the balance to be struck between conservation of the old and adoption of the new. For example, no one in the development community doubts the value of empowering women, and this is as it should be: but it would be foolish in practical terms not to recognize that both men and women may sometimes struggle to reconcile this empowerment with their traditional roles. The example of college-based management education in Brunei illustrates how economic activity generates a range of tensions between the values of the past and those of the present. These may well not be transparent to outsiders, and may raise feelings that run very deep. In short, it may be difficult not only to identify the appropriate beneficiaries for TVET, but, sometimes, to say whether a given outcome is a ‘benefit’ or not.


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One of the reasons for the ubiquitousness of management education around the world is that it transmits a number of very specific skills that prove to have wide transferability. Basic techniques of financial management, the use of tools such as decision-tree or SWOT analyses, simple structures for the identification of marketing opportunities, skill in writing and presenting a plan, and the rudiments of pricing can all go a very long way in a person’s life. However, because it concerns the conditions under which economic production takes place, management education also places wider issues of social organization, freedom and justice in sharp relief, as well as the tension between conservation and change. Hence we find, in these examples, evidence of students engaged in learning designed to contribute to everything from making a basic living through to honing high-level professional skills. The question of whether business activity and management are best seen as an opportunity for those who suffer the most from poor social organization, oppression and injustice, or whether, rather, they are the principle causes of that condition, has been a recurring one in this chapter. Individualists, applying a ‘what works?’ criterion, will take the former view. Egalitarians, focusing on ‘what is fair?’, will tend to favour the latter position. Both may seek to enlist those of an hierarchical turn of mind to formulate rules that embody their own point of view. It should be clear, at least, that the answer to these difficulties, if there ultimately is one, cannot be either competition or collaboration at a national or global scale. One way or another, any and every society is surely characterized by both. As long as this is so, the question of the ends that management education should properly serve will continue to loom large. Our examples also illustrate a wide range of possible modes of delivery. The NHS PASA project revealed that online provision has both strengths and limitations, but that may perhaps be, to some extent, a matter specific to the context. Certainly there are high hopes for the efficacy of information technology-based solutions, both in the delivery of management training and its entrepreneurial application. Focusing on a context very different from that of the UK NHS, Mahmood (2009, p. 222) writes, The potential of ICT is enormous. The introduction of alternative economic activities that take advantage of technology to create more, reach more and produce more will further strengthen the economic outlook and reduce poverty. Some relevant steps are strengthening e-commerce and establishing more infrastructures to support the womenled development of e-community centres and can subsequently build new learning structures and income sources for the youth in rural areas.

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This is a commendable goal. The example of the Mogalakwena HP i-community project points to some of the doubts and possible difficulties that attend it. Finally, it is clear that, in any particular case, the assessment and evaluation of management education may be anything from professional and formal to non-existent. Assessment is not always desirable, but, except in the most informal of settings, an evaluation plan should always be included at the planning stage. The NHS PASA case study is a strong example of this, with the senior managers of particpants involved from the outset. Enough has been said earlier in the chapter about the importance of both context and pedagogy in management training, and these matters will be further discussed, at a general level, in later chapters.

Management Education as Investment In Chapter 1 we noted the indispensibility of theory. In Chapter 3 we discussed the distinction between realism and instruentalism in the philosophy of science, and in particular the issue of whether the underlying assumptions of a theory either could, or should, be tested. For all the cases described in this chapter, theory is only useful to the extent that it informs good and improving practice. So, for example, we might feel on instrumentalist grounds that if both process-based and psychological-profile-based theories of learning styles can yield equally useful results, there is no need for – or at least no urgency about – further investigation of the differences between them. However, if we think of TVET as a form of investment then it is, in social scientific terms, a very long game indeed. This chapter has touched on decisions about TVET that include, z

z z

whether young people should be encouraged through TVET to challenge or embrace the kinds of entrepreneurialsm, and pursuit of personal gain, that is associated with, for example, growth and prosperity on the one hand, and inequality and environmental degradation on the other the balance to be struck between the exploitation and conservation of forest resources in a small country purchasing priorities in relation to the construction and operation of hospitals that will have implications for people’s health over many decades


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For any of these, 40-to-50 years would seem a not-unreasonable minimum future period to consider. In the natural sciences, although some things move very fast indeed, the underlying characteristics and ordering of the universe do not usually change very quickly, if they change at all. In the social sciences – including, as was shown in Chapter 1, economics – 50 years is a very long time. Aspects of the social world that once seemed more or less permanent may disappear. Events and institutions that once seemed centrally important in determining the course of events, later appear to be mere consequences of longer-term trends, or even entirely irrelevant. By way of illustration, in 2002 the author was privileged to be invited to give a presentation at Moscow State University. The building that houses this famous and distinguished institution is one of the great landmarks of the city. Built as an architectural paean of praise to the Soviet Union, those who saw it completed must have felt it embodied the permanent political state of their world. In 2002, however, in disrepair and with its fabric crumbling, it seemed, rather, a massive, tragic footnote to a period of unprecedented state hubris. Now, in 2009, as power in the Russian Federation is once more consolidated in the Kremlin, one might regard it as a landmark in the long-continuing, broadly unchanging Russian affliation to authoritarian government in one form or another. That TVET is a form of investment is a useful idea only if our thinking about it is built upon secure foundations. We need to start from intellectual bedrock. The next chapter begins to attempt this, by exploring the significance of the relationship between three of TVET’s possible beneficiaries: the individual learner; society as a whole; and, the many institutions, including employer organizations of one sort or another, that occupy the space between them.

Chapter 7


TVET, Work, Society and Nature In Chapter 1 the use of sustainable development as a cross-cutting idea to underpin the case studies was justified on the grounds that this concept usefully combines the economic and social dimensions of TVET, while recognizing also that human productive activity – that is, the work for which TVET is a preparation – necessarily involves engagement with the environment. In fact, all work involves simultaneous interaction with social, economic and environmental factors, because these are inseparable. The division of complex phenomena into categories called: ‘the social’, ‘the economic’ and ‘the environmental’ has historically been an extremely useful form of analysis (see Chapter 2). In fact, so useful has it been that it has become part of the institutional architecture of our world. Academic disciplines demarcate themselves in relation to it. Countries allocate ministerial portfolios in line with it. Over time, our thinking is shaped by it, so that it seems sensible, for example, to speak of ‘the environment’ as if it is in some way separate from our normal sphere-of-business; something that is important only if and when it impacts on the economy, or on the quality of life in society, or if we happen to take up ‘environmentalism’ as a cause or a hobby. In fact, we are constituted from the environment. There is no social act that does not take place within an economy and an environment; no economic act that does not in some way implicate a society and an environment; and, no way of thinking about, or acting upon, the environment (that is, the one that matters to us) that is not coloured by our social and economic circumstances. Quite simply, work is a social/economic/environmental activity: and so, therefore, is TVET. This is true regardless of the rights or wrongs of a particular policy idea like sustainable development. This chapter seeks to clarify these inter-relationships as they affect our understanding of what TVET, in its different configurations, can do for its different possible beneficiaries. In doing so it draws on a strand of recent


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work on education as it relates to the interaction of societies with their environments through economic activity. The approach has a particular focus on the parameters of human decision-making over time (Scott and Gough, 2003; Gough, 2009a, 2009b). Foundationally, it depends upon a broad commitment to realism: that is, to the ontological idea that there exists a real world independent of human understandings of it. Such a realist conception banishes relativism, and is compatible with the broadly Darwinian, pragmatic philosophical perspectives of Rorty (1999) and Dewey (1910). A detailed account of such an ontological position has been developed from the perspective of economics by Hodgson (2002; 2004a; 2006). As Charles Darwin’s work is at the heart of it, there is a need for a short aside at this point. As Hodgson notes, there has been an unfortunate but widespread tendency for Darwinian perspectives to be (often aggressively) excluded from thinking in the social sciences. There is certainly no doubt that, historically, Darwin has been at best misunderstood, and at worst wilfully misrepresented, by some who have used his name to justify their actions and beliefs. It would not be appropriate here to discuss the errors inherent in Social Darwinism or Eugenics. Suffice to say, without further ado, that although Darwinism is significant for our understanding of social phenomena it does not: equate evolution with ‘progress’; endorse racism, sexism, imperialism or the triumph of might over right; banish altruistic or collaborative behaviour; or, explain human intellect and purposefulness in purely genetic or biological terms. Rather, the central, minimal point that necessitates consideration of Darwinian thinking is that issues relating to human work cannot credibly be conceived as being without connection to the place of humans in the material universe. Since that universe is governed by Darwinian principles, a theoretical linkage between Darwinism and our social scientific understandings of work and TVET seems logically indispensable. As already noted it is normal, at every level of contemporary discourse from the local to the global, firstly, to make a working distinction between the economy and the environment and, secondly, to assume that the interrelationship between these two entities is typically in the form of a trade-off. This separation is reflected throughout our institutions, as is the relative importance attached, on the whole, to its separate elements. So, for example, almost anywhere in the world (perhaps not on low-lying Pacific islands!), we find greater resources and prestige attached to finance ministries as compared to environment ministries, and, at the international level, the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and World

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Bank are (in this sense) one thing, and the United Nations Environment Programme quite another. However, it is important to be clear that there is nothing inherently stupid, or even wrong, about such an economy/environment distinction. Indeed, readers can hardly fail to notice that it turns out to be impossible to avoid using these terms even after the point has been made that they embody an artificial simplification of the truth. The terms ‘environment’, and ‘economy’ are embedded in our language and our thinking. They are what we have to work with. For Londoners who live in the flight path of Heathrow’s proposed third runway, or rainforest peoples facing displacement by the expansion of logging and/or mining activities, a distinction between economic and environmental considerations offers a perfectly valid, useful way of making sense of the world. They might use it as a basis from which to construct arguments in favour of more TVET provision in, respectively, alternative transport technologies, or the marketing of traditional forest products to tourists. But the same distinction is an equally valid and useful perspective for those who would like to see the runway built or the forest logged because they and their children might hope to benefit, in one way or another, from the resulting additional business activity. These people might press for extra TVET in airport or timber-industry management. To separate economy and environment may help individuals to fashion powerful reasons and arguments to achieve important goals in the here-and-now: but it does not help us towards a collectively better understanding of the overall picture. This matters educationally, because ‘better understanding’ is an educational value. It might matter for other reasons, as we shall see. Hodgson (2002; 2004a; 2006), elucidates the relationship, within a Darwinian framework, between the domain of the natural sciences and that of the social sciences. This, he argues, requires the adoption of a notion of ‘emergent properties’ – an idea already introduced in Chapter 2 – at a number of different, layered ontological levels from the atomic to the social – a cell is more than the atoms that make it up; an individual creature is more than the cells it consists of; a society more than the human beings that comprise it. In this view, reductionist explanations of human behaviour are banished since, for example, while an individual’s behaviour is cannot be inconsistent with her physiobiochemical composition, it cannot be explained solely in terms of this. Rather, the person is a complex system exhibiting system-level properties that are additional to, and not predictable from, the sum of the properties of the lower level components. Similarly, social institutions may be expected to possess emergent properties that


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depend upon, but cannot be reduced to, the characteristics of the individuals that make them up. This raises the crucially important and extremely controversial question of the possibility and nature of ‘downward causation’, that is, the determination of lower-level phenomena by higher-level processes. ‘Upward causation’ is not controversial. For example, patterns of individual sickness, migration, laziness, thrift, fecundity or vocational skill impact upon social institutions. Downward causation, however, not only excludes reductionism, because wholes can no longer be explained entirely in terms of their given constituent parts, but also, contrariwise, opens a door to forms of ‘methodological collectivism’ that seek to explain all individual behaviour in terms of system-level influences and, at least sometimes, invite a totalizing tendency. This is not the place to review the historical twists and turns of these debates. Suffice it say that Hodgson’s (2006) argument seems persuasive when he concludes in favour of two related principles. These are: first, that social scientific theory is not reducible to biology (or, even, physics), but it must be consistent with it; and, secondly, that higher-level causal processes do not alter those at lower levels (at least, not immediately or directly), but work through them. This suggests, for example, that TVET (and TVET institutions) might change peoples’ lives, but only by starting from the context-specific dispositions, experiences and capabilities they already have. We should note that this does not necessarily exclude given psychological dispositions to particular ‘learning styles’ (see Chapter 6) if and where these exist. However, the role of education generally is not simply the delivery of information to those who will use it (though this is not to deny that information is important), but as an expertly-negotiated process for the development of the learner. As John Dewey (1990/1902, p. 65) put it From the side of the child, it is a question of seeing how his experience already contains within itself elements – facts and truths – of just the same sort as those entering into the formulated study; and, what is of more importance, of how it contains within itself the attitudes, the motives and the interests which have operated in developing and organizing the subject-matter to the plane it now occupies. From the side of the studies, it is a question of interpreting them as the outgrowth of forces operating in the child’s life, and in discovering the steps that intervene between the child’s present experience and their richer maturity. Finally, methodological collectivism can be rejected, because individuals cannot be brought to behave in particular ways simply by means of their

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inclusion within particular social institutions. Rather, those institutions have influence through their effects on established individual characteristics – and this process involves the operation of an independent intellect – which is also, in turn, an emergence from a lower ontological level.

Signs, Symbols and Understandings Mention has already been made of the importance of pragmatist philosophy in formulating the foregoing ideas. This is of particular significance for TVET, and for education of all kinds, because it conceptualizes human life as an engagement with the environment using tools. One particular, recent development of this perspective is that of Stables (2005; 2006; 2008), who elaborates the implications of a ‘semiotic’ theory of learning that focuses on the pervasive and inescapable role of signs and signals in forming our understanding of our world. As we have seen, the word environment can be taken to refer to the ‘natural environment’, defined in some way that takes enduring natural processes and laws as its focus. It may also be thought of in personal terms, as the total array of signs and signals confronting a particular human organism. Or, we might propose some sort of halfway house that, for example, takes account of the built environment but excludes social artefacts such as traditional and religious symbols or beliefs. In fact, each of these conceptions represents a level within a layered, mutually-influencing totality. Persons engage with their environment through the use of tools. Tools may take many forms, for example: chisels, axes, paintbrushes, semi-automatic weapons, conversations, emails or (these days) institutional strategy documents. Economic behaviour is one form of such engagement with the environment. Any engagement involves response to particular signs and signals that depend on, but are not reducible to, natural processes and laws. Such responses entail agency and deliberation, but are also always consistent with (but not reducible to) scientific laws. Responses may be mediated through social institutions. Agency may result in both the modification of the material conditions of life, and/or the generation of new signs and symbols. Finally, we should note that there are issues of both geographical and temporal scale. For example, a collective decision to adopt new agricultural practices may set in train a long term process of soil salination that has implications for future generations far beyond the immediate area, while at the same time provoking an almost immediate spike in the share prices of firms manufacturing agricultural machinery. In consequence,


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a variety of fresh signs and symbols will arise, while existing ones may be retained, amended or abandoned. This example merits more careful consideration. It contains three elements. First, there is a collective decision, which implies a political process of some kind through which ‘society’ makes up its collective mind. Next, new agricultural practices are adopted, which means that ‘economic’ processes are in some way different from those that existed previously. Finally, changes in the properties of the soil occur. The ‘environment’ has changed. Of course, this environmental change will have occurred in accordance with unchanging physical and chemical laws of Nature, but it is still change, and it may well have further implications in both the economic and social spheres. A conceptual device capable of uniting thinking about society, economy and environment is that of ‘co-evolution’ (Norgaard, 1984, 1994; Kerry Turner, 1993; Lele and Norgaard, 1995), which has been developed over many years by Richard Norgaard and others with that express intention. The core proposition of co-evolutionary theory is that social action (whether individual or institutional) is capable of causing modifications to the environment over time which then, in turn, promote further individual and social responses. We should note at once that the need to avoid misapprehensions applies to co-evolution just as it does to Darwinism more widely. There is absolutely nothing in this conception that suggests that co-evolution will necessarily be progressive, beneficial, or, from any particular standpoint, morally desirable. It is nothing like as simple as that. For example, suppose that the introduction of agricultural practices mentioned above leads, not to soil damage but to the generation of local food surpluses. These, in turn, make possible increases in population through increased fecundity and reduced mortality. Subsequently outward migration occurs, and further tracts of land are domesticated. This sounds all very well. However, if we introduce the complication that the ‘extra tracts of land’ already provide subsistence for a community of nomads then fresh complications arise. Outcomes will depend on the outturn of social and economic interactions within a context of institutions. Whatever happens next, it will give rise to a new and dynamic set of circumstances. Education in general, and perhaps most particularly TVET, appear to offer a way in which succeeding generations can be prepared to manage their own adaptations to situations of this sort, in the best possible way. Such an account is entirely consistent with the notion of ‘layered ontology’ described earlier. The actions of social institutions do not modify the environment by changing scientific laws. They work through such laws by

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altering the circumstances in which they operate, and by attributing meaning to change processes and their outcomes. It is for this reason that social change may often proceed at a much faster rate than environmental change, and that education is so important. Individuals and (some at least would argue) institutions can learn. They can imitate, reject, experiment and abandon. They can imagine, believe and suppose. In short, and as we have already noted, they can fashion multiple certainties out of uncertainty, but they are vulnerable to unforeseen, and unforeseeable surprises. A co-evolutionary account brings to the surface another important issue for human work. All such work uses resources, but there is much confusion about the nature of ‘a resource’. There can be no doubt that the resources available to humans are ultimately limited. Unless we wish to put our collective faith in future benign arrivals of some sort from outer space, we inhabit a finite planet and must make of it what we can. However, while what we actually and ultimately have available to us is unchanging, our understanding of what is available to us changes all the time. Any given feature of our world becomes a resource only when we want to do something with it, and also can do something with it. This point is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the sequence of events since the publication of The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), which predicted the extinction of resources that have, in fact, become more plentiful. Technologies have improved, relative costs have altered, new knowledge has come to light and wants have changed. Even so, those resources are not infinite. The notion of co-evolution is helpful here because – over very long periods of time and from a human perspective only – it permits the possibility of negative entropy. This is not to question the laws of thermodynamics. Indeed, it is central to the argument that those laws cannot be questioned. Rather, it is to point out that, over spans of time which are vast from a human perspective but geophysically negligible, the ordering of nature can change in ways that happen to be beneficial (or, at least, suggestive) to the human species at a particular point in its development. The formation of hydrocarbons is perhaps the most obvious example. Hence, the question ‘what resources are there?’ is not at all the same as the question ‘what exists?’ In summary, the notion of co-evolution provides an analytic device for considering the holistic interactions of society, economy and environment, that does not depend upon the separation of these elements into separate analytical spheres. Usefully, it does so without prohibiting the use of the words ‘society’, ‘economy’ and ‘environment’, since these are our shared linguistic currency. Co-evolutionary thinking accommodates both physical laws and human meaning-making, attaching importance to both. It reveals


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the potential of learning, but also delineates its scope. As an educational goal it is at once both potentially liberating and extremely challenging. If education is a preparation for work, work is about ‘the immense task of influencing co-evolution to our benefit’ (Norgaard, 1984, p. 532).

