Vocational education: Standing and clarification of key
objects
Stephen Billett, Griffith University
Vocational education is an important and worthwhile project for:
developing the capacities required for meeting societal
needs and wants (e.g. social and economic goals), and
assisting individuals identify with, become competent in
and sustain occupational competence across
lengthening working lives.
So, national, institutional and personal investments for this
project deserve effective practices and policies,
supported by clear conceptions.
Yet, it suffers from low status, negative societal sentiments,
often unhelpful regulation and inadequate educational
purposes and practices.
Proposes - it should be focussed less on institutional
imperatives, and more on those who learn and local
needs and provisions supporting learning.
Case
It has always been ‘privileged others’ who have shaped the
standing and character of occupations and how they are
prepared which has:
i)
persistently positioned vocational education and many of
the occupations it serves as being of low standing, and
ii)
distorted conceptions of its key objects (i.e. occupations
and vocations).
Need to redress this situation and secure a better balance
amongst factors shaping vocational education’s purposes
and practices.
Central here is accounting for both the ‘institutional facts ‘that
comprise occupations and the ‘personal facts’ that
constitute vocations
Progression
Standing of occupations and vocational
education
Ordering of work and education – aristocrats
Enduring legacies
Calling to particular occupations – theocrats
Rise of professions – secular accounts
Origins of vocational education systems and
top-down approaches – bureaucrats
Accounting for those who learning
Occupations as societal facts
Vocations as personal facts
Ways of progressing …..
Vocational education’s standing rooted in dominant societal
sentiments
Across human history, ‘privileged others’ have decided the societal worth of
occupations and their preparation (Billett 2011):Aristocrats –
Theocrats
Bureaucrats (and economists!)
Commentators (academics and theorists)
These societal sentiments advanced in the absence of the voices of those
who practice, learn and assist others learn these occupations
Yet, over this time and today, the vast majority of occupational
requirements and their development are highly localised
A series of profound impacts on vocational education:
i) its purposes, standing and processes
ii) confusion about and unhelpful distinctions amongst its objects (i.e.
occupations and vocations)
Aristocrats: Hellenic Greece
Plato distinguished amongst:
Artisans - engaged in activities such as building, carpentry,
pottery, weaving; - leading to tangible product or services;
Artists - musicians, painters, poetry who produce something
concrete, beautiful and useful; and
Professions – medical, legal, professor, theological, military
He held that “artisans and artists’ work belonged to that side of life which the
average free born Greek citizen regarded as “banausic” and unworthy of his serious
attention …" (Lodge 1947)
The citizens must not lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen, which is ignoble and
far from conducive of virtue. (Aristotle, 1964 p. 60, cited in Elias 1995)
Further, Plato viewed artisans as being incapable of generating new ideas and "had
to wait for God to invent a solution“ to their problems (Farrington 1966:105).
… human capacities had little to do with the effectiveness of their enactment – “...
nature gives the increase. Human reason does little compared with nature.” (Lodge
1947:16)
For Plato, “the nurse and ‘tutor’ were domestic servants, who
were of no particular use in other respects (Lodge 1947 p.35).
… the lowest form of education to be for those who worked
with their hands and not with their minds” – this was to be
referred to as technical from the Greek techne – to make
(Elias 1995)
Aristotle's categories of knowing (or arriving at the truth)
comprise: i) pure science (i.e. episteme); ii) art or applied
science (i.e. techne); iii) prudence or practical wisdom (i.e.
phronesis); iv) intelligence or intuition (i.e. nous); and v)
wisdom (i.e. sophia),
Yet, techne alone is most closely associated with and
characterises occupations served by western vocational
education systems.
Enduring legacies
1. Low standing and limited requirements of many occupations
•
simple, easy to learn (short-term training, low level
certification), justifies reducing duration of trade training
•
measurable outcomes (e.g. competency-based assessment)
•
hierarchical qualification frameworks (e.g. ETF, AQF, DQF)
2. Limited capacities of many workers
• beliefs about these workers, their work and learning (e.g.
ETF, DQF, AQF, spokespersons) – remember NAFEs!!!!
