Keeping the Vocational in its Place
The popular connotations of vocational education and training are that they are the reserve of those who are capable only of imitation, procedures and carefully guided behaviour. This lower place for the vocational is reflected in:
- Institutional structures and forms of governance;
- The range and titles of awards given to programmes offered;
- The options available to learners and streaming;
- Forms of accreditation, credit transfer and articulation;
- Access and entry requirements;
- Policy documents, ways in which legitimacy is afforded, and funding procedures; and the like.
While there are policy statements about redressing such undervaluing of vocational education, nevertheless the mechanisms and regulations summarised above continue to keep it firmly in this place and separate from the discourses of other kinds of learning.
On the other hand, other forms of learning are usually denoted education or development – general, academic or higher education, and professional development – associated with the development of explicitly valued and codified forms of knowledge, promoted as abstracted, theoretical and generalisable. These forms of education are reserved for the ‘more able’; future academics and the professional-bound; those who it is thought can think, analyse, generate and critically reflect; those who it is thought need these capacities in their further academic pursuits or professional work; and those who can be trusted with access to such privileged ways of knowing and being.
‘ this polarisation flows… especially from
a false division between behaviour and the codified ‘knowledge’ that
is implied.’
John Stevenson
The paper argues that this polarisation flows from a mistaken view of the vocational and vocational knowledge, especially from a false division between behaviour and the codified ‘knowledge’ that is implied. The paper reviews research findings on workplace activities, and discusses them in terms of theoretical concepts about the development of meaning. These studies demonstrate how it is problematic to use terms like ‘knowledge’, ‘competence’ or ‘skill’ to denote the meanings that are immanent in workplace activity. This is because:
- The term ‘knowledge’ connotes a stable, codified mental entity that can exist outside the activity in which it is found
- The term ‘competence’ connotes a codifiable ability that can be transported to other contexts; and that this ability is purely procedural or behavioural with no propositional or conceptual aspects
- The term ‘skill’ is also restricted in these ways, emphasising the repetitive nature of specific behaviour.
For these reasons, the successful actions that individuals demonstrate in workplace activity are here called ‘meaning making’.
The paper reviews studies of activities involving information technology,
literacies, problem solving, and values, all supposed key/core skills/competencies.
In these activities, meaning was found to be:
- Provided by the collective object and activity directed at that object
- Derived from the significance of the activity
- Mediated by artefacts and by implicit and explicit values and rules
- Related to the various roles and responsibilities of people engaged in the activity
- Culturally defined
- Holistic, transcending traditional boundaries like literacy, numeracy, problem-solving and values
- Constructed in and for activity
- Not some kind of conceptual label in an individual’s mind.
Hence, while conceptual labels could be constructed by observers to describe and cluster workplace actions and activities, this process involved abstraction from the culture, artefacts and objects of those activities; and was not necessarily meaningful in those terms to those engaging in the activities, let alone transferable to other activities.
‘it was not public meanings, rendered in words, often as theoretical concepts, that were central to the ways in which these individuals came to understand the world, themselves and work…
On the
other hand, the meanings that came from engaging in vocational
pursuits were direct, accessible and powerful - enabling activity
in that context.’
John Stevenson
Hence, it was not public meanings, rendered in words, often as theoretical concepts, that were central to the ways in which these individuals came to understand the world, themselves and work. Neither were these public meanings necessarily directly accessible or capable of providing the best vehicles for learning. On the other hand, the meanings that came from engaging in vocational pursuits were direct, accessible and powerful - enabling activity in that context.
However, it also needs to be recognised that meanings derived in working can be inert unless they are connected with wider public ways of knowing. Hence, it is important for individuals from all walks of life, with all kinds of aspirations to develop connections among different ways of knowing. For these reasons, the paper argues that the vocational, along with other everyday activities should be assigned a central place in the making of meaning. It is through such activities of engaging with everyday objects, that a person makes and re-makes meaning, as different ways of knowing are tested for their utility in collective pursuits.
‘ Individuals can access public meanings only if they make sense,
and they will make sense only through experience with them. ’
John Stevenson
In short, the place for the vocational is as a central activity in being, living, working, and learning. As one pursues significant activities, one makes meaning in each of them and inter-connects these meanings so that contextualised particulars become part of a coherent whole. It is here that individuals find and develop real literacy, values, problem solving capacities and information technology capacities. It is therefore a mistake to stratify learners into the vocational and the non-vocational as if this made sense, as if it were desirable and as if it would promote learning for either group. Displacing the vocational from a coherent relationship with publicly codified meanings has serious consequences for learners who are denoted vocational, as well as for learners who are denied the value of the vocational.
The vocational, then, should have a central place in accessing and making meaning, derived from the significance of the activity to the individual and to the collective. However, vocational activity is not self-sufficient. The making of vocational meanings needs to be coherently related to everyday meanings and meanings that have been derived from the ongoing record of human activity. Neither meanings used for collective transactions about human affairs, nor the meanings that individuals derive from significant vocational activity are independent. Individuals can access public meanings only if they make sense, and they will make sense only through experience with them. Significant personal involvement in activity is the best and most effective source of the kinds of experience that are needed.
The full paper (102 KB)
Note: A journal article derived from the keynote, entitled The Centrality of Vocational Learning published in the Journal of Vocational Education and Training vol 57 number 3.