TVET and Tools The foregoing has a number of important implications for our understanding of TVET. First, it will not do to think of students as neoclassicallydetached consumers of TVET with a given structure of wants and preferences to which TVET systems and institutions must respond. This is partly because they are part of such systems and institutions and so help to shape them, and partly because the wants that they have are developed over time through their participation in TVET and other social institutions of which they are a part. Second, and by exactly the same token, such students cannot be thought of either as the human raw material from which just, powerful or otherwise admirable institutions can deliberately be shaped. They have agency, and they have history. They may develop in one way or another, but they will not be moulded into premeditated uniformity. As with any species, the defining and most important characteristic of human beings is, in Darwinian terms, their capacity to generate variety. Third, the conventional conception of skills-training to meet skills-needs is very over-simplistic. We have seen that skills-needs are contingent, over the span of a person’s working life, on inherently uncertain co-evolutionary processes. Further, it proves very difficult to say exactly what a ‘skill’ is. Clarke and Winch (2006) catalogue a wide variety of quite different approaches to defining the term, and question whether it translates in any meaningful and transferable way across national boundaries. They also note the problem of, ‘Conceptual inflation’, whereby a term with a relatively narrow range of application is progressively expanded with consequent problems of ambiguity and comprehension. (Clarke and Winch, 2006, p. 26) One aspect of this difficulty is that, in its totality, the idea of skill is inseparable from considerations of: the given characteristics of the individual; the acquired characteristics of the individual; the institutional and historical contexts of which the individual is a part; the tools of all kinds that are involved; the individual’s relationship with those tools; and, the unfolding co-evolutionary outcomes of present and past actions. This is not, let it be

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emphasized, a claim that nothing can be done, or that scientific enquiry is pointless: quite the contrary. It is rather, an assertion that preference for ‘hard facts’ is not the same as a preference for simple facts. Two historical examples may serve to show what can happen when all this goes wrong. Diamond (2005) gives an account of a number of different societies, both modern and ancient, that have either failed and collapsed, or survived under challenging circumstances. Among the former are, z

z

The Greenland Norse, who vanished in the mid-fifteenth century. A Christian society with a strong cultural tradition that attached them to the ‘homeland’ in Scandinavia, they lived in two settlements on the west coast of the island. One of these was approximately 500 kilometres north of the other. Agricultural practices did not transfer well from Europe, and the main food-producing animals in Norse Greenland societies were hardy breeds of sheep and goats. However, some cattle were retained because of their high status, notwithstanding their unsuitability for the climate. All these animals were primarily kept for milk and its derivative products. A major productive activity was therefore the preparation of hay as winter animal-feed. The main source of meat was hunting. Diamond (2005, p. 235) characterizes this society as: ‘communal, violent, hierarchical, conservative and Eurocentric’. The Greenland Norse were caught up in a period of natural long-term global cooling of the climate, but of course they were ignorant of this. In fact, they had no way of even conceptualizing such thing. Their economy became gradually less viable as the summer season became shorter and the winters more severe. Evidence suggests that, as things got worse, the ruling elite continued to devote such trading opportunities as remained to the acquisition of European fashions and religious jewellery, bells and stained glass. Above all, they despised the Inuit and refused to adopt their techniques, although these were perfectly adapted to survival in the Arctic. The Polynesian people of Easter Island. These were discovered by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen in 1722. He was immediately puzzled that the inhabitants of such an extraordinarily remote speck in the Pacific Ocean lacked the ability to make anything other than extremely leaky and unseaworthy canoes. A further puzzle was how the massive statues, for which the island is famous, had been erected without heavy timber and strong ropes. There was not a single tree on the island higher than three metres. A later visitor, in 1838, reported that the inhabitants repeated incessantly the word ‘miru’, which refers to the wood traditionally used by Polynesians to make canoes. Easter Island’s highest mountain is


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called ‘Terevaka’, which means ‘place to get canoes’. In fact, the island had been subject to massive deforestation caused by human activity and compounded by macro-level geographical factors such as poor rates of soil replenishment. Trees were cleared for gardens, burned for firewood and cremations, worked to make canoes capable of fishing in the open ocean, and turned into timber and rope for the erection of statues. The evidence suggests that this deforestation resulted in a collapse in sources of both wild and cultivated food, as erosion, nutrient-leaching and loss of shade all took their toll. There followed starvation, a collapse in the population, and cannibalism. The political and religious structures of the society that erected the statues were discredited, and statues themselves were destroyed as rival clans warred against each other. Both these examples illustrate very well, but at an accessibly small scale, the inseparability of social, economic and environmental factors. The primary causes of disaster, in both cases, were long term and to some extent unknowable to the people involved. Their own day-by-day explanations of what was going wrong seem likely to have been quite different, focusing on ultimately ephemeral issues of religion, political power, cultural prestige and so on. In short, the people of both societies engaged with the totality of their environments through the use a variety of tools, and the use of these tools was transmitted from one generation to the next. Therefore we may say that there was education. In neither case does it seem that there ever a moment when a centralized authority could have identified ‘future skill-needs’ with certainty. There must have been at least a tacit view on this point however, and in the end it was, in both cases, the wrong one. The skills that actually (or might have) turned out to be crucial were not those that commanded the highest status at the time. And yet, if these societies had any chance of survival at all, it might have been through a careful consideration of the productive skills that were most useful, the possibilities for adapting and adding to these in a way that was responsive to changing circumstances, and a commitment to retaining or acquiring skill options (such as Inuit whaling techniques or open-ocean fishing) which, at the point of decision, were not sufficiently valued to be maintained. It was noted earlier that better understanding matters educationally. It also matters if we think our own society might be less than secure; and it seems that, for one reason or another, many people do think so. Both the Greenland Norse and the Easter Islanders were, in part, overtaken by events at a lower ontological level – respectively, the cooling of the climate and the failure of airborne soil replenishment. Perhaps, for example, climate

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change, biodiversity loss or, indeed, pressure on freshwater resources, confront us with similar kinds of problem today. Such problems might manifest themselves directly through environmental catastrophe. They might take effect indirectly through conflicts over disputed rights to environmental assets such as water, oil, and agricultural land; or, over financial claims to such assets and their expected products, in the present or the future. Or, perhaps, none of these things will happen. Either way, what people learn in relation to these possibilities is important for the eventual outcomes. In a discussion that follows his wide-ranging review of evidence, Diamond (2005, p. 427) writes of societal failures: Many of the reasons for such failure fall under the heading of what economists and other social scientists term ‘rational behaviour’ arising from clashes of interest between people. That is, some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interests by behavior harmful to other people. Scientists term such behavior ‘rational’ precisely because it employs correct reasoning, even though it may be morally reprehensible. This chapter has discussed the context of TVET as it relates to human societies and indeed the human species. The next focuses on individual learners, and the question of rationality.

Chapter 8

Rational TVET

Chapter 7 ended with Diamond’s (2005) account of ‘rational’ behaviour as a frequent contributory cause in societal collapses. Rational behaviour, he states, can also be bad behaviour. Presumably, however, no one would claim that rational behaviour is always bad. This chapter discusses individual rationality from the perspective of TVET and investment.

Rationality and Employability We might think of rationality in relation to TVET in a number of different ways. For example, it might be argued that it would be rational to educate shop-floor workers and managers alike in the tenets of Corporate Social Responsibility, because this will lead them to behave in ways that are beneficial from the point of view of society as a whole. As we saw in Chapter 6, it might also be argued from the same perspective that this step was entirely irrational. Further, because the most famous advocate of the view that CSR is irrational is Milton Friedman, a famous economist, and, because ‘rationality’ is a word associated with – or, perhaps, appropriated by – economists, it is also possible to suggest that achieving the goals of CSR requires a move away from excessive rationality. The paradox seems to be that, on the one hand, ‘rationality’ is a normative, value-loaded concept but, on the other hand, a large part of the value that is actually attached to it derives from the assumption that ‘rational’ choices are somehow ‘scientific’ and free from the distorting influence of values. This difficulty is interestingly illustrated by different policy approaches to the transmission of skills for the workplace. A case can be made for: rational planning of society-wide skills development; the empowerment (or, some might say, abandonment) of some individuals to exercise their own rational choices about skills acquisition; or, an explicitly value-positive approach that willingly foregoes rationality in favour of some higher objective. From

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the point of view of an investment-based approach, the first of these positions suggests investment in TVET by society, with society as the principle beneficiary; the second suggests investment in TVET by the individual, with the individual as the principle beneficiary: and, the third suggests investment in an entirely metaphorical sense only, with the principle benefit possibly being an accrual of some intangible property such as social justice. These matters are next explored in the context of a recent study of employability and skills. Moreau and Leathwood (2006), conducted a longitudinal study of 310 students of psychology, business studies, computing and film studies at a ‘post-1992’, inner-city university in England between 1999 and 2005. They note evidence that graduates from universities of this type, which until 1992 were for the most part polytechnics, face greater difficulties in obtaining employment as compared to those from more traditional and elite institutions. The conceptual context of the study is described by the authors in terms of a recent observed shift in the discourse of post-compulsory skills education towards the concept of ‘employability’. This, they argue, represents a move away from a view of employment outcomes as resulting from system-level characteristics of the labour market. Instead, whether or not people find work is increasingly presented in official policy statements as a matter of individual responsibility that a person discharges by acquiring skills. Conversely, if a person is unemployed, argue Moreau and Leathwood, this is increasingly presented, by policy makers, as a problem of that person’s own creation. He or she has failed to acquire appropriate skills. Whatever its merit, this personal-responsibility account is broadly associated with the discourse of a globalized, knowledge-driven society. We encountered it previously in Chapter 6 (Man-Gon Park, 2009). In such a society, the argument goes, rational planning, discredited by the collapse and/or abandonment of communism, must be replaced (for reasons that are themselves rational) by marketized processes based in individual rationality. Further, employees have a responsibility not only to acquire skills but to upgrade them moreor-less contimuously. Crucially, the model depends on a conception of a labour-market that is free and fair. Those who do acquire and upgrade skills will be able to take them to market and obtain their just reward. However, Moreau and Leathwood (2006, p. 319) conclude that such markets are not, and in fact cannot, be free and fair. They write, Skills and qualities are not neutral. Employers might want, for example, someone who is strong and decisive, but they will inevitably read these

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qualities differently in different applicants. Such qualities tend to be identified with masculinity rather than femininity, with the consequence that a woman who presents herself as strong and decisive can easily be seen as not feminine enough or aggressive, whereas a man presenting similar qualities can be seen as simply meeting the requirements for the post. Social class, age, gender, ethnicity and disability are written on the body – they cannot be ignored or somehow neutralised by the development and portrayal of some ‘neutral’ skill. Even if this argument is accepted, a very wide range of responses is possible to it, as was shown in Chapter 3. We might equally well conclude, for example, that the scope of markets in skills-acquisition should be curtailed (because markets do not work) or extended (because they are being restricted in some way that makes it impossible for them to work properly). A final point of some significance is that, if the conception of a worker constantly upgrading skills through TVET in order to remain competitive in the labour market is fully accepted, then investment may no longer be the appropriate metaphoric perspective from which to consider it. Under such circumstances, the worker becomes a consumer of TVET, and the priority for TVET providers can only be the immediate satisfaction of training wants. Some will feel that such an outcome would embody rational choice, others that it is irrational in the extreme.

Economics and Rationality Economics is sometimes described as ‘the science of choice’. The view taken by economists of the nature of rational behaviour merits close attention because it is so influential. According to Hausman and McPherson (1994), the ‘standard theory of rationality’ in economics considers a person to be rational if she chooses what she most prefers from a complete, transitive and continuously-ranked set of preferences and, in the process, maximizes utility. This view is often described as equating rationality with utility maximization, and although this is strictly incorrect because utility is an index of preference rather than a goal as such (Hausman and McPherson, 1994), this terminology is also used in what follows. ‘Transitive’ in this sense means that if A is preferred to B, and B is preferred to C, then A is preferred to C. A rather technical issue that is very important to the present argument concerns the status of the standard theory of rationality under conditions

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of uncertainty. Hausman and McPherson (1994, pp. 257–8) put it as follows: This standard theory of rationality is silent concerning what to do in conditions of risk or uncertainty . . . To extend the standard theory requires one further axiom, the so-called ‘independence condition’ or ‘sure-thing principle’. What this condition says is that when an individual faces a choice between two bets that are identical except for one prize, then the individual will prefer the bet with the preferred prize. However, these authors note that, even with this condition in place, the theory of rationality contained within the standard theory is very ‘thin’. In fact, it has been questioned or rejected by a number of influential economists. For example, Julian Le Grand (2003) points out that there is no obvious reason why a rational consideration of options should not lead to a ranking that altruistically sacrifices some personal utility for the sake of other people. It might be argued against this that the person’s utility function should therefore include the utility they receive from altruistic behaviour, but as Hodgson (2006) demonstrates, in this case the standard theory of rationality actually becomes non-falsifiable: anything a person does must have utility, and any surprising behaviour can be accommodated by means of an addition to the utility function. Someone who enrols in a course this week and drops out next is rational in both cases, because they obtain (by definition) maximum utility from participating for the week, and for no longer. Hodgson (2004a) also observes that mainstream economists increasingly tend to claim that all approaches that do not rest on personal utility maximisation are not really economics at all. This has the effect of excluding some of the great historical names of the discipline, such as Hayek, Marx and Malthus. Elsewhere, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, Paul Krugman (1994) has suggested that perfect rationality would be economically irrational. The 2001 winner, Joseph Stiglitz (2002) critiqued mainstream accounts of globalization. There are many other examples. However, to say all of this does not mean that we can assume that mainstream economics explains nothing. On the contrary, it is very good indeed at explaining a great many important (if, to some people, apparently boring) things like, proverbially, the price of fish. To understand why, we need to understand something more about the concept of a market. In Chapter 5 we noted the definition of the market offered by the philosopher Robert Nozick (2001, p. 284): ‘an institutional process whereby individual actions and plans are coordinated’. This apparently simple

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definition points us towards the complexity that simple things may conceal. Coordinating individual actions and plans turns out to be enormously complex. The price of everyday items (such as fish, to persist with this example) summarizes information about: the relative preferences people have for fish as against other goods and services; those global raw material and capital-goods prices that are relevant to the fishing industry in extraction, transportation and retailing; wage levels in the industry; industry regulation at national and international levels; transport costs; energy costs; taxation; the relative prices of other goods that might be produced using the same inputs; consumer preferences; and more besides. This power that markets have to summarize massive amounts of information into a price that can be compared with other prices deserves serious recognition. However, at least three distinct (though frequently confused) further issues arise. First, it is legitimate to ask whether the market always does its job properly. This question would have to be answered in the negative if, for example, some suppliers of fish were exercising monopoly power, breaking the law or misleading customers. However, in such a case, we should once again note, it is not immediately obvious what to do next. Is the problem that there is too much of the market, or too little, in fish production? A pretty good argument can usually be made either way. Second, we might ask whether all the relevant ‘actions and plans’ are individual ones? Even if the answer to this is yes in relation to the market for fish, we might still ask whether the same necessarily follows for a much more complex good like education? Some think not. For example, (Whitty, 2002, p. 47) has warned against policies that ‘define education as a private good rather than a public issue and make education decision-making a matter of consumer choice rather than citizen rights’. Third, even if we are satisfied that individual actions and plans are being coordinated properly, this does not necessarily mean that fish production, as presently practised, is in keeping with wider goals that societies may aspire to, such as poverty eradication, human rights in the workplace, human wellbeing or environmental conservation. In part this is a further consequence of the fact that actions and plans may be collective, rather than individual, in nature. It also arises because such goals, which have a strong value-content and are quite aspirational in nature, raise the possibility that we might change our actions and plans. We might even decide that we do not particularly like who we are, and would like to change ourselves into something better. It would be understandable, perhaps, to conclude from all this that the prospective TVET trainee, the prospective employer and the public-sector policy maker are all as likely to get things right by guessing what to do as by putting their faith in rational decision-making. However, this would

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be wrong. The difficulty lies, not in the apparent elusiveness of the term ‘rationality’, but in the perception that there will be a single best course of action. The next section develops this idea by examining two contrasting areas of debate, both of which relate to decision-making in TVET. One concerns the use of formal modelling as a tool of (rational) economic analysis. The other is Amartya Sen’s (1999; 2002) exposition of rationality within his ‘capability’ approach to human development.

