Higher and Further: Can We Keep Our Educational Promises?

Background

In a neo–liberal framework of globalizing economies, Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) is often one of the state–regulated mechanisms through which societies are expected to sustain and develop their members’ capacity for self–reliance and self–determination. Within regulated systems of TVE, teachers are required to be effectively qualified and informed. Qualification of TVE teachers has historically been through university–led teacher education programs or in an amalgam of paraprofessional certificate–level training and credentialed industry experience. In developed economies, education for TVE is generally located within the technical–vocational domain of further education and subordinate to higher education.However, historic divisions are blurring due to the increasingly vocationalized nature of higher education. In the Australian context higher education is now no longer exclusively based in universities, as an increasing number of TVE providers gain higher education accreditation from government agencies. This indicates a physical and philosophical shift in the educational and institutional environments where the theoretical and conceptual knowledge of TVE is constructed and disseminated. Within TVE, knowledge is not abstracted or isolated from practice as a product per se, but rather viewed as an integrated component of technical / vocational competence. A distinctive difference of TVE is its educational intent of linking self–development with imperatives of socioeconomic development.

Internationally, the educational intent of TVE is underpinned by the stewardship of organizations such as UNESCO and their International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (UNEVOC); who provide a visible presence for TVE in the international context. The policy statements of these organisations inform the TVE community of the nexus of skills and understandings that UNESCO advocates for the knowledge–focused economies of the twenty-first century. Therefore UNESCO’s (2004) normative instruments for TVE provide an internationalized Litmus test around which to frame discussions on the intent and purpose of technical knowledge in changing educational settings.