• assessable as Pass/Fail – Competent/Not Competent
• vocational educators mere implementers of what is required
to be learnt as decided by others (e.g. centralised curriculum)
Also reflected in societal esteem of occupations
Occupational Scales (Hope-Goldthorpe Scale 1974) –
social desirability
Class
Occupations
Class I
High-grade professionals, managers,
administrators and large proprietors
Lower grade professionals and managers, and
higher grade technicians
Class II
Class III Routine non-manual workers
Class IV Small proprietors and the self-employed
Class V
Lower-grade technicians and supervisors of
manual workers
Class VI Skilled manual workers
Class VII Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
Mental-manual divide
Reference to techne in lower classes
Australian Qualification Framework – Eight levels of competence
Non-routine work tasks a part of most forms of work (Billett 1994)
Demands and complexity of work not given (Darrah 1996)
Massiveness and extent of knowledge, not just given in the occupation: situational factors
Level
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Volume of learning (massiveness of content)
(Domain-specific knowledge)
Discretion and decision-making
(General capacities)
Theocrats: Calling
The word vocation Latin root is vocare - “to
call” – a summons, a bidding, an invitation to
a particular way of life.
These summons were invitations by God for
individuals to demonstrate their talents.
Paul, suggested that few individuals would be
summoned in this way, yet others should
"earnestly desire the higher gifts" (Rehm 1990:
115).
Yet, "some economic activities were distinctively
more ‘perilous to the soul’ than others and the
more commercial the motive the more dangerous
activity became." (Rehm 1990: 130)
So, it is privileges others that issue the call to, make judgements about
occupations and rank them accordingly
Reformation brought acceptance of making profit and
accumulating capital
Within Puritanism - moral self-sufficiency was easily
equated to legitimating accumulation of wealth when
arising from individuals’ efforts. (Quicke 1999)
Calvinism - work was to reshape the world in the
fashion of divine kingdom and through one's dedicated
labours to prove oneself. (Dawson 2005).
Accordingly, vocations denote individuals’ conception of their lives as a
social mission - a strong and persistent disposition to be of service to
others. (Hansen 1994)
Daily work as divine vocations became central to the so called ‘protestant
(or Puritan) work ethic’.
Yet, critiqued as instances of workers being duped into false
consciousness (Marx)
So, first theology and then philosophy expresses societal sentiments
Secular accounts
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the concept of vocation had an
increasingly secular connotation.
Humans were essentially and primarily workers and their work was the
ultimate human expression through which fulfilment could be achieved
(Dawson 2005)
Yet, distinctions amongst occupations meant the worth of work was
shaped by societal sentiments .
For example, distinctions between professions and other occupations
reinforce relative standing of occupations, access to them and
educational provisions supporting them
Yet, there are few distinctions between professional work and other
kinds, except perhaps the massiveness of the required knowledge
(Winch 2004)
What about the guilds …..!!!!
Class and work: societal sentiments
• Social class and gender segmentation perpetuate the
standing of occupations and arrangements for their
preparation, in analogous ways
• Note: societal acceptance and attraction of ‘craft’
occurred in the mid-19th century after the economic
role of artisans had been displaced (Adamson 2007).
• Arts and crafts movement was idealistic middle class
concept (Mischler 2004)
• Extends to academic commentators – false
consciousness, Bauman’s concept of (un)worthwhile
work etc
All of these accounts emphasise the worth of work and self
as a worker as being shaped by influential others.
Bureaucrats: Shaping vocational education provisions
Formation of vocational education systems often associated with:
1. Need for skilled workers
•
destruction/lack of family/workplace-based skill development
2. Developing employable capacities of young people
•
avoiding unemployment
•
avoiding societal disengagement
3. Engaging young people/workers with nation state
•
centralising control and governance (‘estate’ to ‘state’)
Led to: i) vocational education addressing state interests, ordered
through bureaucratic and centralised means; and
ii) an emphasis on entry-level training
Students’ needs and subjectivities as learners often not considered
Students bring particular and diverse bases by which they engage in vocational
education provisions: these need to be understood, accounted for and responded
to appropriately
A good job, which is not in a factory and pays well so I can buy a house.