Formalism and Capability We have already seen both that there are many questions to be asked about the standard theory of rationality in economics, and that it provides a powerful tool that can be a rich source of usefully-accurate predications. Many of these predictions result from formal modelling processes. As we saw in Chapter 3, it has been influentially argued that, as long as predictions are accurate, no further methodological justification is necessary. However, even as formal modelling (or, ‘formalism’) has become increasingly dominant, so contestation about it has become increasingly vigorous. Perhaps the most widely-cited objection is that of Blaug (1997, p. 3): Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing. This is not perceived everywhere as merely an interesting issue for intellectual debate. For some, at least, it is also about competition for intellectual territory, jobs and influence. A forum for those who wish to contest the influence of formalism is provided by the ‘Post-Autistic Economics Network’ [www.paecon.net/], whose website complains: From the 1960s onward, neoclassical economists have increasingly managed to block the employment of non-neoclassical economists in university economics departments and to deny them opportunities to publish in professional journals. They also have narrowed the economics curriculum that universities offer students. At the same time they have increasingly formalized their theory, making it progressively irrelevant to understanding economic reality. And now they are even banishing

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economic history and the history of economic thought from the curriculum, these being places where the student might be exposed to non-neoclassical ideas. Yet, in a review of formalism in economics published in the journal of the Post-Autistic Economics Network, Hodgson (2004b) takes issue with those who would banish formal, mathematical analyses from all but a handful of tightly-specified problems. He argues, rather, that such analyses have their place provided they are used in the service of scientific enquiry that seeks better to understand the real world. This might happen in three ways. The first is through operations performed upon measurable economic variables, that is, though econometrics. He sees a significantly wider scope for work of this kind than other critics of formalism such as Lawson (1997; 2003; 2004). Second, formal techniques may serve as ‘heuristics’, that is, they may use simplified or counter-factual models to demonstrate important explanatory possibilities. Hodgson cites as an example of this the work of Schelling (1969), which showed that segregation along ethnic lines can result from the incremental consequences of small feedback effects, even in the absence of strong or systematic racial prejudice. Of course, this does not prove that racial prejudice is absent in any particular case. It proves only that a full and scientific consideration of the causes of segregation needs to consider a wider range of factors than is intuitively obvious – but that is an important point in its own right. Third, formalism may enable critique of the internal assumptions on which theories are built. Again, Hodgson provides a number of examples. He concludes, The pressing agenda issue for further discussion and enquiry in this area is to explore the inadequately explored middle ground between the unacceptable extremes of unreflecting worship and (at least expectational) denial of formal models and methods. (Hodgson, 2004b, p. 9) In this view, the accuracy of predictions is an important matter, but so is the credibility of the assumptions on which those predictions are based. In a rational perspective, both are weighed. Therefore, and for example: if formal analysis, perhaps using concepts such as ‘human capital’, can accurately model a variable such as the aggregate rate of recruitment to TVET programmes; if it can reveal counter-intuitive possibilities in the way that such recruitment levels respond to intended ‘incentives’; or, if it can show that the underlying assumptions of macro-policy on TVET are mutually incompatible, then all of that is to be applauded. If these achievements are built

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on the assumption of a world of asocial, utility-maximizing individuals then that is absolutely fine if, and only if, we do not lose sight of the counterfactual nature of that assumption. An approach to rationality that in many ways complements that of Hodgson is that of Amartya Sen, who offers a far-reaching and influential critique of utility-based approaches. In describing selective aspects of Sen’s work here a false separation is being made between his discussions of freedom and of rationality. The latter is the focus of the present chapter, while the former is examined in Chapter 9. It should be noted from the outset, however, that the two are entwined in Sen’s thinking, since he believes that the disciplined exercise of freedom is a characteristic of rationality. Sen (2002) rejects the standard theory of rationality in economics on the specific grounds that rationality cannot be adequately described in terms of either internal consistency of choice, the maximisation of self-interest or maximisation in general. Internal consistency provides an inadequate test for rational behaviour because it allows for sets of choices to be simultaneously rational even as they are mutually exclusive and contradictory. It requires no assessment of whether choices are wise or stupid, carefullyconsidered or rash. This matters because, for Sen, the central property of rationality is normative; it favours that which is better over that which is worse. As for accounts of rationality that depend upon one-or-another sort of maximizing behaviour, he writes: ‘Rationality cannot be just an instrumental requirement for the pursuit of some given – and unscrutinized – set of objectives and values’ (Sen, 2002, p. 39). However, he is also clear that, z

z

identifying what rational behaviour would look like in any set of circumstances tells us, by itself, nothing at all about what people are actually likely to do in those circumstances. associating rationality with normative worth does not mean that selfinterested behaviour is always, or even necessarily often, irrational.

Rationality on these terms requires simply that reason is employed in the scrutiny of alternative options before choices are made. In the presence of freedom, this process may lead to a development or enhancement of rationality, since choices may be made not only from a set of available options, but about what preferences are to be preferred. Sen (2002, p. 12) refers to these ‘preferences over preferences’ as ‘metarankings’, and further writes, The best alternative according to the preference that a person actually happens to have may not be the best (or even maximal) according to

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a preference she would prefer to have (and work towards realizing). (Sen 2002, p. 18) Earlier we noted three questions that arise in relation to the operation of markets: Do they do their job properly? Are there collective ‘actions and plans’ of which account should be taken? Can markets reflect aspirational goals for personal and social improvement? The discussion to this point has a bearing on the first and third of these. Having noted the possible usefulness of the standard theory of rationality, we have described an approach that contradicts its most foundational assumptions about the nature and structure of human preferences. On Sen’s account of things, one important preference about which a rational person would reflect would surely be the value to be attached to markets, and the most appropriate ways of responding to their imperfections. They would ask how far, for example, the marketization of training opportunities served their preferences, and what courses of action might be most consistent with those preferences if and when the market failed to deliver. They could by no means described as the predictable repositories of a fixed order of utilities that should be maximized and/or aggregated in the name of rationality. Further, learners engaged in TVET would not be bundles of given preferences investing in (or consuming) such education as was demonstrably most likely to maximize their personal utility within given parameters of employability. Rather, they would be studying in the hope of actively developing their own value-preferences, seeking to improve both the quality of their ambitions and their abilities in realizing them. Of course, employability is not irrelevant to this and neither – emphatically – are markets, but rational employers would also be engaged in the rational development of their own business preferences. A rational world would be one in which actions and plans were under constant review – not necessarily changing – but always under review. As for the second of our three earlier questions, advocates of education as a means to achieve wider social improvement often appeal to ‘rationality’ in self-justification (see, for example, Kemmis and Fitzclarence, 1986; Brown and Lauder, 2001). They offer a form of rational collective plan. Like the view of rationality proposed by Sen, this position also insists that, at its most foundational, rationality is concerned not only with facts but with values. It differs, however, in assuming that the nature of those values can be externally determined and then transmitted (often, but not always through education) to the individual. For Sen, by contrast, establishing and developing the relative value to be attached to different choices is a matter

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for the individual. In particular, self-interested behaviour is explicitly not excluded, as we have seen. In the spirit of Hodgson’s (2004b) suggestion that one role for economic analysis is the to critique the internal assumptions of policy propositions, it might be asked from an economic perspective whether collective goals really can be pursued through education in this way. In a discussion of the implications of Hayekian economic and philosophical thinking for one particular instance of such planning, Pennington (2008) summarizes a key aspect of Hayek’s position as follows: If social wholes are indeed more than the sum of their individual parts then it follows logically that none of the constituent elements even when acting in an organised group via institutions such as the state can ever comprehend all of the factors that contribute to the advance of the whole . . . a reliance on spontaneous order is preferable precisely because it facilitates a higher level of rationality at the macro-social level than would be possible were the process of societal development to be controlled by a designing mind or group . . . For Hayek, incremental change via competitive testing of alternate practices is able to draw on a much wider division of knowledge than socialist attempts to ‘reconstruct’ cultural practices, whole cloth. (Pennington, 2008, p. 97) In Chapter 7 we introduced the idea of ‘emergent properties’, that is, qualities of a whole that could not be explained purely in terms of the characteristics of the parts that comprise it. If society is the whole, therefore, it follows that no individual, or sub-group of individuals can possibly comprehend that whole well enough to plan its future course. Hayek’s position is closer to that of both those who favour central planning and those who place their faith in the workings of the neoclassical market than it is to Sen’s. His main concern is with social progress rather that the iterative development of the individual. However, beyond this he is also at odds with both planners and neoclassicists. There is not, and cannot ever be, either a planning body with adequate knowledge to bring about the best possible arrangements, or a market equilibrium that achieves the same thing. Knowledge is widely dispersed and constantly developing. Individuals live their lives in a social context that they can only ever partly comprehend, and that is in constant flux. They should try to improve themselves and the world they inhabit, but their efforts are as likely to be met with failure as success and, in either case, have merit primarily to the extent that they inform others about what should be imitated, and what avoided. This is an account that, though it raises challenging questions, seems to offer little scope for

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education beyond transmitting those skills and understandings that have been shown to be of enduring value, and only a rather crude – if central – role for learning. It raises a serious difficulty for the notion of a rational collective plan. However, a gentler and more hopeful interpretation of the situation is possible. In the account of emergent properties as it has been developed by institutional economists (Hodgson, 2002; 2004a; 2006), institutions are interposed between the individual and society. Such institutions possess properties that make them greater than the sum of the persons that comprise them, and are capable of exercising downward causation upon those persons in a way that works through their established individual characteristics. The individual is seen, not as an original and unexplained determining force, nor as a partially-sighted, patchily informed experimenter adrift in an ocean of uncertainty, but rather as an actively developing intellect who is already engaged with unfolding events. Education is not just possible: it is unavoidable, because institutions induct their members into shared understandings, traditions and habits. They may also develop individual potential for critique of those understandings, traditions and habits, very much in the manner commended by Sen. Since work is at the heart of human engagement with the environment, and TVET is about work, TVET institutions should be central to this process.

TVET, Rationality and the Case Studies This chapter began with a discussion of CSR, an idea already explored in some depth through the case study of management education in Chapter 6. It was noted that almost any view of the rationality of CSR is possible: that it is the only rational course; that it is entirely irrational; and, that it is rational only if the operational circumstances of a business are such that embracing (or appearing to embrace) CSR optimizes profitability. This confusion creates a grave problem for the notion of TVET as an enhancement of employability, since employability would seem to require the poor TVET trainee to demonstrate a positive attitude to CSR in the first case, a negative attitude in the second case, and a cynical one in the third. However, advocacy of CSR-through-TVET often revolves, as we have seen, around the rather different idea that employees, once appointed to their posts, can change the nature of the businesses they work for. Whether this is always realistic is open to question, but we can see clear divergences here between market-based and planning-based approaches, and between approaches

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that focus primarily upon the interests society might have in TVET, the interests employers might have in TVET, and the interests of the learner in TVET. Yet although there are divergences, these do not have to amount to irreconcilable divisions. UNEVOC’s work on CSR has made progress in bringing together representatives of the corporate sector and advocates for social justice causes in ways that are, convincingly, non-cynical. The management students described in the Borneo case study experienced strong personal tensions because of their loyalties to different roles and institutions: but this did not mean they were irrational. Rather, it made them who they are. This same point applies, with perhaps even greater force to the health-sector procurement officers, because it was in the nature of their jobs to manage often conflicting financial and health benefits, and to balance long- and short-term considerations. Further, most of them also exhibited a strong sense of themselves as citizens, and therefore as the owners and clients of the service for which they worked. Similar points could be made about the other case studies. A debate between water professionals about whether education should emphasize the personal or economic aspects of freshwater provision, in settings where the resource is scarce and poverty is rife, is neither proof that one or the other must be irrational, nor a vindication of those who would leave the matter to the market. It is a part of a process through which institutions may develop those persons who comprise them. And those higher education courses (described in Chapter 5) that seek to develop creative skills as a direct contribution to sustainable development should not be seen as interfering unwarrantedly in the workings of the market for design products, nor as distracting from the transmission of an established canon of sustainability. They are shaping the preferences that markets might subsequently coordinate, and developing our understanding of what it is that we most want to sustain in a world where we can not have everything. The suggestion, then, is that to be truly rational TVET should respect both markets and grand social visions, but be the slave of neither. Learners are neither simply tools for the achievement of great social designs, nor bundles of consistently-ordered preferences behaving in accordance to some immutable process. They are human beings who must survive and make sense of life through work. They have limitations, and they have potential. TVET that recognizes this can make a positive difference for all of us.

Chapter 9

TVET and Freedom

Freedom, like rationality, is a concept with along and varied history both within and beyond strictly economic thought. Its historical influence within economics is traced by Prendergast (2005), who notes the centrally important distinction between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ conceptions of what freedom means. This terminology originated with Isaiah Berlin, although the phenomena to which it refers is much older. According to Prendergast (2005), the concept of negative freedom can be traced back at least as far as Hobbes, and the concept of positive freedom to Rousseau, Kant and Hegel. Prendergast’s particular focus is on freedom as it appears in the work of Amartya Sen, and so this provides a point of continuity with the arguments of the previous chapter. However, the positive/negative freedom distinction also provides a fresh perspective upon our discussion of TVET, and so is discussed first.

Positive and Negative Freedom According to Berlin (2002), negative freedom is present when an individual’s choice is not constrained by others. Positive freedom consists in being one’s own master. Berlin notes that these conceptions are not, on the face of it, very different. However, their development through history has diverged in such a way that the importance of the distinction can hardly be overstated. One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of great historical ideals – justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission or emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution. (Berlin, 2002, p. 212)

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Positive freedom carries with it an implication that persons are divided against themselves. Their freedom may be limited by their own weakness, or by acts of deception or exploitation by others. They may fail adequately to control their animal instincts. Therefore, anyone who carries a strong conviction that human beings should be a particular way, may wish to conclude that they also would, naturally, be that way, if only their weaknesses could be tamed, their deceivers or exploiters exposed, or their animal natures suppressed. The next step in this line of reasoning may be – and, according to Berlin, all too often has been – to decide that the ultimate test of freedom is whether those persons are, in fact, behaving as desired. If they are not, it may then be decided that action to make them ‘free’ – that is, to overcome the perceived weakness, deception or exploitation – is justified in their own best interests. As Berlin particularly notes, the action chosen in such cases has often been education of some kind. Negative freedom, on the other hand, says a person is free if he or she can do as they please. It may be exercised wisely or not, and is likely to lead to both successes and failures. It is not – and in a sense this is the whole point – in any way ideal. It is just a better conception than the only possible alternative. The origins of the notion of positive freedom lie in rationalist thought. It is this that provides the link to the ideas of Sen, and to our discussion of the role of TVET. In rationalist thought, so considered, a rational society will consist of rational individuals, each of whom is in full rational control of themselves. Little or no compulsion will be required, since each life will be both governed by reason and fully free. Dissent under these circumstances becomes a kind of pathology, and one role of education might be to remedy this – by bringing about ‘behaviour change’, for example. Freedom is demonstrated by not choosing a different path. As Berlin notes, it is this reasoning that has underpinned the worst excesses of both communism and fascism. At a level of analysis higher than the mere political, they amount to the same thing. What is missing from all such rationalist approaches, as noted over the years by thinkers as varied as Hayek (1960) and Krugman (1994), is an acknowledgement of the fact that rationality requires us to recognize that rationality itself has limits. Uncertainty and change are intrinsic to the human experience, and the natures of both are uncertain and changing too. In Chapter 8 the view of rationality proposed by Amartya Sen was set forth as, at least, a promising and suggestive basis for thinking about TVET. Yet there seems no doubt that Sen is an advocate of a form of positive freedom. Prendergast (2005) traces his views in this respect, but perhaps

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the simplest summary of them can be derived from the following: I have tried to argue for some time now that for many evaluative purposes, the appropriate ‘space’ is neither that of utilities (as claimed by welfarists), nor that of primary goods (as demanded by Rawls), but that of substantive freedoms – the capabilities – to choose a life one has reason to value. If the object is to concentrate on the individual’s real opportunity to pursue her objectives . . . the account would have to be taken not only of the primary goods the persons respectively hold, but also of the relevant personal characteristics that govern the conversion of primary goods into the person’s ability to promote her ends. (Sen, 1999, p. 74, original emphasis) At the heart of this formulation lies a juxtapositioning of concepts – freedoms; capabilities; choice; life; reason; value – that has inspired many even as it has prompted a small army of academic investigators to dissect its implications. Education appears to be clearly implicated because a person cannot take advantage of a freedom if they do not have the required knowledge or skill. Indeed, it might be argued that, with the exception of education in basic literacy and numeracy, this applies most particularly to TVET, since it can provide knowledge, skills, and also disposable income from subsequent employment. There is much more to this account of freedom than the simple ‘absence of restraint’ associated with negative freedom. At the same time, however, Sen departs from the mainstream tradition of positive freedom, or ‘rationalism’, associated with Rousseau and Hegel in important ways (Prendergast, 2005). Most particularly, he separates the notion of freedom from that of control. We can be free, even though we lack control over many aspects of our lives and our world. In fact, if this were not so, freedom would be impossible, since modern societies are so complex that full control (or anything like it) is simply not possible. This raises other difficulties. It might be taken to suggest, for example, that one can make oneself free simply by renouncing one’s desire for those things that lie beyond one’s power to obtain. So, for example, if a person aspires to become a motor vehicle mechanic but no training is available, they could be said to have achieved freedom if they renounce their ambition. Possibilities of this kind are expressly rejected by Berlin (2002, p. 186) who refers to them as, ‘a sublime, but, it seems to me, unmistakeable form of the doctrine of sour grapes’. It seems clear that tensions between the preferred conceptions of freedom of Sen and Berlin will not go away, but

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there is, nevertheless, something to gained by focusing instead in what they have in common. Both acknowledge the limits of rational control. Both emphasize, not a final, perfect state of the world, but rather the iterative choices of particular individuals at particular places and times. Both steer a course between the twin determinisms of all-seeing social planning and blind utility maximization. Both recognize the persistence of uncertainty and change.

