Policy formation in the context of TVET policy transfer

• In Event: Education Development, Policy and Education

Proposal

(Technical) vocational education and training (TVET) is a means to address labour market needs and provides an impetus for both, individual development and societal participation. With a strong focus on what is relevant for skills development and personal growth, it differs from other educational sectors as many more stakeholders and viewpoints are involved. Moreover, TVET has numerous interlinkages with higher education, adult education and other labour-market relevant types of learning, which makes boundaries blurring and needs special attention. With a growing request for more and better qualified workers and an arising scepticism about the value of higher education degrees, many countries around the world have a newly awakened interest in work-integrated learning and TVET. In order to convince national policy makers about educational reforms in one’s system, the international argumentation relies on the value of externalization for shifting, renewing or replacing national educational policies. In order to do so, a profound comparative understanding of national TVET systems is required. Further, policy makers need to understand how players in other systems interact, how this may have use for the home system and how to initiate a mutual learning process. Research on the variations of policy transfer and how it has been conceptualized and used across the world contributes to deepening knowledge in the field of international and comparative education and supports international development work.

Against this background, this contribution will provide an introduction into the development of research on policy transfer with a particular focus on TVET. It will start with clarifying the notion of TVET versus VET (vocational education and training) and its linkages with higher education, adult education and other forms of learning, which provide or improve labour market access. This clarification frames the conceptual scope and understanding of TVET. We will elaborate about the concept of policy transfer from an interdisciplinary perspective, including how historically TVET policy transfer has been understood and been used in international cooperation. At the core of this section the authors address the question to what degree one can learn anything from other countries’ education systems, how to compare them and borrow at least parts of them (Zymek & Zymek 2004, 25). Third, the authors show, based on several examples, how today’s understanding of policy transfer results from a long transformation process and how it became a key instrument for governing education systems.

Built on the theoretical framework of policy borrowing as developed by e.g. Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) and adapted to the field of education by e.g. Phillips and Ochs (2003) or Phillips and Schweisfurth (2011) the authors focus on core assumptions and characteristics of policy borrowing in the context of TVET including the understanding of policy borrowing as well as the process and preconditions of policy borrowing. Based on current developments in three exemplary countries, the authors will critically reflect upon the application of existing theories and extend them by providing a more differentiated analytical model.

Authors

• Sandra Bohlinger, Technical University Dresden

• Antje Barabasch, EHB