Vocational education and training, culture and self: Dominant interests, diverse traditions and vocational education in globalised times

Abstract

This chapter discusses how the standing of occupations and vocational education and training (VET) has been shaped by dominant cultural interests, which its impact upon individuals' vocations and their communities and how these factors play out in current globalised times. These factors are held, both in the past and currently, to shape the standing and form of what constitutes worthwhile work and positions VET in ways that make it prone and subservient to powerful interests. This case is illustrated through critiquing the appropriateness of a dominant European approach to VET (i.e. dual system) for global purposes. Instead, more than advancing dominant cultural and economic interests, it proposes opening up the central purposes and focuses of vocational education, for global times, including its role in transforming culture and sustaining self. A claim pursued throughout this chapter is that influential 'others' has always played a key role in shaping work, work identity and manifestations of vocational education, often to its detriment, often because they are remote form and misunderstand and fail to appreciate the demands of knowledge required for work and its learning. In contemporary times, this influence extends to dominant interests within Europe and elsewhere offering and in some cases mandating unhelpful models of vocational education, such as the dual system to countries that have distinct cultural and institutional structures and relations, from those in which this system has been shown to work. The case is advanced through considering the how history and cultural practices shape the provision of work and the institutions that influence the purposes and provisions of VET.