Freedom and Education These matters find a strong echo in educational theory, though they have tended to play out in particular ways unique to that field. One interesting summary of the possibilities is provided in an obscure but very influential paper by Stephen Kemmis (1983), in which he sets out an account of three alternative views of education available at that time. These are, z

z

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The ‘job-slots’ view. Education exists to service the labour market, the needs of which at any particular time are determined by factors exogenous to education. This will require the preparation of high-, mediumand low-status individuals, and so reproduce existing social relationships of production. However, the approach is unlikely to perform this function well, not least because it is slow to recognize and adapt to change. In this view, TVET is usually associated with preparation for low-status occupations, in the manner noted by Wolf (2002). The ‘cultured persons and survivors’ view. This sees education as a means to develop the self-aware, self-motivated, caring, responsible and able (or ‘rounded’) individual, in the best traditions of liberal education. The problem with it, according to Kemmis, is that it pays no attention to (and, in the end, depends on) the structural inequalities and irrationalities of capitalist societies. Education of this sort often seems, and in fact often is, elitist and even patrician in nature. This is despite frequent, and no-doubt well-intentioned, attempts to make its benefits available to underprivileged but worthy persons who might not otherwise enjoy them. The ‘members of society’ view. Education should involve an aggressive rejection of the other two alternatives. Rather, it is concerned with participation, democracy, collaboration, justice and rationality. It involves the community in negotiated decisions about the conduct and content of teaching. It focuses on matters that are considered to be socially useful.

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In subsequent work (Kemmis and Fitzclarence, 1986; Carr and Kemmis, 1986), Kemmis and his collaborators link this typology to Habermas’s (1972, 1974) conception of three different kinds of ‘knowledge-constitutive interests’. In particular, the ‘members of society’ view is linked to the ‘emancipatory knowledge-constitutive interest’, which in turn becomes the underpinning of the socially-critical approaches to education. This position continues to be influential today, particularly to the extent that it has developed the Kolbian tradition of pedagogy outlined in Chapter 6 (the 1993 study by Greenall Gough and Robottom cited there is an example). It contains within it a strongly positive, rationalist view of freedom. However, while it is clear that, in practical terms, the ‘job-slots’ and ‘cultured persons’ views have not gone away, it is also the case that Kemmis’s classification no longer describes all the available possibilities – if, indeed, it ever did. In particular, much educational thinking has accorded a secondary role to the idea of freedom, and adopted an extremely questioning stance to the idea of rationality in the abstract. In this context, Derry (2008, pp. 49–50) has written, The force of the critique of anything that goes under the rubric of abstract rationality has been motivated by a redirection of focus towards the contextual, the situated and the practical and away from any notion of reason understood in universal terms presupposing a shared psychic unity of human kind. In contrast to a unifying project associated with rationalism, the emphasis is on multiple ways of making meaning sustained by variations in cultural experiences and forms of life that are widely viewed as incommensurable. In turn the critique of abstract rationality in education has raised questions regarding the forms of knowledge appropriate to learners. Areas of curriculum that are seen to exemplify abstract rationality have been questioned as regards their usefulness for learners. This quotation gives rise to several important points. First, a number of issues relating to conceptions of ‘situated’ and other forms of collective learning were discussed in Chapter 6. There is no doubt that this has been an important and productive tradition of study. Second, the ‘unifying project associated with rationalism’ is precisely that to which Berlin objects in his critique of positive freedom. It is also associated, if in a very particular way, and as we have seen, with socially-critical approaches to education. Third, it should be clear from the foregoing discussion that a rejection of ‘rationalism’ should not, does not need to, and, in fact, cannot involve the abandonment of standards of rational judgement. It is one thing to say that

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rationality has limitations, and quite another to say that it is useless. What other basis of judgement is ultimately credible? Fourth, this book has sought to argue, following Thompson (1997) and his collaborators, that the existence of ‘multiple ways of making meaning’ is a normal characteristic of any society under uncertainty, and constitutes no threat to the use of processes of rational thought and enquiry: indeed, it requires these. Finally, any marginalization of ‘areas of the curriculum that are seen to exemplify abstract rationality’ constitutes an extreme problem for TVET, with its definitional applicability to the world of work. Derry herself notes the difficulties inherent in mounting an attack of reason itself. This, she argues, can lead to ‘a damaging relativism’ and ‘agnosticism for truth’ Derry (2008, p. 60). At this point it will be useful to restate part of the argument of earlier chapters, and in particular that of Chapter 7. There it was argued, following Hodgson (2004a; 2006; 2008) that we can most usefully presume the existence of a real world beyond our perceptions. Rational enquiry is one way in which we try to bring our perceptions into line with this reality, and this effort has historically produced considerable success as well as, along the way, some notable failures. We can never be absolutely certain that we have got things right, but we can more – rather than less – certain about particular things in particular circumstances: and we do not, in any case, have the option of actually living as if we know nothing. It was further argued that the real world is best considered as a set of layered ontological systems, from the atomic to the social. Each successive layer may exhibit emergent properties. These must be consistent with its constituent elements, but cannot be reduced to them or explained solely by reference to them. Social institutions are therefore capable of causally modifying the individuals that constitute them, but only in ways that are consistent with those individuals’ given characteristics. Thus it becomes possible to reconcile the inescapable logic of a real world composed of atoms and governed by natural laws, with the active intellect and purposeful decision-making displayed by individuals as they respond to the signs and signals that represent their environment to them. TVET institutions are an important example of this possibility, which excludes neither rationality or freedom. Two questions immediately arise. How can an educational process such as TVET (best) operate in this way? And, how would one know that it was working? One possible response to the first of these involves the idea of ‘learning cultures’. In a paper that develops the theoretical implications of the ‘Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education’ project, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, Hodkinson et al. (2007,

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p. 420) define a learning culture as ‘the practice through which people – students and tutors – learn’. Their approach is explicitly within the broad theoretical canon of ‘situated’ approaches to learning, but expressly seeks to address three issues that are implicit in the foregoing argument. These concern the relationships between: the mental and the physical; the individual and society; and, social structure and individual agency. Hodkinson et al. approach this task through the development of a sophisticated theoretical framework that draws particularly on the work of Bourdieu, and on his development of the concept of ‘field’. This enables multiple complex systems of inter-related social components to be envisaged, any of which may overlap with others. In the context of the present argument (and on this point, therefore, speaking for neither Bourdieu or Hodkinson et al.), such ‘components’ might include given individuals, understandings, practices, institutions, and physical resources and processes, all causally inter-related in particular ways. The concept is particularly useful in that it provides a way of thinking about relationships within a field that may not be visible, or be accorded their due importance, by those closest to them. It also points to the inter-relatedness of different fields. Hodkinson et al. further argue that Bourdieu’s ideas are suggestive in explaining the place of the individual in learning. Within a particular learning culture, a person may participate in both cognitive and emotional ways. They are also likely to participate in a number of other, possibly overlapping, learning cultures. They may move both within and between these cultures. Hodkinson et al. (2007, p. 425) conclude, Learning is one major mechanism through which dispositional changes come about. At the same time, changes in position and disposition can contribute to new learning. In any leaning culture, the learning taking place depends significantly on the position, dispositions and relevant capital of the learner, and in turn contribute to that person’s influence on the nature of the learning culture itself. That is, the learning of individuals can be understood as a process of continual becoming, through participation in several different learning cultures over time. There seems no reason why a person learning in this way cannot be described as both rational and – in a way that avoids at least the worst implications of the positive sense of the word – free. Turning now to the question of determining the effectiveness for the individual student of TVET in this conception, an indicative possibility is provided by the work of Boud and Falchikov (2006) on professional

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education. These authors report work on assessment practices that are designed to enhance the student’s subsequent learning, and that might therefore support ‘continual becoming’ (in the words of Hodkinson et al.), or ‘an expertly-negotiated process for the development of the learner’ (to use the terminology of Chapter 7). In particular, Boud and Falchikov develop the notion of ‘constructive alignment’ between learning activities and their associated assessment practices. This is to say that, if the student, once qualified, will need to continue to learn, adapt and upgraded her skills, then the assessment process should take account of this. In an earlier paper Boud (2000, p. 15) describes such an approach as ‘sustainable assessment’, which he defines as meeting ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of students to meet their own future learning needs.’ Such assessment might focus on, inter alia: engagement with standards, criteria and problem analysis; the importance of context; collaborative working; authentic problems; student reflexivity; learner agency; management of risk; and/or, portrayal of outcomes for different purposes. Again, such an approach might minimally serve to keep the learners’ prospects of a rational pursuit of freedom alive.

Freedom, the Case Studies and Investment No one can be free if they do not have access to a minimally adequate supply of clean fresh water. If rationality has an ultimately normative basis, then no rational case can be made for denying any person such supply. It is not ultimately a question of resource scarcity, but rather one of priorities in resource distribution. The deliberations of the UNESCO Working Group on Water Education and Capacity Building for Sustainable Development, discussed in Chapter 4, were informed by a specially-prepared issues paper. This made a strong case that learning is central to the management of all natural resources. It emphasized that such learning can serve to reconcile the individual and collective interests that people have, and recognized that it must have both cognitive and moral aspects. It seems quite clear that, in practice, such learning would necessarily be situated. It would take place in a context of the learner’s own connections within and to both the social and physical environments. At least some of the most appropriate content might be expected to include knowledge derived through processes entailing an abstract conception of rationality. The learner would seek to apply these in a rational way, and this might,

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perhaps, be described as a process through which she was enabled better ‘to choose a life she had reason to value’. It is perfectly possible, and in no way a denial of rationality, if some or most of what was valued through this formulation was actually a benefit to others. Through this process, the learner might be expected to change, and to reconstitute the total situation in a variety of ways. This might require new learning, and it would be useful, therefore, if the person was receptive to that possibility. Similar possibilities arise through all the other case studies. University courses that focus on problem-solving in relation to such issues as waste, pollution, disaster management and floods are similarly context-embedded, rationality-dependent, and capable of enhancing the freedom of both the learner and others. The same might be said of management students making sense of the conflicting priorities of development and cultural identity in Borneo, or procurement specialists making incremental progress in understanding the immensely complex consequences of large scale international purchasing decisions. Further, resources devoted to any of these might be considered to be investment in a general, but developed, sense consistent with the arguments above. This would see investment as a rational process that aims to enhance future freedoms through the expansion of capabilities – that is, of the abilities to choose, live, reason and develop values. This formulation goes at least someway towards countering the objection noted in Chapter 3, that TVET has intrinsic value and cannot, therefore, be thought of as nothing more than investment. Its further implications are explored in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 10

TVET and Justice

Justice and Freedom The work that people do can be both an expression of, and a means to, their individual freedom. It also provides perhaps the a major arena in which whatever justice or injustice characterizes their lives becomes apparent. TVET, therefore, bears on justice, just as it does on freedom. It is often supposed that freedom and justice are in opposition to each other. If people do what they like, the argument goes, the outcomes can hardly be expected to be fair. There is powerful evidence to support this view. Some of those whose primary concern is with freedom are dismissive of the possibility of justice. For example, Hayek (1960, p. 385) writes, The desire to eliminate the effects of accident, which lies at the root of the demand for ‘social justice’, can be satisfied in the field of education, as elsewhere, only by eliminating all those opportunities which are not subject to deliberate control. But the growth of civilisation rests largely on the individual’s making the best use of whatever accidents they encounter, of the essentially unpredictable advantages that one kind of knowledge will in new circumstances confer on one individual over others. At the same time, it is commonplace for a concern for justice to inform policy-making – in the form of redistributive taxation to fund TVET in centrally-identified skills-sets, for example – in ways that are precisely contrary to ‘the growth of civilisation’ in Hayek’s conception. One apparent escape from this perceived incompatibility of freedom and justice is through an appeal to one form or another of positive freedom. It is in people’s true nature to be just, so the argument goes, and therefore once they have been liberated from whatever deflects them from that true nature, they will become both free and just. As we saw in the previous chapter, this appealingly simple view, in all its many forms, has an extremely poor record in practice. Historically, many of the most egregious examples

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of oppression and inhumanity owe their justification to it. Further, it has not a single, enduring success to its credit. Truly, to use the words of Shakespeare’s Porter (MacBeth, 2:3:19) it is ‘the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire’. However, if we start from the perspective of TVET, it will not do to see the relationship between freedom and justice as a simple trade-off. We have already noted some of TVET’s possible positive implications for freedom. Justice is also widely in evidence as a driving force in its design and delivery. For example, following a meeting of 155 countries, 20 inter-governmental bodies and 150 non-governmental organizations in 1990 (Hughes, 2009), the ‘Jomtien Declaration’ declared that, Every person – child, youth and adult – shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs. Those needs comprise both essential learning tools (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy and problem solving) and the basic learning content (such as knowledge, skills, values and attitudes) required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions and to continue learning. (UNESCO, 1990) As a marker for the argument that follows, we should note here that this quotation leaves open the question of whether the ‘educational opportunities’ that are appropriate to ‘basic learning needs’ should be thought of as a minimum quantum to which everyone is entitled, a variable but equivalent allocation that builds on each individual’s initial personal endowments, or a variable and non-equivalent allocation that accepts that different people have different and non-equivalent potentialities. In short, the quotation appeals to the concept of equality (or, at least, equity) without clarifying what it means. This point is further discussed below. For now, we should simply note the pervasiveness of social justice concerns across TVET provision. Returning to the framework for analysis set out in Figure 2.1, it is not only that justice appears as one of the ‘possible ends to be served’. We can also say that, z z

Inequitable distribution of skills and knowledge is an important aspect of injustice The availability of different modes of delivery has a bearing on access to TVET and therefore upon equity of provision

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Justice requires that assessment processes are fair to those who are disadvantaged in some way. Equity of provision is an issue for course and programme evaluation Existing injustices will be embedded in the social, political, economic, environmental and historical context of provision There are implications for justice in the approach taken to the management of TVET (for example in relation to fair access), and in its choice of pedagogy (for example, through the way that different ‘learning styles’ are treated)

In Chapter 1 we noted that TVET may be seen either as a cause, or an effect, of events within a wider context of globalization. This global frame of reference has important implications for TVET’s relationship with issues of justice.

The Context of Globalization The contested status of globalization was mentioned in Chapter 1. In spite of this lack of clarity about what it is and whether it is good for us, the term has become part of everyday usage. As a minimum, millions of television viewers around the world have a sense that there are particular, globalized issues at stake as a result of observing anti-globalization protests. It is also worth mentioning the notion of ‘postmodernism’ at this point. This has less vernacular reach than ‘globalization’, but is related to it, at least in some theoretical senses. In a helpfully clear discussion, Farrell (2001) distinguishes two possible meanings of postmodernism. One makes an epistemological claim about how we understand the world, the other a claim about history. Either might involve, for example, an assertion that the ‘grand narrative’ of progress achieved through scientific rationality is defunct. In the former case, however, this would mean that there exist no credible grounds to believe in such a thing, while in the latter case it would mean that, empirically, societies had lost their faith in progress of this kind. Whatever the truth of the epistemological claim, there is some certainly some evidence to support the historical one, though the matter could not be described as settled. Postmodern thinkers point out that globalization has opposed effects. On the one hand, it tends to make everything, everywhere, the same. Local and traditional practices, including those that relate to employment and work (Payne, 1997) are thus undermined. Traditional social structures may disintegrate, and people may attach themselves to the resulting fragments

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(Lyotard, 1984). Hence, even as the world becomes more homogenous, it becomes more finely differentiated. An overview of the earlier history of debate about globalization is provided by Jemmott (2002, pp. 47–62). In summary, the main points of this are as follows: z z z

z

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z

There is widespread agreement that globalization is important, but much less about why it matters. Enthusiasts for globalization tend to have faith in market forces. Opponents of globalization argue that it strips societies of their distinctive cultures, traditions and practices while offering in return only the tacky superficialities of Western consumer society, and the false hope of participation in it on equal terms. Although they receive different degrees of emphasis in different expositions, there is widespread agreement that technological advances (especially in information technology), the rise of fully transnational businesses and the growth of global capital flows are all important to globalization. There is very widely-shared view that education – and perhaps TVET in particular – must respond in some way to the creation of a global market for labour. There is very much less agreement about what that response should be. It is also possible to believe that globalization has a mixture of good and bad effects that play out differently in different contexts.

More recent thinking on globalization and its relationship to education has tended to emphasize the notion of the ‘knowledge economy’. The situation has been summarized in the following way: Globalisation and the advent of the knowledge economy created a new context where not only workers, but also companies, are mobile in the global market as a result of their international restructuring and global outsourcing strategies. Flows of capital and firms, through foreign direct investments and global subcontracting practices, have rapidly increased in recent times, linking peripheral places and workers to advanced Western economies within the international division of labour. (Ferro, 2006, p. 173, original emphasis) What is particularly new here is that technological and financial globalization has not only created increased migratory pressures, but also the possibility of

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labour market competition from remote sites. As Ferro herself goes on to note, India has been at the forefront of this process. From the point of view of those in, or about to enter the labour market, the results of this can seem terrifying. It is as though an international treadmill of competition for work has been created and is now accelerating, with continuous, rapid upgrading of individual skills the only possible way of keeping pace. Cohen (2006, p. 114) describes the consequences for TVET as follows: The aim of contemporary knowledge management is autopoesis – the development of self-replicating, self-correcting and self-sustaining systems of technological innovation . . . Equally, the aim of much postindustrial vocational training is the formation of knowledge workers who can operate and manage these systems. The problem seems to be not so much that governments have bought into this vision, but that the vision has run away with any power governments might have to do anything about anything. Democratic participation at the local, or even national level seems likely to wholly in vain – so why bother? And if there is no choice but to run-to-stand-still in this way, constantly upskilling for survival, then how much of priority can social justice realistically be? There is something in all of this, without a doubt. There is also a need for caution. First, national governments are still there and still have power. On the whole they have not (except sometimes rhetorically) ‘bought into’ the full implications of the knowledge economy. They are equally likely, as in the UK, to be pursuing a rather antiquated and discredited course that focuses on a perceived shortfall of atomized skills, and further (and rather oddly, given the elevated role simultaneously accorded to the market) to see this shortfall as a result of supply-side deficiencies (Winch and Hyland, 2007). Second, as Wolf (2002) points out, the link between education and economic growth is nothing like as clear cut as is commonly supposed. Third, one can question the assumptions upon which this rather frantic narrative is based, in exactly the same terms as Hayek’s focus on the ‘growth of civilization’, cited above, might be questioned. What is it for? A rational answer to this question, as we saw in Chapter 8, must ultimately be normative. What would happen, we might ask, if we began from a view of what justice requires, rather than trying to accommodate justice, as an afterthought, to the exigencies of market-led activities? Curiously, one well-developed answer to this question leads us straight back to the market, although in a rather different way. This is because of its power, discussed in Chapter 8, to coordinate actions and plans.

