Hope for Communities in the Margins: Life-Long Learning

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

How can policies, practices, and ideas of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) for communities in the margins challenge its current status among academic education and provide hope and lifelong education for employability? The struggles of parents and students to attain an education leading to a vocation cast TVET in the light of a human rights endeavor aimed at bringing about more just and inclusive educational futures, especially for marginalized communities. This panel will engage participants in considering the CIES 2024 conference’s thematic guiding question on how we can understand contestation, resistance, struggle, defiance, and compliance in education for lifelong learning.

By revisiting TVET as a comparative education research agenda that involves lifelong learning beyond general education and knowledges relating to various sectors of economic and social life (UNESCO, 2001), we are turning a spotlight on a neglected aspect of “education for all.” TVET has come a long way since the days when students could be steered from academics into hairstyling, auto repairs or carpentry; nevertheless, in 2012 parents rose in protest after the San Diego Unified School District proposed new high school graduation requirements mandating two years of career and technical education courses (two to four courses). School officials in San Diego spent hours in meetings assuring hundreds of parents that courses like computerized accounting, child development and website design could benefit all students, yet parents still circulated an online protest petition and when it come to a vote, every single parent at the meeting voted against the new requirements.

While in many countries vocational and technical education is designated for those who do not qualify for academic and higher technological subject matter, when it came to the so-called de-colonized countries, vocational education was the ‘one-size fit all’ solution in the 1960s. Decolonizing movements abandoned higher vocational and technical training in most government and donor poverty-reduction strategies. Looking to the future, the UN Development Group (UNDG) Millennium Development Goals Task Force calls for the education agenda to focus on a “ lifelong learning approach, encompassing both formal and informal delivery mechanisms… including vocational training and higher education.” The fourth focus area of the SDGs focuses on lifelong learning, and promoting quality education. Going forward, the aim to “provide quality education and lifelong learning” will include access to technical and vocational skill building for youth and adults. Upskilling and “green skilling” for future jobs have become the need of the hour. All ages of the society depend on this new economy, and the potential of TVET to develop participants in it remains underexplored. TVET has the transformational ability to make the UN’s agenda of lifelong learning a real possibility. Given the focus of the SDGs and the urgency of our economic needs, it becomes imperative to critically address pertinent comparative research questions in relation to the aims and scope of education systems in countries and regions that are considering TVET as part of their national economic agenda as well as looking at systems where whole groups of people, such as the indigenous, the minoritized, and immigrants living in diaspora, are excluded from the benefits of education.

The panelists and discussant will engage the conference participant in the following questions:

How can protests against vocational education, as traditionally viewed, be taken into account in shaping the future development of TVET, and how does a particular focus toward supporting students in the margins and other (dis)empowered groups play into this?
Who is most likely to be excluded across different TVET schemes, and what policy and practical steps have been taken to increase access to education for all?
Can comparative research help shape the future of TVET as longlife learning?
How can TVET lead to the greening of the planet and prepare for the (green) jobs of the future?
How have bottom-up and participatory approaches been invoked to enhance TVET policies at local, regional, and national and international levels?
How have asset-based approaches been used to tap into potential and current TVET students to inform policy and practices?

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Matthew A Witenstein, University of Dayton

Individual Presentations

• The South African TVET Sector: A Bourdieusian Perspective - Linda Ronnie, University of Cape Town

• Vocational program of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation: The role of emotions - Bruna Navarone Santos, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation/Oswaldo Cruz Institute

• Professional Self-Fashioning: Minority Students Educated in the Majority Schooling - Esther E. Gottlieb, The Ohio State University

Discussant

• Radhika Iyengar, Columbia University - Earth Institute