Vocational education: Standing and clarification of key objects
Stephen Billett, Griffith University Slide 2 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. Slide 3 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
educations purposes and practices. Central here is accounting for
both the institutional facts that comprise occupations and the
personal facts that constitute vocations Slide 4 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 .. Slide 5
Vocational educations 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) Slide 6 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) Slide 7 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) For Plato, the nurse and tutor were domestic servants, who
were of no particular use in other respects (Lodge 1947 p.35).
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. Slide 8 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 Slide 9 Occupational Scales (Hope-Goldthorpe Scale
1974) social desirability ClassOccupations Class IHigh-grade
professionals, managers, administrators and large proprietors Class
IILower grade professionals and managers, and higher grade
technicians Class IIIRoutine non-manual workers Class IVSmall
proprietors and the self-employed Class VLower-grade technicians
and supervisors of manual workers Class VISkilled manual workers
Class VIISemi-skilled and unskilled manual workers Mental-manual
divideReference to techne in lower classes Slide 10 Australian
Qualification Framework Eight levels of competence Non-routine work
tasks a part of most forms of work (Billett 1994) Massiveness and
extent of knowledge, not just given in the occupation: situational
factors Demands and complexity of work not given (Darrah 1996)
Slide 11 Theocrats: Calling 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) The word vocation Latin root is
vocare - to call a summons, a bidding, an invitation to a
particular way of life. So, it is privileges others that issue the
call to, make judgements about occupations and rank them
accordingly Slide 12 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)
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 Calvinism - work was to reshape the
world in the fashion of divine kingdom and through one's dedicated
labours to prove oneself. (Dawson 2005). Slide 13 Secular accounts
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the concept of vocation had an
increasingly secular connotation. Yet, distinctions amongst
occupations meant the worth of work was shaped by societal
sentiments. Humans were essentially and primarily workers and their
work was the ultimate human expression through which fulfilment
could be achieved (Dawson 2005) 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 ..!!!! Slide 14 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, Baumans
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. Slide 15 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
Bureaucrats: Shaping vocational education provisions Slide 16
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) Students needs and subjectivities as learners
often not considered These needs have to be understood and
responded to locally Slide 17 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 Slide 18 Occupations Societal facts
Occupations are culturally, historically- derived 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.
Slide 19 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... Slide 20 Vocations as personal
practices The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is
living- intellectual and moral growth. (Dewey 1916: 310) Slide 21 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) Opposite of vocations is not leisure
but idleness and parasitic dependence upon others 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) Slide 22 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 arms 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) School students paid part-time work - aged care
workers, student nurses Has to be assented to Slide 23 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 Slide 24 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