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Justice, Equality and TVET ‘Equality’ and ‘equity’ are terms often encountered in discussions about both social justice and education. They are often used in confused and confusing ways, or as if their meaning is simple or self-evident. They are also often implicit in educational or policy rhetoric, in ways that permit a variety of interpretations. This may sometimes be an advantage from the perspective of practical policy management, but that is not the point. To illustrate: earlier in this chapter we noted exactly this lack of clarity in relation to the use of the phrase ‘basic learning needs’ in the Jomtien Declaration. In that context the phrase may well have served an extremely useful purpose, in creating a document to which the many participants in the process could give their assent. ‘Basic learning needs’ served a purpose as a rhetorical common denominator. However, at some point there is still a need to ask exactly what it means. Le Grand (1991) points out that, in fact, the terms equity and equality are quite different. While equality may well be accorded moral significance, it also has a descriptive element. We can ask: equality of what? Equity, on the other hand, is a normative concept that might very well be applied in situations where fairness requires inequality. If the allocation of marks to students following a task was equal, regardless of the quality of the work submitted, or even of whether any work was submitted at all, then there would be no point in awarding marks. If some students had taken the task seriously and worked hard, while others spent the time playing tennis, many would think this outcome inequitable. Le Grand notes that failure to distinguish equity from equality has often caused problems for egalitarians. It is much easier for non-egalitarians to argue against equality than against equity. Hayek’s (1960, p. 87) dismissal of a famous mantra illustrates this well: ‘As a statement of fact, it is just not true that “all men are born equal”’. Nevertheless, in approaching the question of how justice might be given a prominent place in our thinking about TVET provision, the focus of this chapter is not on equity, but on a developed conception of equality. Ronald Dworkin (2000) makes a case that progress towards the achievement of equality can only be made through employment of the concept of the market. By way of preliminary clarification, it should be said that, in doing so, he does not deny that, in practice, the workings of markets have in many cases led to greater inequality. The main planks of his argument are that, first, the only way of thinking about equality that can possibly make sense in policy terms is equality of resources. This term is taken to mean that each human life is entitled to an equal share of the resources available.

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Second, because of the descriptive aspect of equality, some kind of metric is needed to establish whether equality of resources exists in a particular case. And third, the only possible source of such a metric is the market, because of its power to summarize information about people’s preferences. In developing this position, Dworkin employs a distinction between actual and hypothetical markets. In a hypothetical market some elements may be the same as those that actually exist, while others are counterfactual and imputed. So, for example, personal interests might be represented as they actually are, while personal wealth is set at a level that would accord with an initially equal distribution. It can then be asked what results the market would produce under these partly altered circumstances. The market is therefore deployed in an entirely value-free way, to determine how actions and plans would be coordinated under circumstances other than those that actually obtain. It is ‘servile’ (Dworkin, 2000, p. 112) to the social goal of equality of resources. This goal, he believes, should be the normative foundation of policy making. He writes, The market . . . enters because it is endorsed by the concept of equality as the best means of enforcing, at least up to a point, the fundamental requirement that only an equal share of resources be devoted to the lives of each of its members, as measured by the opportunity cost of such resources to others. But the value of actual market transactions ends at just that point, and the market must be abandoned or constrained when analysis shows, from any direction, that it has failed in this task, that an entirely different theoretical or institutional device would do better. Hypothetical markets are plainly of comparable theoretical importance to actual markets for this purpose. We are less certain about their results, but we have a great deal more flexibility in their design, and the objection that they have no historical validity is simply beside the point. (Dworkin, 2000, p. 112) Placing the notion of opportunity cost at the heart of things is significant. It ensures that whatever choices are made within the hypothetical market must be consistent with the total available resource stock, and connects normative preferences to the limitations of the real world. Le Grand (1991) has catalogued a number of possible ‘economic conceptions of equity’. Dworkin’s proposal for hypothetical markets falls squarely within the class of ‘envy-free allocations’ (Le Grand, 1991, p. 66). Dworkin argues that equality of resources would be achieved at a point at which no

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person would prefer the bundle of resources possessed by any other person to their own. To understand this better, Dworkin suggests, we might think of a situation in which the inhabitants of a desert island conduct an auction for its resources. The process is facilitated by the using something easily available and reasonably divisible as money. Of this purchasing power, each person has an equal share. The auction continues until everyone agrees that it should end. At this point, although everyone may well not be equally happy, the condition that they are all ‘envy-free’ has been met. Resources have been distributed in a way that recognizes that one person’s preferences have implications for another’s. Such a moment of ‘envy-free-ness’ is of course, unachievable in practical terms in any complex, modern society. Again, that is not the point. What is being proposed is a systematic way of thinking about what equality, and therefore justice, might require in principle. The problems of achieving distributive justice are legion. But they are less likely to completely defy all remedy if they are addressed systematically in the first place. Dworkin is therefore able to claim that his proposal offers a: ‘rough model in designing political and economic institutions in the real world’ (Dworkin, 2000, p. 140). In a somewhat more developed form that employs the notion of a hypothetical insurance market, he then goes on to apply this ‘rough model’ to actual policy problems, for example that of health care provision in the US. If one began from a situation in which the distribution of wealth was broadly fair, knowledge about the availability and costs of medical procedures was universally available, and people could be assumed to act with due prudence, then a hypothetical market for health insurance, argues Dworkin (2000, p. 313), could ‘help us to decide what health care we should aim to provide for everyone in our own, imperfect, and unjust community’. It would provide an indication of what health care provision might look like under conditions of equality, and redistributive taxation and public spending might then be employed – with moral justification – to bring the actual situation closer to the hypothetical one. Dworkin himself accepts that this could never be a precise tool for thinking about justice issues. It is, however, a useful tool. Among the many questions that arise is one relating to non-marketable personal attributes such as charm. For example, we might ask whether a hypothetical market for TVET could indicate a just outcome for a student whose lack of personal charm meant that he was unlikely to find favour with employers. This is similar in nature to the issue raised in Chapter 8, that: ‘employers might want, for example, someone who is strong and decisive, but they will inevitably read these

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qualities differently in different applicants’ (Moreau and Leathwood, 2006, p. 319). Dworkin (2000, 2004) addresses this by proposing that insurance be available within the hypothetical market. Compensation for the person’s disadvantage would be fixed at the level for which a duly prudent person would insure themselves. While insurance against the consequences of personal charmlessness might well then prove to be unfeasibly expensive, insurance against the sexist misapprehensions of employment interview panellists might not. A second question that is relevant to educational matters concerns inheritance. Dworkin is clear that the situation that obtains, following the auction, when the community is envy-free, cannot be expected to last. Inequalities will come about as different people make different personal decisions about trade, and about the productive and non-productive use of their time. This would appear to call for periodic redistributions. Again, Dworkin seeks to solve this problem through hypothetical insurance. Premiums for insurance against ‘bad luck in family economics’ (Dworkin, 2004, p. 353) would be deducted in proportion to the gifts a person makes during, and at the end of, their lifetime. This would place a constraint on the ability of some to start life with a resource advantage over others due to inheritance, measured in a context of comparative preferences. Dworkin’s ideas are presented here tentatively and, necessarily, in a very summary form. They provide, perhaps, a helpful way of beginning to address an intractable and elusive problem. However, if used to indicate an outline of a just system of TVET provision, they might provide surprising insights. In fact, the use of a hypothetical market in this way offers a similar advantage to that claimed for formal analysis in economics by Hodgson (2004b), and discussed in Chapter 8. It provides an heuristic – a simplified and counter-factual model that demonstrates explanatory, and in this case socially-creative, possibilities. Further, it promotes justice, but places individual free choice at the heart of the process that determines what justice requires. It is both rational, and clear about the normative basis of that rationality. Dworkin himself expresses that basis in the terms of the following two ‘principles’: The first principle holds that it is objectively important that any human life, once begun, succeed rather than fail – that the potential of that life be realized rather than wasted – and that this is equally objectively important in the case of each human life . . . The second principle acknowledges this objective importance, but insists nevertheless that one

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person – the person whose life it is – has a special responsibility for each life, and that in virtue of that special responsibility he or she has a right to make the fundamental decisions that define, for him, what a successful life would be. (Dworkin, 2000, pp. 448–449) As an initial value-position to underpin TVET provision, this would seem to have much to commend it.

Chapter 11

TVET and Security

In 2003, the Third National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment of the US National Council for Science and the Environment was held in Washington D.C. The theme of the conference was ‘Education for a Sustainable and Secure Future’. Its keynote speaker was Jonathon Lash, President of the World Resources Institute. He addressed delegates in the following terms: Since 9/11 the United States has devoted enormous resources and intense attention to identifying, forestalling, and, ultimately capturing or destroying those bent on harming us or our friends. Generally that is what “security” means in the current debate . . . Those concerns are real and we are compelled to act to confront them. But military strength and homeland security are not enough to make the world secure. I want to make a case for fighting poverty, protecting the environment, and in particular protecting people’s rights as the path to human security, and the foundation, in the long term, for global security. Neither violence nor hatred is a pathology only of the poor, nor does violence flare only in the presence of poverty, but poverty is volatile when compounded with misery, powerlessness, and injustice. Although the terrorists we know most about were not recruited from among the poor, they seem bent on provoking a war in which the poor would be soldiers. We cannot create security only by striking at the flint; we must deal with the tinder. This chapter suggests that education in general, and TVET in particular, have a particular contribution to make to the achievement of global security. This is because of their significance for beneficiaries at different social levels: for individuals, employers and society as a whole. TVET is implicated in the security of all three, and in the connections between them.

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What is ‘Security’? Jonathon Lash’s speech appeals to a particular conception of security, usually called ‘human security’. In a recent paper Fell (2006) asks whether this human security is the dominant issue of the twenty-first century, having now replaced a previously long-standing policy preoccupation with the military balance of powers. There are some reasons to think this may be so. Since the 1970s a number of threats to security have emerged that cut across traditional conceptions, and are unresponsive to measures at the national level. This is partly, but not entirely, due to the globalizing forces of informational technology innovation, trans-national corporate power and capital market promiscuity discussed in Chapter 10. Other factors, which may well be related to globalization but need to be examined in their own terms, include the oil-price shocks of the 1970s, and the AIDs pandemic (along with the possibility of other, subsequent, pandemics such that associated with avian influenza). In this context, the threat from global terrorism following, particularly, the attacks in New York of 11 September 2001, can be read either way. On the one hand, its existence reinvigorates the notion of the nation-state as that-which-is-to be-made-secure. An enemy (‘terror’) can be identified, and set in clear opposition to oneself and one’s friends (‘freedom-loving peoples’). ‘War’ can then be declared, justified in traditional fashion, and pursued using, at least partly, traditional means. On this assessment there seems very little for TVET to do, beyond perhaps providing skills that are required by the armed forces and their supporting organizations. On the other hand, Al Qaeda is an example of a non-state threat. It is difficult to say exactly what it is or where it is. An alternative response is that expressed so eloquently by Mr. Lash. However, it is possible to question the value of the ‘human security’ formulation. It may be asked whether it is in any real sense new, and whether it is really sufficiently focused on security to adequately replace more traditional ways of thinking. As Fell (2006) notes, attempts to persuade policy makers to think more inclusively have spawned a number of cognate terms in the past, such as ‘common security’, ‘cooperative security’ and ‘comprehensive security’. A cynic might well ask if human security is anything more than the latest in a long line of attempts by society’s ‘doves’ to get the ‘hawks’ to behave more gently. If so, their prospects of success are poor. The hawks’ response is well-established, tried and trusted. As Carl von Clausewitz put it in 1832: ‘War is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst’ (Clausewitz, 1989/1832, p. 75). Fell also

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points out that critics will always claim that human security is not really about ‘security’ at all, but about raising the profile of issues in international development by stealth. This may well be, at least partly, a matter of semantics: but it will matter in the allocation of resources to different organizations and individuals. Against this analysis, it is also possible to argue that ‘human security versus traditional security’ distinction amounts to a great deal less in practice than it does in theory. Chandler (2008, p. 427) writes that the struggle for the heart and soul of global policymaking is often posed as one between two different ‘paradigms’, two entirely different outlooks on the world, one paradigm reproducing current power relations and inequalities and insecurities, the other challenging such a view, recognizing the interconnectedness, interdependence and mutual vulnerabilities of security threats and the need for collective, collaborative, humancentred responses. However, he goes on to suggest that the true picture is much more confused, with advocates of the second ‘paradigm’ frequently slotting rather neatly into structures that service the first. One instance of this lack of clear distinction concerns ‘fragile states’. We have seen, for example, that much of the justification for military intervention in Afghanistan has generally been set forth in terms of the need for development. Such development is expected to neutralise the potential for terrorism to breed in what would otherwise be a failed state. van Veen (2007, p. 9) puts the general point as follows: Fragile states, let alone fragile regions, are territories in which public control is wanting and power vacuums wait to be filled. This creates opportunities for the unscrupulous to engage in violent activities such as criminality, conflict and terrorism. Investment in such activities creates incentives to protect and continue them. We might note in passing that the (perfectly justifiable) use of the term ‘investment’ here, to indicate an initial outlay in criminal capital for the sake of a future flow of illicit returns, highlights the importance of insisting on an ultimately normative basis for our actions. Among the steps proposed by van Veen to remedy the problems of fragile states are a broad range of capacity building measures designed to create order and enable development. There is a role for TVET in this, particularly to the extent that it can be linked to networking activities for, as van Veen (2007, p. 11) goes on to note, ‘because capacity in fragile states in usually weak, coordinated

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multilateral engagement is often to be preferred over bilateral engagement’. The educational use of networks is further discussed below. Finally, it is worth pointing out that a strength of the human security approach is that it enables connections to be made between external and internal sources of insecurity. The terrorist bombings in London of 7 July 2005 were committed by British Muslims who identified strongly with events in Afghanistan and Iraq, that is, in the most fragile of fragile states. It is impossible to say with any precision how far the internal insecurity of such states is of a piece with the internal insecurities that Brown and Lauder (2001), for example, identify as arising from social polarization and the de-regulation of labour markets in developed countries like Britain. However, Cohen (2006, p. 118) makes a telling point in this context, when he argues that race and religion may provide an appealing refuge for those who find themselves separated from their cultural heritage and identity and, at the same time, firmly embedded in: ‘communities of labour adrift of the official knowledge economy’. There is no doubt that all of the foregoing continues to weigh large in official thinking, notwithstanding the conceptual confusions and uncertainties that attend the key ideas. Indeed, resolving these confusions has become a priority for publicly-funded research. The Research Councils (RCUK) that fund research in British universities has recently committed large sums of money to a programme entitled: ‘Global Uncertainties: Security for All in a Changing World’. RCUK explains its first calls for bids from researchers under this programme in the following terms: The cross-Council programme focuses on the nature and interactions of five global issues: conflict, crime, environmental degradation, poverty and terrorism, and their implications for various concepts and contexts of security and insecurity. Within this framework, this fellowship call focuses specifically on how ideas and beliefs of individuals, communities and nation states relate to these five global phenomena. Fellowship applications under this call must address one or more of the following key research areas: a. How do individuals and communities develop their ideas and beliefs about security and insecurity? b. Why do some ideas and beliefs lead to conflict, violence or criminal activity? What lessons can we learn from (a) above that provide the basis for countering those ideas and beliefs that reinforce conflict, violence and crime? c. How do issues around the cycle of knowledge production and use interact with the creation, management and resolution of insecurities?

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Technical and Vocational Education and Training d. How are risks and threats communicated, constructed, represented and received by key actors and communities, using different media and cultural forms for different audiences, including the use of language, images and symbolism? e. Is there an acceptable balance between national security needs and the protection of civil liberties and human rights? If so, can one be secured? And how do we balance local needs against global responsibilities within a security context? f. How should institutions with responsibility for different aspects of a broad security agenda, including security forces themselves, evolve to meet new risks and threats? [www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/ opportunities/current_funding_opportunities/global_uncertainties].

The human security focus of this programme is evident. An example is considered below of how TVET might respond to it, with reference to the ‘water education’ case study of Chapter 4. First, however, the role of education in relation to security is placed within the wider arguments of the book.

Education and Security Chapter 7 proposed a realist ontology for which the crucial identifying characteristic of any category or classification is not its essence but its ability to generate variety. Thinking about education in these terms would lead us to reject the following approach: To define education we must, then, consider educational systems, present and past, put them together, and abstract the characteristics which are common to them. These characteristics will constitute the definition we seek. (Émile Durkheim, 2006, p. 78) In such a view, we begin our educational endeavour with a stipulative definition of what it is that we are about, and this is derived from the identification of commonalities across other endeavours in the same category at the social system level. Therefore, TVET is what TVET is. Douglass North (1994, 362) offers a more promising formulation, in which both variety, and the engagement of the individual with her environment through signs and signals, are strongly implicit: Learning entails developing a structure by which to interpret the varied signals received by the senses . . . The structures consist of categories –

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classifications that gradually evolve from our earliest childhood to organize our perceptions and keep track of our memory and analytic results and experiences. In these terms, and with regard to the wider arguments of the book, one might propose a conception of education as a systematic attempt to engage the agency of learners, for the purpose of ongoing deliberate review and refinement of their own interpretive structures, through consideration of the interpretive structures of others. This enterprise would be set in a context in which, at least as a principled ideal, the notion of equality of resources, as discussed in Chapter 10, was accorded primary normative significance. The educational approach to (human) security issues would be informed by a specific conception of justice, and operationalized through both dialogue between learners, and reasoned reflection by those learners upon their own preferences. It should be said at once that, as written, this proposition is broadly consistent with a fairly wide range of philosophical perspectives that suggest possible purposes for education. Examples include the following: z

z

z z

z

Amartya Sen’s (2002) previously-discussed notion of individual ‘metarankings’ – that is, preferences about what it is better to prefer – and his linkage of the personal development of preferences to the foundations of rationality and freedom. Jürgen Habermas’s (2003, p. 33) conceptualisation of moral behaviour as: ‘a constructive response to the dependencies rooted in the incompleteness of our organic makeup and in the persistent frailty . . . of our bodily existence’. Friedrich Hayek’s (1960, p. 81) claim that, ‘in discovering the best use of our abilities we are all entrepreneurs’. The view advanced by John White (2007) when he argues that the notion of ‘wellbeing’ cannot be understood solely in naturalistic terms. Rather, it is dependent on culture and cultural processes. To insist that any viable conception of wellbeing must be minimally consistent with the laws of biology in no way detracts from this proposition. We return to this topic in Chapter 11. Ian Westbury’s (1999, p. 361) view of the essential role of the curriculum leader in promoting ‘an expansive conception of education’, while at the same time recognizing that the curriculum is, ‘the public organizational form that, to be legitimate, must instantiate the aspirations of all of the constituencies of the school’.