Partner wants to retire from train driving in 5 years time and drive trucks. She wants to be
the bookkeeper for this business.
Has been in catering for the last 10 years but was made redundant last year. She enjoyed
some short computer courses and decided to work her way up the ladder.
Daughter is now in high school and will need to know how to use computer. It is important
that she can show her because daughter has a learning disability.
Completed a course last year, Cert. in General Ed. for adults, and decided she wanted to
do another course.
She is new to the region and hopes to meet people and get some work in office admin,
even as a volunteer. She has not been in the workforce for 20 years and wants to bring
herself up to current standards and get over her fear of computers.
(Billett & Hayes 2000)
These needs have to be understood and responded to locally
Redressing the distortion arising through these societal
sentiments
Proposes that key conceptions of occupations and
vocations need to be more clearly defined
Occupations – arise from history, culture and
circumstance – they are societal facts
Vocations – arise as personal practices and
sentiments from experiences and to which
individuals need to assent – they are personal facts
and practices
Occupations – Societal facts
• Occupations are culturally, historicallyderived and situationally shaped practices
• There are manifested in and transformed by
the circumstances of their enactment
• and the conceptions, capacities and
subjectivities of persons enacting them.
• They comprise practice through which
individuals secure vocational purposes and
learn that practice, yet in doing so remake
(and transform) that practice.
Occupation is a concrete term for continuity. It includes the development of
artistic capacity of any kind, of special scientific ability, of effective
citizenship, as well as professional and business occupations, to say nothing
of mechanical labor or engagement in gainful pursuits. (Dewey 1916:307)
Importantly, these domains exist at two levels:
i) canonical occupational knowledge - often manifested as occupational
standards
ii) situational requirements for performance in particular work settings – “what we
do here is...”
Vocations as
personal practices
“The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is livingintellectual and moral growth.” (Dewey 1916: 310)
A vocation means nothing but such direction in life
activities as render them perceptibly significant to a
person, because of the consequences they
accomplish, and are also useful to his [sic] associates.
… (Dewey 1916:307)
We must avoid not only limitation of conception of
vocational to the occupations where immediately
tangible commodities are produced, but also the
notion that vocations are distributed in an exclusive
way, one and only one to each person. (Dewey 1916:
307)
Opposite of vocations is not leisure – but idleness and parasitic
dependence upon others
Therefore, a salient distinction between occupations and vocations is what they
mean to individuals
… being a teacher, a minister, a doctor, or a parent would not be vocational if
the individual kept the practice at arm’s length, divorced from his or her sense
of identity, treating it in effect as one among many indistinguishable
occupations.
In such a case, the person would be merely an occupant of a role. This is not to
say the person would conceive the activity as meaningless. He or she might
regard it as strictly a job, as a necessity one has to accept, perhaps in order to
secure the time or resources to do something else.
Thus, in addition to being of social value, an activity must yield a sense of
personal fulfilment in its own right in order to be a vocation.” (Hansen 1994:
263-64)
Has to be assented to …………
School students paid part-time work - aged care
workers, student nurses
Some premises about how to proceed
Occupational requirements are not uniform, so national prescriptions alone are
insufficient
Need to accommodate local decisions about occupational requirements, students’
readiness, available resources and experiences
Those who teach and support learners often best placed to make decisions about what
should be emphasised
Individuals (e.g. students, workers) decide how they engage with and learn from what is
provided them – taking up the invitation
Three forms of curriculum
i)
Intended curriculum (e.g. national curriculum)
ii) Enacted curriculum (e.g. workplace, training room, vocational college)
iii) Experienced curriculum (e.g. learners’ interests, subjectivities)
Too much emphasis on the first and too little on the second two
Most of these matters that need to be understood and addressed at the local level
How might we progress?
Broader range of discretion by teachers, people in
workplace, students to met local circumstances
Greater consideration of organisation and enactment of
learning experiences
Engaging with the voices of those who learn
Building of partnerships within VET and across
communities
Developing teachers, those in workplaces and students’
capacities to learn occupational knowledge
Building the Berufkonzept