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However, the discussion acquires a particular edge through a focus on security, particularly when this is set in context of our insistence on both: the co-evolutionary unity of society, economy and environment; and, the inevitability of uncertainty and surprise. What can or should education have to offer in response to threats from global terrorism, contested migration, climate change and pandemic disease? Is a focus on learners’ own development of their ‘interpretive structures’ good enough under these circumstances? What are the educational alternatives? One such alternative involves encouragement of a retreat into selfsufficiency and isolation. At an interpersonal level we should learn to shop locally, grow our own vegetables, reduce our carbon footprints, develop a sense of community, and report unattended luggage: at a national level we should reduce food-miles, support domestic industry, treasure shared values (one of which might be a commitment to tolerate diverse values) and reduce dependency on transnational pipelines and the mineral riches of contested foreign deserts. Many instances of these kinds of behaviours may have individual merit, but at an aggregated, totalising scale this is an approach that finds itself at odds with the immutable characteristics of lower ontological levels. Quite simply, there is ultimately no security in selfsufficiency because it is massively inefficient. It does not offer the possibility of survival for anything approaching the present human population, or, in rich countries, at anything like the present quality of life. Further, this is an approach that yields freedom from fear on very questionable terms. That freedom is earned simply by curtailing our desires. A second kind of response is to make survival the highest value of all. People should learn to accept that, if it is believed to be at stake, then searches may be conducted, roads sealed off, personal information accessed, rights suspended and collateral damage accepted. As with the first kind of response, there may be individual instances of all these things that seem only sensible: but in the aggregate, or as a universal rule-of-thumb, this approach, like the first, defeats its own object. This is because the aspiration for survival goes beyond (though it includes) the mere aspiration to continue breathing. It extends to a desire for freedom and justice (however conceived, and among other things), and these are progressively undermined by each instance of suspended rights or collateral damage. We might summarise the argument of this section as follows: z z

Human survival requires human variety. Individual responses to issues of survival that are appropriate at particular places and times may be unsuitable for generalisation or aggregation.

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The meaning of ‘survival’ is a composite of elements from both lower ontological levels (for example, the requirement to continue breathing), and higher ones (for example, a desire for freedom and justice).

It is admitted that ‘education that helps learners develop their interpretive structures’ makes a poor slogan when compared with ‘self-sufficiency’ or ‘search and destroy’. However, it has the merit of accommodating the need (sometimes) for both, and being a slave to neither. It might be objected that the foregoing amounts, in the end, to little more than blind faith in the emergence of spontaneous order, with education as its midwife: help people realise what they really want to do, equip them with the tools to do it, and everything will turn out for the best. Given that our focus is nothing less that human security, such unconsidered faith would be rash. As Hodgson (2004a, p. 435) puts it, While self-organization and spontaneous orders are important and widespread in both nature and society, they rely on specific types of incentive alignment that ensure that most individuals have no reason to deviate from or disrupt the emergent order. Other payoff structures exist that may not lead to optimal or satisfactory outcomes, and additional factors may be necessary to reach a satisfactory result. ‘Additional factors’ mentioned by Hodgson include enforcement, and the temporary imposition of suitable arrangements as a means of modifying preferences over time. The arguments presented here are consistent with those of Hodgson to the extent that they recognize both the importance of spontaneous order and its possible limitations. However, they go beyond his analysis in proposing that what counts as an ‘incentive’, a ‘payoff’, a ‘satisfactory outcome’, an acceptable ‘additional factor’ or, ultimately, ‘order’, can only ever be contingent, and can only be arrived at through the interpretation of currently-received signs and signals. Therefore, each of these terms itself admits of variety. Education’s role is to ensure that variety is productive, with regard to both the biological fact of survival, and what it means to survive. The next section briefly explores what this might mean in terms of water education.

Water Education, Networks and Security There is no doubt that water is implicated in security issues. There are some situations in which a little education in relation to freshwater and its uses

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can go a long way in terms of enhanced security, for example through training in basic hygiene, instruction in water resources management or the training of water technicians. There are other much more complex situations where water resource issues are implicated in conflict, crime, poverty and/or terrorism, and where water education may have a role in ameliorating these. One possibility, which is currently the focus of work designed to respond to the RCUK programme, is to develop the role of learning networks in responding to situations in which uncertainty is rife, actions have implications across a range of spatial and temporal scales, and knowledge is diffused among a great many different people. All these characteristic may be present in the case of freshwater management issues. There is no shortage of existing networks, in relation to water education, TVET or almost anything else. They are widely held to be a good idea. However, they do not always work very well and, even when they do, they often fail to engage adequately with other networks that are addressing similar matters in a different way, or from a different perspective. The point here is similar to that raised in Chapter 6 – that knowledge may be highly context specific, and expressed in language that is unique to a particular community of practice. Hence, it may not travel well to other contexts or communities, even when it is important that it does so. A further problem is that networking activity can be time consuming and inefficient. An example of this is provided by a study by Ravenscroft et al. (2002) that investigated participation in public forums in England and Wales. It concluded that these could sometimes result in slow and confused decisionmaking, as well as in additional costs. Nevertheless, the apparent advantages of networks remain. Suppose, for example, that one could create a network that linked, z

z z z z

Water quality data for developing countries that have shared surface- or ground-water resources, collected through a large-scale public participation process, using simple, cheap, but scientifically-reliable techniques Existing water-sector practitioners Researchers into the scientific and social aspects of freshwater, in higher education institutions in those countries As required, water specialists elsewhere in the world TVET policy-makers and trainers with a concern for freshwater issues

Suppose further, that communications within this network were focused upon the following four questions: (i) How do issues of human security impact upon your activities? (ii) How might, or does, your work impact

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upon human security issues? (iiii) What are the key security-related tensions that emerge from your professional experiences? (iv) Do these identified tensions offer a basis for further, innovative, legitimate educational interventions that might contribute to the resolution of insecurities – who needs to learn, and what should they learn? The result might conceivably enhanced mutual understanding leading to targeted education and training of the very highest quality. Work has therefore continued to develop a ‘learning-network analysis and design tool’ based on extensive international review of existing networks (Gough and Scott, 2007). This tool, as its name suggests, might be used in two ways: to distinguish the particular characteristics of existing networks; or, to assist in determining the features best suited to the operation of a new network. Its main categories are, z z z z z

Basic characteristics: membership; structure; purpose; expectations for learning; scale; technology; source of funding Issues addressed; internal basis for evaluating success of failure; methods of influence or dissemination of information Disciplinary focus; core practices (e.g. engineering, teaching, marketing) Forms of communication between core and peripheral members Approach to learning

Each of these headings is further sub-divided. Further work is planned to explore the possibilities for a ‘network of networks’ linking all those with an interest in issues of water education and security in the way described, and to test the usefulness of this process.

Chapter 12

TVET and Wellbeing

On the face of it, ‘wellbeing’ is an ambiguous, and possibly unhelpful concept. McGillivray and Clarke (2006, p. 3) write, It lacks a universally acceptable definition and has numerous, often competing, interpretations. As human well-being cannot be directly observed, it cannot be directly measured. Further, terms such as quality of life, welfare, well-living, living standards, utility, life satisfaction, prosperity, needs fulfilment, development, empowerment, capability expansion, human development, poverty, human poverty, land and, more recently, happiness are often used interchangeable with well-being without explicit discussion as to their distinctiveness. While there is every intention, in what follows, to be a explicit as possible about the meaning that is intended, it is the very breadth of the term wellbeing that enables it to draw together many of the (inter-related) aspects of human experience that TVET does, might or should influence. As we have seen in previous chapters, these include, z z z z z z z z

the absolute level of economic development. Economic growth the absolute level of social development. Social change the sustainability of the co-evolutionary relationship between humans and the non-human environment the management of competing perceptions and understandings in conditions of uncertainty personal abilities, capabilities, skills or competencies rational self-development the balance of present and future costs and benefits at both the personal and the social levels the quality of social, economic and environmental infrastructure and governance

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the availability of options in the present and the future freedom, equality and justice security

Economic and Non-Economic Approaches to Wellbeing Much academic work on wellbeing has a focus on international development. Clearly, however, it is also an issue for the developed world. Further, these spheres of wellbeing are not separate. In practical terms they are linked by the operation of the globalized economy. In normative terms they are connected by concerns about, for example, social justice and environmental degradation. As we saw in the previous chapter, these conjoining factors come together in a variety of ways that bear on national and individual security. Work is central to wellbeing, not only because it is a means to earn a living, but also because it is an important means of personal self-expression and development, and because the work that others do creates the conditions in which more or less wellbeing is possible. TVET is therefore a means to wellbeing in all these senses. Sumner (2006) notes that the breadth of the concept of wellbeing has been reflected in a move beyond straightforwardly economic indicators that began more than 50 years ago. Even so, economic approaches have remained dominant in its measurement. Such approaches focus on personal income or consumption, and on the acquisition of material goods. Those indicators most commonly used, according to Sumner are: GDP per head; real wages; unemployment rates; percentage of population below one US dollar per day; percentage of the population below the national poverty line; percentage of the population vulnerable to poverty; and, various technical measures of income inequality. In discussion of the meaning of wellbeing, however, non-economic indicators have come to dominate. The most common relate to, Education: enrolment rates; completion rates; literacy rates. Health and Nutrition: Malnutrition rates; Mortality and morbidity rates/life expectancy/infection rates; Health service usage. Environment: Access to ‘improved’ water sources; access to ‘adequate’ sanitation; household infrastructure. Empowerment and Participation: Participation in political processes; Knowledge of local projects and budgets; Number, size and revenue of active NGOs. (Adapted from Sumner, 2006, p. 64)

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There are also a number of composite indicator systems that combine a range of variables, for example the quality of life indicators of the World Health Organization, and the human development indices of the UNDP. Sumner (2006, p. 65, original emphasis) notes that non-economic indicators have greater medium- and long-term significance because, ‘they address more directly the ends or outcomes of policy (being educated and healthy) rather than the inputs or means (greater income)’. This is interesting, because TVET is sometimes presented as being little more than a means to greater (individual and national) income. Of course, successful TVET does increase earning power and may stimulate economic growth: but, if it is properly educational, it is an end in itself, as well as a means for the achievement of other objectives.

Wellbeing, Education and Change In a recent paper White (2007, p. 25) has developed an educational account of wellbeing, as follows: Wellbeing is not to be understood in terms of individual desire satisfaction, even where the desires are both informed and of major significance in a person’s life. If it is not a subjective matter in this sense, neither is it an objective matter of deriving it from features of our human nature. The truth is more subtle. Wellbeing is still desire-dependent, but the desires in question are not those of an individual, but of a loose collection of people. White argues that education can contribute to wellbeing by facilitating communications between individuals that help to develop those shared ‘desires’ while strengthening and widening that ‘loose collection of people’. Education is specially-placed to do this in ways that are inclusive and democratic, valuing what people are at the same time as it creates possibilities for them to develop in new directions. This formulation has echoes of a number of others discussed previously, for example, z z

Hodkinson et al.’s (2007) account of learning cultures and ‘continual becoming’ The idea of learning as investment through a rational process that aims to enhance future freedoms by expanding capabilities

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The idea of education as a systematic attempt to engage the agency of learners, for the purpose of ongoing deliberate review and refinement of their own interpretive structures, through consideration of the interpretive structures of others

But while the arguments of this book are broadly consistent with White’s exposition of wellbeing, they also highlight certain constraining factors that operate in practice (which, it should be said, was not White’s particular concern). For one thing, the ‘desires’ which those charged with planning educational strategy think appropriate may not be shared by the intended recipients. Further, pursuing desires, whether they be individual or collective ones, will lead to different consequences for different people. Those consequences will often not be exactly as anticipated, and will change the parameters in which future decisions about wellbeing will be made. So, for example, there may be no reason to doubt that the official promotion of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in England in the period from the late 1980s to the 1990s was motivated by some conception of the enhancement of wellbeing for learners, employers and the country as a whole. The consequences of this policy are described by Wolf (2002, p. 85) as follows: Faced with this offering, the rational choice of any sixteen-year-old, male or female, was to reject NVQs . . . A levels, diplomas and degrees were the way to keep your options open and to present yourself as a desirable, flexible individual with general skills and abilities. And general skills were what success in the modern labour market demanded. Perceptions about what was desirable and how it might be achieved differed, there were market forces at work, and the aggregate outcomes of the process, which were not widely foreseen, changed the context in which future actions and plans were laid down by individuals and institutions.

An Example: Wellbeing, Water and Higher Education in Africa A particular example of TVET through higher education for sustainable development (see Chapter 5) that supports broad wellbeing objectives is reported by Gough and Scott (2007). This is the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) project: ‘Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability

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in African Universities’ (MESA). Professor Akpezi Ogbuigwe, UNEP’s Head of Environmental Education and Training, set the tone of this pan-African collaboration in the journal Research Africa (p. 20) in October 2006. She asked: ‘What is the purpose of education if it cannot produce answers to Africa’s problems?’. The project features a number of initiatives, including: seminars for university leaders; workshops; awards programmes; a MESA business campus; and, materials development – for example, an ‘Education for Sustainable Development Innovations Course Toolkit’ [see: www.unep. org/Training/mesa/toolkit.asp]. The toolkit makes use of a number of case studies, one of which relates to the Nile river basin (see Chapter 4). The following is an extract from that case study that indicates the wide range of skills-education that may be required in a context of threats to wellbeing. Lack of awareness and concern for environmental issues as well as the risks and uncertainty involved in sustainable development challenges need to be taken into account. For example, the large scale programme to establish wells in the Sahel during the 1960s and 1970s can be directly linked to growing herd numbers and land degradation within a 100 km radius of the wells. Conflicting interests are also an important underlying cause of unsustainable practices as is evident in the expansion of largescale mechanised agricultural schemes in some Nile Basin countries and the subsequent concentration of migratory animals and nomadic populations . . . environmental education and ESD initiatives thus need to take into account not only information but also exploratory orientations. These need to involve different interest groups and equip people with the competencies to make decisions in situations of conflict and uncertainty. This idea, that skills in conflict-resolution are significant within TVET in relation to the use of water resources, has also emerged strongly from UNESCO’s work on water education. One issue that arises for wellbeing and TVET in Africa, as elsewhere, is that of possible tensions between educational and developmental goals and local culture. For example, among traditional Fulbe societies in Burkina Faso it has been observed that women resist joining cooperatives set up for the purpose of enabling development Buhl (2005). This is awkward for Western development specialists, given the central place enjoyed by the empowerment of women in much development thinking. In particular, developing the business skills of women is a strategy that has enjoyed considerable success in other settings. However, in Fulbe culture household

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production is the traditional responsibility of men. From the perspective of the women the removal of this cultural obligation would have the immediate effect (whatever its long-term promise) of disadvantaging themselves further. Further, since culture defines a domain of activity for women which is essentially private, the women felt that, in a second sense, participation would be disempowering, possibly leading to alienation from family and the wider community. At the very least, this points to the inadequacy of simple, universalized conceptions of wellbeing as a basis for training interventions. Even in South Africa, which is not formally considered to be a low-income country, continuing inequalities are stark and many challenges to wellbeing remain. There also, water use and management are seen as central to national development policy. This has led to the setting up of a structure of water management institutions, and the adoption of catchment-level Integrated Water Resource Management (see Chapter 4). Work by Lotz-Sisitka and Raven (2009) has identified a number of strategies for improving the effectiveness of the South African TVET sector in general. They begin by outlining how the South African Qualifications Authority, set up following the end of the apartheid system in 1994, was required to set up a new National Qualifications Framework that would provide for lifelong learning, and respond to national policy requirements to promote environmental rights and sustainable development. The Framework further created a challenge to integrate the education and training sectors, and this was addressed through the notion of ‘applied competence’. Within applied competence, the concept of reflexive competence has a significant contributory role. Lotz-Sisitka and Raven (2009, p. 310) note that: ‘the notion of reflexivity holds numerous promises for social change and transformation’. The recommendations from their study include, z

First, a need for systematic recognition of the limited (though important) role of TVET courses within the wider context of a person’s life, as these interact with ongoing change in the workplace. There is a need for iterative process of interconnected lifelong learning and workplace change. Interestingly, it seems that wider processes of workplace change may also sometimes be necessary if education is to be effective in enhancing wellbeing. Following a study of education and poverty in Côte d’Ivoire that used quantitative modelling techniques, Grimm (2006, p. 322) concluded that expansion of educational provision could not be expected to lead to significant poverty reduction unless it was accompanied by complementary increases in physical capital and technological capability.

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Second, in order to develop the ‘reflexive competence’ of learners, courses need to facilitate engagement with the actual systems, practices and challenges of the workplace. Third, there are implications for assessment, since outcomes-based approaches to TVET, based on instrumental criteria, will fail to engender the critical questioning skills that are required to challenge, and bring about advances upon, the existing state of affairs.

An Often-Forgotten Group: TVET, Wellbeing and Hunter-Gatherers. We have already noted how, in White’s (2007) discussion, it is proposed as a strength of education in the context of wellbeing that it is able simultaneously to value people as they are in the present, and stimulate their ambitions and abilities for change. In most respects, this seems like an appropriate and, indeed, exciting prescription. There is, however, at least one group of people for whom it may be more controversial. Brody (2002) provides an anthropologically-based account of human history for which a crucial change occurred for human societies at the point at which they moved from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural one. Brody’s thesis is based on extensive ethnographic work among Inuit and other indigenous groups. He argues that post-agricultural societies differ fundamentally from pre-agricultural societies in their relationship with nature. Pre-agriculturalization, survival depends on keeping nature as it is, and on maintaining its predictable cycles of renewal. For hunter-gatherer societies as varied as the Inuit of North America and the Penan of North Borneo, economic life revolves (or revolved) around sustaining a fairly stable level of population within a defined (if possibly very large) territory in a state of (to modern eyes perhaps rather cruel) harmony with the rest of the natural world. Post-agriculturalization, survival depends on a process through which nature is modified for the purpose of increasing production. Where successful, such increases in production lead to increases in population, which create a requirement for more land to be brought under cultivation – through both geographical expansion and technological advance – in order that material living standards (and their growth) can be maintained. This leads to a profound irony. Agricultural societies have often equated ‘civilised’ life with ‘settled’ lifestyles and disparaged huntergatherers as ‘uncivilised nomads’. Yet, seen over any time span longer than one generation, it is the hunter-gatherers who are ‘settled’, in that their

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territories are constant, very well understood, and used in a regular sequence. By contrast, agriculturalists are constantly driven to capture new land, and to export surplus individuals into new territory. They are, as societies rather than individuals, always on the move. In Chapter 10 we noted the need for constant innovation in a modern, globalized knowledge economy. Brody’s work suggests that, in principle at least, this need for constant upgrading may not be as recent in origin as is often supposed. Brody observes (supporting his observation with much ethnographic evidence) that this shift is reflected in the religious and spiritual beliefs which people, in different societies, tend to have. In particular, the monotheistic religions which (like agriculture itself) originated in the Near East, provide an understanding of human relations with the natural world which is entirely consistent with the economic necessities of agricultural life. He focuses, in particular, on the biblical story of the Fall, and the loss of Eden. Before this, humans lived in a garden which was divinely maintained to meet their needs. Afterwards, they had to work for a living, go forth, and multiply. Multiply they certainly did, to the point where, quite clearly, no mass return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is now possible (even if thought desirable) at anything remotely like currently prevailing population levels. To adapt Brody’s terminology, the majority of the human species is now firmly and irrevocably this side of Eden. However, the exit from Eden had a further consequence: the new agriculturalists had to learn new skills, and they have been learning them ever since. That this analysis does in fact apply only to a majority of cases, and not to everyone, is certainly important. Though they are typically under threat, there still remain a number of hunter-gatherer societies, and there are also (as Brody acknowledges) some examples of agricultural societies that maintain a steady-state relationship with nature. Nevertheless, it remains the case that, however admirable such communities may be in themselves, they do not represent the way the world is going. Nor, indeed, do they offer a model of a way in which the world as a whole could conceivably go without – to put it starkly – a massive cull of the total human population. Hunter-gatherers are a tiny minority of the world’s population, and doomed by economic and demographic logic to remain so. But they still have rights. It is difficult to know what can be done about this, or how the wellbeing of hunter-gatherers can be assured. In 1990 I was fortunate to spend a few nights in a jungle camp in Sarawak with Penan hunter-gatherers. In response to my question about their view of my world, their headman replied simply: ‘You have nothing we want’. However, something must be done, because justice demands it, and also because it is, in Brody’s terminology,

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the post-agriculturalists who threaten the hunter-gatherers, not the other way round. It seems that education, on the usual Western development model, can be of little help. Even if the appropriate people and goods can be assembled in one place, the results may not be as intended. Huntergatherer groups such as the Inuit have shown themselves to be extremely versatile in their acquisition and deployment of useful new skills: but there is very often the problem that young people go away to learn and never come back. Also writing about the tribal peoples of Sarawak, Colchester (1992, p. 46) records that those sent down river to boarding schools: Spend a miserable first couple of years being ridiculed for their ignorance of pop music, fashion and dance and their parochial outlook. They are shamed into cutting their traditionally long hair and learn to despise the old ways of their parents. Other more imaginative solutions have had somewhat better success. Penan have been trained in permaculture schemes in parts of Borneo where logging has so reduced the forest cover that their traditional lifestyle is no longer viable. In Guyana, indigenous rainforest groups have been taught how to market traditional rainforest products. For some, around the world, ‘ecotourism’ has proved attractive, though this is not without its problems (Gough and Scott, 2002). Perhaps the real need is to accept that ‘valuing people as they are in the present’ is one thing, and, sometimes, ‘empowering them to change’ quite another. Our principle of equality of resources would require us to ensure that, insofar as it is still possible, hunter-gatherer peoples should be able to retain the material necessities for the continuation of their societies. Our approach to freedom should enable us to accept the normative basis of their rationality even where it differs from our own. Berlin (2002, p. 217) calls this: ‘the ideal of freedom to choose ends without claiming eternal validity for them’. What surely must be clear is that, if these societies continue to atrophy – and, realistically, they probably will – then any subsequent training for their members should be based on as thorough an understanding as possible of both their societies, and ours. In neither case is a simple ‘skills-delivery-and-growth’ model likely to be adequate. Finally, there remains the possibility that we might still learn something from them. In Chapter 7 we saw how the Norse community in Greenland perished, even as it regarded the Inuit people – whose skills were perfectly adapted to the conditions – with fear and contempt.

Chapter 13


We are regularly assured by politicians, employers and others that TVET is extremely important. There also often seems to be an almost wilful determination to believe that it is really very simple: employers know what skills they need from the workforce, education (including, increasingly, higher education) should deliver them. All will then be well. However, the reality is more complex. Payne (2008, p. 94) writes, The problem of ensuring that the sum of employer training decisions is optimal for society in the long run is widely recognised as being a perennial and universal policy challenge across the developed world . . . In the UK, it is often argued that this is particularly problematic, with many firms said to compete successfully on the basis of low skill, low value-added product strategies, occupying what Finegold and Soskice (1988) called, ‘the low skills equilibrium’. A particular concern of this book has been to explore, in the context of a broad definition of TVET, exactly what ‘optimal for society’ might mean. The suggestion has been that it is much more than a largely mechanical input into processes that generate economic growth. Of course, economic growth is important. But growth itself is a ultimately means not an end. One possible response to this might be to suggest that it is government’s responsibility to concentrate on promoting growth, so that individuals can make their own choices about their ultimate ends under the best possible circumstances. But the distribution of the benefits of growth determines individuals’ respective abilities to identify and pursue personal ends, and the approach taken to TVET has a bearing on this. And anyway, governments are not content to leave the selection of ultimate ends to individuals. On the contrary, they seek to influence them extensively, both through direct means such as the promotion of social projects such as social inclusion, sustainable development and healthy living, and indirectly through taxes and subsidies. Further, the relationship between TVET that is ‘optimal for

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society’ and the interests of any particular, individual learner is not absolutely straightforward. As Christopher Winch (2000, p. 79) puts it, The choice of primary occupation is one of the most important that people can make. It is not just a technical decision about how best to gain an advantage in the labour market (even if some people represent it to themselves as such), but, to a certain extent, a question about the ends in life that one wishes to adopt and thus, the kind of person that one wants to be. It is quite commonplace, for example by using the notions of ‘human capital’ or ‘social capital’, to employ ideas relating to the economic concept of investment in addressing these issues. This book has sought to do so in a particular way.

Investment: A Summary We began with the simple observation that investment entails some kind of present outlay in the expectation of future returns and a net benefit over time. This invokes the concept of time-preference, which is linked to other relevant factors such as uncertainty and risk. There is a further association with the term ‘capital’, which has been used in relation to TVET (and education more widely) in a variety of ways. It was argued that confusion about the precise meaning of capital is rife – even within the discipline of economics itself. Nevertheless, some of those who wish to employ the term in educational settings do so as if its meaning and implications are absolutely clear, while others seem almost to have forgotten the nature of the purchase on problems that it brings and, therefore, why it is being used at all. Nevertheless, the term does provide intellectual traction of a particular kind, even if metaphorically. It was suggested that, in the context of TVET, investment-based approaches might usefully be supplemented (not replaced) by consideration of the value of future options. This is a technique identified in the literature of management studies for dealing with particular kinds of investment decision-making. Subsequent chapters have linked the idea of investment to a wide range of issues. Taken together, perhaps, these could be said to scope out what would need to be considered in a full determination of that which is ‘optimal for society’. In particular, z

Human institutions and learning were placed within a layered, realist ontology. This establishes fundamental terms of engagement between societies, institutions (such as colleges) and individuals. These make


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z

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possible, in turn, a theory of the substantive processes that investment of this sort might involve, expressed in terms of ‘emergent properties’ and ‘reconstitutive downward causation’. It was argued that society, economy and environment together constitute an integrated whole that humans engage with through the use of tools of all kinds. Central to this integration is a process of co-evolution. Macro-scale impacts of TVET occur through that process. Both TVET, and investment in it, are rational endeavours. There are a variety of competing accounts of what ‘rationality’ means. Either explicitly or implicitly, all have a normative basis. An account of rationality as having human development at its heart was presented. However, it was also argued that rationality itself has rational limits, and that therefore the ends of ‘human development’ should be unscripted and emergent rather than prescribed. Ultimately, in educational terms, one has to trust the learner. Such an approach prefers ‘negative’ to ‘positive’ freedom. It also strengthens the case for the inclusion of an options-element in the evaluation of TVET investments. Traditional net present value approaches (whether applied literally or metaphorically) require a specification of expected outcomes. To some extent, at least, a commitment to negative freedom prohibits this. If TVET is a rational activity, and rationality must ultimately have a normative basis, then TVET systems require a normative underpinning. The notion of a hypothetical market was discussed as a possible basis for making incrementally better investment decisions in TVET over time. Some of the implications of the total approach were discussed, in the context of contemporary issues of security and well being.

With this in hand, the next section considers a number of additional issues relating to the use of the terms ‘investment’ and ‘capital’.

TVET and Human Becoming In general terms it might be said that much of the argument to this point has served to advance the idea that TVET, properly conceived, has an important role to play in processes of human becoming. This has emerged quite specifically at a number of points, for example in relation to individual rationality (Sen, 1999; 2002), TVET learning processes (Hodkinson et al., 2007), inter-relation with non-human nature (Norgaard, 1984; 1994) and social justice (Dworkin, 2000; 2004). The point runs deeper than this, however, since the case advanced here is explicitly rooted in a Darwinian perspective

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(Rorty, 1999; Hodgson, 2004a; 2006; 2008) for which ‘becoming’ is what species do. Variety, not homogeneity, lies at its heart. We can try to manage our way onward, but onward we must always go. TVET is significant but, like everything else we do to influence the future, it will take effect in ways that can never be fully predicted and are sure to throw up surprises. The rational thing to do in the face of this uncertainty is not to assume it away, but to accept it as inherent to our human situation. That is why variety matters so much. The idea of capital is much older than the science of economics. One early appearance of the idea is in Matthew 25, the ‘Parable of the Talents’: 25:14 For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them.15 To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey.16 Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents.17 In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more.18 But he who received the one talent went away, and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.19 Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.20 The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents.’21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’22 Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, ‘Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have gained two more talents.’23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’24 And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.25 And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’26 But his master answered and said to him, ‘You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed.27 ‘Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.28 Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’29 For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.30 Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.


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And yet, like many great statements of principle, this one turns out to be ambiguous. Elsewhere in the same Gospel, we find the following: 6:25 ‘Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?’ Earning a return might be the most important thing, or it might not. This is not a resolvable contradiction, but an enduring and frequently creative tension. The case studies of Chapters 4 to 6 are shot through with it. For example, z z

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Water is both an economic resource, and an object of cultural, political, aesthetic and personal value. Higher education may promote ‘sustainable technologies’ as profitable business opportunities, or as alternatives to a society led by business and profit. In management education the relationship between ‘doing well’ and ‘doing good’ is a frequent source of both tension and synergy for learning.

But constant uncertainty and indefinite change is a hard message to swallow. Culture, and our loyalty to particular institutions (Schwarz and Thompson, 1990; Thompson, 1997), helps us find certainty where none exists as a basis for living everyday life. We are comforted by the prospect of an equilibrium or final state. Norgaard (1994, p. 46) describes the situation in terms of what might be termed ‘co-evolutionary gridlock’: The coevolutionary perspective explains why options are disturbingly limited in the short run; culture has determined environment and environment has determined culture. At each point in time there is a near gridlock of coevolved knowledge, values, technologies, social organization, and natural environment. Yet over the longer run we approach an equally disturbing situation of nothing determining anything, that all will change in unpredictable ways. Where we will be in the future is determined by neither today’s culture nor environment alone but by these and a host of unpredictable future factors. Yet come the future, near gridlock will prevail.

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This conception is helpful in thinking further about the educational tension between valuing what people are, at the same time as facilitating their consideration about what they might become. This was previously discussed, in the context of wellbeing, in Chapter 12. More widely, Norgaard’s notion of ‘gridlock’ also assists in reconciling educational thinking – within which it is usually a fairly central assumption that human preferences are malleable – with economic analysis that assumes that preferences can be taken to be given. Our current state of wellbeing arises as an interpretation of our current knowledge, understandings and practices, in the context of our current material circumstances. All this will change over time, including, perhaps, our presently most-cherished values. Broadly speaking, mainstream economics provides sharp insights into how things are, and that is important because we can begin from nowhere else. But education’s job is not simply to service that status quo, even if it is a status quo characterized by – in Cohen’s (2006) term – ‘autopoesis’. Education in general, and TVET in particular, must challenge learners, teachers and policy-makers to think about what they want to become, and to consider their own answers against those offered by others. This in no way precludes teaching skills, but it does suggest that the choice of skills to be taught should depend on a great deal more than the currently-perceived needs of employers (even assuming these are accurately reported – see Payne, 2008). Both society and the individual learner could be said to be investing in such a project, which would take account of both the present value of expected returns, and the fullest range of possible future options. But perhaps the word ‘reconciling’ is too strong to describe this process of disciplinary juxtapositioning, and perhaps simply engaging different learners’ perceptions is not strong enough as a pedagogic device. Even if we set aside option-value and the certainty of change, problems remain with the idea of returns-to-investment over long periods of time. One of these, noted by Robert Nozick (1993), is that the curves that describe the rewards accruing to two different, alternative courses of action over a long period of time, may cross. Imagine two alternatives, X and Y, either of which, in the present, appears to constitute a viable investment, offering acceptable returns over a period of, say, 20 years. However, during the first three years the annual rewards to choice X are the greater. After that, choice Y offers the higher annual reward. Nozick (1993, p. 16, original emphasis) asks: ‘Where are we standing when we say that avoiding the temptation is the better alternative?’ He goes on to suggested that the initial period (in this example, of three years) is an inappropriate frame of reference for making the choice because it does not constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the


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chooser’s views on the matter. From years four through to twenty, choice Y would be preferred. Therefore, this period is the more representative of the total set of views the chooser would have. This problem raises a wider issue with the idea of ‘human becoming’, which is that of the nature of the relationship, in the present, between a person and her future self. In this context, Le Grand (2003) considers how preferences change through time in relation to individual choices about insurance and savings. Like investment, these both call for present sacrifice as a preparation for uncertain future outcomes. Drawing on the ideas of Derek Parfit (1984) and John Broome (1985), Le Grand develops a case that we can usefully think of persons, in the present, as treating their future selves as if they were different people. Such behaviour, he argues, would not be irrational. A person as a child is connected to the same person in old age by psychological links. As the time gap increases, these links become increasingly stretched and weakened. This means that orthodox economic choice in the present cannot be taken to include consideration of the future possibilities. The person doing the choosing is the person now, and not the person then, or indeed a ‘representative sample’. Hence, present decisions cannot be expected to take appropriate account of future considerations. The present person may disadvantage the future person – who has a legitimate interest in the decision, but whose views are not represented. There is, in a real sense, a market failure (Le Grand, 2003), and this in turn constitutes a case for intervention to correct it. Such intervention might be educational, and might be through TVET. If so, it would emphasize both the present value of expected returns to present choices, and the value of future options. But it would seek to extend the dialogue between different perceptions to include those of future persons or, perhaps, ‘representative samples’. It would create a ‘hypothetical forum’ to stand alongside the hypothetical market. It would be entirely in keeping with Sen’s (2002, p. 12) case that freedom for a person includes, ‘the extent to which she has the opportunity of choosing – or “developing” – the preferences that she may prefer to have’.

TVET, Options and Measurement In developing the argument of this book some care has been taken to be clear that nothing in it should be taken to indicate an opposition to quantitative techniques and measurement. When things can be measured, they should be. However, at the same time, aspects of a problem that cannot be

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measured should not be ignored for that reason alone, and measurements that are so dependent on essentially capricious assumptions as to be, in truth, estimates at best, should record this fact. The discussion of option values derives originally from ideas in financial economics and, in that sphere, extraordinarily complex mathematical techniques are used to value intricate option products. In Chapter 5 is was pointed out that, in fact, such techniques can prove catastrophically misleading if they are never tested in a market. But, nevertheless, perhaps we cannot rule out the possibility that, one day, it will be possible to quantify the value of the future options that different educational choices in the present open up or close off. In the meantime, estimates (guesses, if you like) of the worth of future options will have to do, always bearing in mind that the value should be greater the longer the time period before an option becomes available, and the greater the overall risk. In both respects, of course, this is the opposite of the way future returns are treated in a discounted cash flow model, where longer time spans and higher risk both increase the discount rate. In fact, as Mun (2002) notes, the discount rate is usually both most sensitive, and the most difficult variable to quantify in DCF. By way of making this point, and in concluding this chapter, the following quotation from the business literature makes clear that, in some circumstances, just knowing whether an unknown value is positive or negative can be enormously useful: To make things right, you should develop cash flow forecasts conditioned not only on understanding the project initially, but also conditioned on making decisions that effect the forecasts as new developments arise. We’re not saying this is easy. And your estimates will often be so subjective you may think the added work is a pointless exercise. But this is decisionmaking under uncertainty, up close and personal. Consider the alternative of simply ignoring the options. This in effect says that the options are worth zero, a value you know to be wrong. (Moore, 2001, p. 191) Investment and capital are useful terms for thinking about TVET. They demand that we be as precise as we can. They also offer scope for extensive confusion and misleading, oversimplified conclusions.

Chapter 14

Conclusion: Vocational Learning and Teaching: What and How?

Chapter 9 discussed Kemmis’s (1983) presentation of three views of education. The first two of these, the ‘job-slots’ view and the ‘cultured persons and survivors’ view, reflect a long-standing distinction in educational thinking between – in more conventional terms – vocationalism and liberalism. In its most extreme form, vocationalism results in the kind of limiting, second-class provision so trenchantly criticised by Wolf (2002). From Chapter 1 onwards it has been made clear that such is not the view of vocational education espoused by this book. However, we have also noted the tendency of many recent policy pronouncements on education, at all levels, to adopt a discourse of skills delivery that is hardly more ambitious. In particular, this focus on skills seems to many to threaten a liberal view of education that many continue to find very attractive – notwithstanding Kemmis’s rather scathing re-designation of it in terms of ‘cultured persons’. Perhaps the strongest account of liberalism in these terms is that of the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, which was discussed in the context of TVET and higher education in Chapter 5. As Suissa (2004) points out, this approach sees education as a form of conversation. Its purpose is to inculcate traditions across generations, and to facilitate the freeing of the learner’s mind from the humdrum, everyday, here-and-now exigencies of everyday life. It is therefore explicitly at odds with TVET as defined here: ‘the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work’. However, and as Suissa points out, this vocational/liberal distinction has been challenged by philosophers of education such as Pring (1995) and Winch (2000). Before considering this challenge in more detail, we should first return briefly to Kemmis’s (1983) third option: the ‘members of society view’. This has been developed in a variety of ways in curriculum theory and, as noted in Chapter 9, continues to be influential. The primary reason it is rejected as a basis for TVET within the present argument is that it leads, inevitably, to an account of education as a means to a form of positive freedom.

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Critical curriculum theorising requires that we collaborate in the political struggle to overcome irrationality, injustice and coercion in our own work, and through our own work, in society as a whole. (Kemmis and Fitzclarence, 1986, p. 115) It is hardly a parody to say that the view taken in this socially-critical account is that good education is education that promotes socialist forms of society, and that any other forms of social organization are irrational. Rationality will be recognizable by its socialist characteristics. In cultural theory terms, the argument lies wholly within an egalitarian rationality, and sees the individualist and hierarchical rationalities as sources of ‘injustice’ and ‘coercion’ respectively. It has been argued above that, ultimately, education must have a normative basis, and that the basis should in fact be a particular conception of equality. So far, so good. However, this book has also sought to show that any conception of a purely collaborative, egalitarian society from which competition and hierarchy have been expunged is illusory and, in the end, meaningless. Further, the pursuit of positive freedom in this way is, quite simply, a mistake. On the face of it, then, the situation is not promising. All three of Kemmis’s ‘ways of thinking’ have been rejected. However, Winch (2000) offers a fourth alternative, developed specifically in relation to TVET. This he calls ‘liberal vocationalism’. Liberal vocationalism builds on the recognition, which has steadily gained ground since the discrediting of theories of unitary ability, that ability is actively specific and that abilities vary widely and are related to interests. It recognises and celebrates the diversity of human life and aspirations. It also fulfils many of the main criteria of a liberal education: it initiates young people into worthwhile activities, building on cognitive breadth it seeks to provide cognitive depth in certain areas and it emphasises choice and forms of learning that are ethically acceptable. It parts company with traditional liberalism in putting limits on the depth to which ‘forms of knowledge’ are pursued and substitutes in their place more practical modes of knowledge. (Winch, 2000, p. 32) Although they have not been developed in the same way, the key points of this paragraph are at least broadly consistent with many of the arguments of this book. To say that ability is ‘actively specific’ chimes with the notion of individual agency in a developing institutional context. Variety appears at the heart of educational endeavour, and as a key characteristic of a

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healthy society. There is an emphasis on the ethical underpinnings of educational action. The practical is accorded high status. As Winch himself notes, this is a radial prescription: but, in late 2009, as the world struggles to cope with economic slowdown, it surely offers greater hope and inspiration for learners and teachers alike than the slide back towards an elaborated form of ‘job-slots’ thinking that seems to typify so many contemporary policy statements.

Investment and Liberal Vocationalism The notion of capital is pervasive in thinking about TVET. As already noted, it takes a large number of adjectival forms – cultural capital, social capital, human capital and so on. A good deal of time and effort has been devoted to the attempt to distinguish these from each other and, conversely, to link them to each other in particular ways. Much of this work is extremely valuable, but there is also a tendency to lose sight of the underlying power that the term ‘capital’ actually brings to the discussion. Yet it was this that made it attractive in the first place. Further, though the term is derived from economics, economics provides no definitive guidance as to its proper use. Indeed, as was shown in Chapter 3, there is a long history of conflicting usage within that discipline. In fact investment, and therefore capital, are useful concepts for thinking about TVET, and offer possibilities to advance the project of liberal vocationalism in education, as set out above. Investment creates capital. Capital is a stock that generates a flow over time. That flow, and any further benefits associated with it, must be sufficient to justify the initial investment and any further costs it entails. These costs must fully represent the value of any alternatives that are foregone or lost as a result. However, much of what is at stake may be difficult or impossible to quantify. The question is then whether the concepts of investment and capital are used as an aide to more precise thought than would otherwise be possible, or, instead, as a way of prolonging and complicating imprecise thought. Rather than proliferating adjectival conceptions of capital, it may well be found more useful to ask to whom, in any particular case, its particular resulting flows accrue. Clarity about expected benefits may well be helped by formal, quantitative techniques to the extent that these are applicable. It may also be informed by consideration of future options that might be opened up or closed off by particular investment decisions. This is not an argument for always keeping all options open (which would, anyway, be impossible), but simply a case for

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not ignoring the value they evidently may have. This will also entail that any particular TVET decision be considered in its full social, economic and environmental context. As we saw in Chapter 2 (Figure 2.1), the beneficiaries of TVET may be students, and/or employers, and/or society as a whole, and/or some particular favoured social group, and/or future generations. All these interests cannot always and everywhere be expected to coincide. Indeed, they may trade off against each other. Expected benefits should therefore not only be clearly attached to those who are expected to receive them, but also stated as clearly as possible. Benefits should not be confused with content. Skills are means to ends rather than ends in themselves. TVET is an educational endeavour, not a form of corporate recruitment. It seeks to enable learners to lead more worthwhile and prosperous lives. Of course skills (and jobs) are, in general terms at least, essential to this, but they are not the same thing. Decisions about the appropriate mode of delivery, disciplinary content, pedagogy, management approach, course assessment and evaluation and mode of delivery can all be made better in the light of clear thinking about these issues. The objective will always be to maximize the net benefit to the chosen beneficiaries. Of course, in the absence of complete information and quantifiability there will always be plenty of potential for mistakes to be made. But at least they should be informed mistakes from which new lessons can be learned. The objective is to think as clearly as possible, where complete clarity is inescapably unachievable. Finally, Figure 2.1 lists a number of ‘possible ends to be served’ by TVET and TVET-related policy: social justice; individual freedom; national pride; competitiveness; education system improvement; conservation of tradition; and, modernization. Others may be added to the list, but this book has argued that it is the first two that are truly foundational to TVET. If it is successful, we should be able to trust our learners. The rest will follow. In fact, as the case studies in Chapters 4 to 6 illustrate, much excellent TVET is happening around the world. It is not always accounted at its full value. The investment-based way of thinking described here is proposed as a step towards correcting this mistake.

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Index

Page numbers in bold denote words that appear in figures. Akpezi Ogbuigwe 160 analysis 11 by beneficiary and by content 12 definition of 11 dimensions of 25 by mode of delivery 17 nature and purpose of 11 pedagogy 25 e-learning 27 reconstitutive downward causation 12 and reductionism 11 whole versus part 12 Ashton, D. 33 assessment 20, 26 and evaluation 21, 26 forms of 21 Bateson, G. L. 12 Becker, G. 33 Berlin, I. 127 Bhagwati, J. 68 Blaug, M. 120 Boud, D. 133 Bourdieu, P. 38 Bowman, C. 39 Brighouse, H. 79 Brody, H. 162 Broome, J. 171 Brown, P. 35, 149 Chandler, D. 148 Clarke, L. 156 Clausewitz, C. von 147 Codling, C. 61 Coffield, F. 86 Cohen, P. 140, 149, 170 competence 21 and learning to learn 22 Côte d’Ivoire 161 Crowther, K. 85 Cullingford, C. 85

Darwin, C. 105 Dehler, G. E. 92 Derry, J. 132 Diamond, J. 112 Dworkin, R. 80, 141, 142, 143, 144 education 7 see also competence, learning characteristic of 7 definition of 36 formal, informal and non-formal modes of modes of 17, 26 Flexible Learning Toolboxes Project in Australia 19 Higher Educational Funding Council for England (HEFCE) 17, 18 information and communications technology ( ICT) 18, 19 VLE (virtual learning environment) 18 Research Councils UK (RCUK) 149 Ekins, P. 80 Elkington, J. 90 Falchikov, N. 133 Farrar, N. 18 Farrell, F. 138 Fell, M. 147 Ferro, A. 140 Fien, J. 4, 96 Finegold, D. 165 Fitzclarence, L. 9 Foster, J. 68 Fredricksson, U. 36 Friedman, M. 45, 90, 115 Gardner, H. 85 Globalization 6 the Context of 138 and ICT 6 see also informations and communications technology Sector Skills Council (SSCs) 6 skill demands 6

190

Index

Gough, A. G. 91 Gough, S. 9 The Green Capitalists 90 Green, F. 33 Grimm, M. 161 Habermas, J. 151 Hart, S. L. 92 Hausman, D. M. 117 Hayek, F. 78, 128, 136 Hedberg, P. R. 84 Hodgson, G. M. 38, 105, 118, 121, 124, 144 Hodkinson, P. 132, 158 Hoskins, B. 36 Hudson, L. 85 Hyland, T. 22 investment 28, 148, 166 and capital 28, 175 time-preference 29 capital confusion 37 cultural capital and symbolic capital 38 individual capital and social capital 38 and liberal vocationalism 175 lifelong learning 37 as form of human capital 37, 121 magnet economies 35 individual employability and job creation 35 sacrifice as a characteristic of 29 Jacob Roggeveen 112 James, P. 97 Jemmott, H. 139 Jucker, R. 68 Kakavelakis, K. 15 Karmel, T. 4 Kelsey, J. 61 Kemmis, S. 9, 130 Knight, F. H. 47 Kolb, D. A. 84 Krugman, P. 118, 128 Lauder, H. 35, 149 Laurillard, D. 87 Lawson, T. 121 Le Grand, J. 118, 141, 142, 171 learning 84 collective learning 87 e-learning 87 experiential learning 84

individual learning 84, 87 learning style 84 multiple intelligences theory 85 reflective learning 84 dimensions of 84 Leathwood, C. 116 Limits to Growth 110 Lord Leitch 61 Lotz-Sisitka, H. 161 Lundgren, U. P. 9 MacIntyre, A. 9 Mahmood, T. 101 Man-Gon Park 96 market 78, 142 Marshall, A. 38 Marx, K. 3, 38 McFalls, R. 92 McGillivray, M. 156 McPherson 117 Michaels, P. J. 90 Mill, J. S. 16 Moreau, M. P. 116 Mun, J. 42 Murphy, T. E. 86 Nixon, J. 86 Norgaard, R. B. 109, 169 North, D. 150 Nozick, R. 78, 170 Oakeshott, M. 60 Parfit, D. 171 Payne, P. 165 Popkewitz, T. S. 9 Prahalad, C. K. 92 Prendergast, R. 127 Pring, R. 173 procurement 97, 98, 100, 126 National Health Service (NHS) 97 aspect groups 98 Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) 98 production 3 SWOT analyses 101 Ramsden, P. 77 rationalities 63, 122 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) 115 through TVET 125 cultural theory approach 65

Index egalitarian rationality 64 individualistic rationality 64 Raven, G. 161 Ravenscroft, N. 154 Reich, R. 35 Research Africa 160 Ricardo, D. 38 Robottom, I. 91 Rorty, R. 4, 105 tool-using 4 St. Matthew 168 Schelling, T. C. 121 Schwarz, J. L. 86, 97 Scott, W. A. H. 9 Sen, A. K. 120, 122, 151, 171 Shakespeare, W. 137 Skill 15, 22, 23 and competence 22 instrumental empathy 15 related to environmental management 73 related to manufacturing 73 related to society 74 in sales process 15 and values 15 Smith, A. 38 Soskice, D. 165 Stables, A. 108 Stiglitz, J. 118 Suissa, J. 173 Sumner, A. 157 sustainable development 4, 99 Earth Summit 66 in England 69, 70 Centre for Research in Education and the Environment (CREE) 69 creativity-oriented 72 objectives of HEFCE 69 Policy Studies Institute (PSI) 69 problem-oriented 70 responsibility-oriented 71 skill-oriented 72 Higher Education funding Council for England (HEFCE) 67 World Concil on Environment and Development (WCED) 66 Swart, J. 39 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) analysis of 11

191 by beneficiary and by content 12 by context 23 by methods of evaluation and assessment other dimensions of 25, 27 beneficiaries of 12, 13, 26, 103 benefits of 13 capital in relation to 31 Dual System in Germany 32 high-skill and low-skill routes to economic growth 33 National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) in Britain 32 content of 14, 26 work on CSR 126 see also Corporate Social Responsibility customer for 8 definition of 1, 3 and e-portfolios 5 Informations and Communication Technology (ICT) tools 5 and European Union (EU) 24 and expected values 14 formalism and capability 120 heuristics 121 human capital 121 Post-Autistic Economics Network 120 and freedom 127 in educational theory 130 learning culture 132, 133 positive and negative freedom 127, 128 transforming learning cultures in further education project 132 globalization 6 and higher education 60 Leitch Review of Skills in UK 61 rationalities 63 social change 62 and human becoming 167 importance of 5 institutions 7 disciplinary perspectives and the importance of 7 and International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training(UNEVOC) 1 as investment 4, 27, 28, 102 Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) 31 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 41

192

Index

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) (Cont’d) market values 78 Net Present Value (NPV) 30 in Ireland 24 Standards Based Apprenticeship System 24 and justice 136 autopoesis 140, 170 equality and equity 141 globalisation and postmodernism 138 Jomtien Declaration 137 macro-context of 104 co-evolution 109 environment and economy 106 layered ontology 109 methodological collectivism 107 natural environment 108 semiotic theory of learning 108 see also learning upward causation and downward causation 107 work 104 and management education 82 Bonn Declaration 88, 89 Brunei coastline development plan 95 entrepreneurship education and leadership education 82 experiential learning 84 Human Capital Metrics (HCM) 86 inclusive capitalism 92 individual and collective learning in 84 management education for post-16 students in Borneo 93 Mogalakwena HP i-community project 92 online workplace learning for procurement officers 97 principles of modern management 83 progressive plastics 94 role of UNESCO-UNEVOC 88 as means for livelihood 4 co-evolutionary gridlock 169 and multiple literacies 9 neoclassical economics 45 perfect competition 45 opportunities and initiatives available 2 options and measurement 171 rationality and economics 117, 167 capability approach 120 economics 117

standard theory of rationality in economics 117 rationality and employability 115, 116 neutral skill 117 scientific realism and scientific instrumentalism 44 and security 146 Al Qaeda as a non-state threat 147 the cross-council programme 149 different forms of security 147 fragile states 148 human security versus traditional security 148 metarankings 151 Third National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment 146 and society 112 Fulbe societies in Burkina Faso 160 Greenland Norse 112 hunter-gatherers 162, 163 Polynesian people of Easter Island 112 sustainable development 3 technical education 2 and tools 111 conceptual inflation 111 and UNESCO 1 see also United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) 88 InWent 88 World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCD) 89 as a vehicle for transformation of society 4 vocational education 2 history of VET in England 44 liberal vocationalism 174 liberalism 173 and water education 48 Hydroaid in Italy 53 Institute for Water Education (IHE) 48 Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) 50 The International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC) 54 International Hydrological Programme (IHP) 2, 48 networks and security 153

Index Nile Basin Initiative Transboundary Environmental Action Project (NTEAP) 52 Office of Government Commerce (OGC) 51 in security issues 153 water quality degradation 53 watermark scheme 51 Working Group on Water Education and Capacity Building for Sustainable Development (GWESD) 48 and wellbeing 156 applied competence in Africa 161 economic and non-economic approaches to wellbeing 157 ecotourism 164 hunter-gatherers 162 National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) 159 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 1, 23, 48, 54–56, 66, 88–93 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 159

193

Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities(MESA) 159 Thabo Mbeki 92 Thompson, M 63, 97, 132 Tooley, J. 78 Trorey, G. 18 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 1, 23, 48, 54–56, 66, 88–93 van Veen, E. 148 Veblen, T. 38 Westbury, I. 151 White, J. 151, 158 Winch, C. 22, 166, 173 Wolf, A. 140 Wood, G. 50 World Resources Institute (WRI) 146 Yielder, J. 61

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