The purpose of this chapter is to set out an analytical framework that will be

used as a point of reference throughout the book. It will provide structure

for the argument. This quite necessarily involves a development of a set of
categories across which different examples of TVET may differ.
It will be useful at this point to make it clear in general terms what
analysis should be taken to mean, since we live in times in which ideas
and actions are sometimes judged not only by their intellectual robustness,
but also by how fashionable they happen to be. Thus, while analysis seems,
for the most part, still to have quite positive connotations in contemporary
usage, reductionism, for example, does not. Rather, terms like holism
and systems-thinking enjoy more contemporary appeal through their
(apparent) emphasis on the cohesion, rather that the granularity, of social
phenomena. Yet a (Collins) dictionary defi nition of analysis is: the division
of a physical or abstract whole into its constituent parts to examine or determine
their relationship; and the entry for reductionism reads: the analysis
of complex things, data etc., into less complex constituents.
In fact, the real issue here is not whether the comprehension of complex
phenomena such as TVET requires that they be separated somehow into
component parts. This, as we shall see, is actually unavoidable at pretty
much any level of comprehension below the purely spiritual. Rather, what
is at stake is the nature of the relationship that the whole is taken to have with
those of its component parts that analysis identifi es. In a strict reductionist
view this relationship is unidirectional and deterministic. The whole is the
sum of its parts, and can be entirely explained in terms of the behaviour of
those parts. So, for example, on such an account social institutions like
examination boards, colleges and trades unions are made up of individual
persons who are in turn made up of cells made up of atoms. Each higher
level is explained by the properties of phenomena at a lower level. Institutions

may in principle be explained psychologically; psychology may be explained

physiologically. However, physiology (for example) may not be (fi nally)
explained as a product of the behaviour of institutions. Clearly such a view
is highly analytic: but it is not a necessary corollary of an analytic approach.
One can equally well hold that wholes are more than the sum of their parts.
So, for example, it can be argued that social institutions may develop
emergent properties that are not explicable as a straightforward aggregation
of factors from the individual level, and that such properties may then
lead in some way to alteration of the attributes that individuals originally
brought to the situation. From an educational perspective the possibility of
such processes which may termed reconstitutive downward causation
(Hodgson, 2006) is crucial in determining the true potentialities that
exist for learning. However, their existence in no way obviates the need for
analysis at other levels, such as that of the individual. Nor, in fact, does a
commitment to methodological holism or systems thinking do so a point
readily illustrated from a systems perspective by Gregory Batesons (1972,
pp. 11516) famous observation that: No organism can afford to be
conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Indeed,
and for the sake of completeness, we might note that even a strict methodological
collectivist for whom individual characteristics are determined
wholly by system-level factors cannot dispense with analysis, since this is
needed to disaggregate system effects at lower levels.
The view taken in this book is that wholes may indeed amount to more
than the sum of their parts. Further, properties unique to the whole may in
certain circumstances exercise downward infl uence (but not absolute determination)
over the parts that comprise them. Arguments in favour of this
position will be brought to bear in due course, but for now the task is to set
out, as fully as possible, those analytical elements that seem signifi cant for
our understanding of TVET.
Analysis by Benefi ciary and by Content

As noted in Chapter 1, there is more than one possible answer to the question:
who is the customer for TVET? Any discussion is likely to be unproductive if
it is unclear who the benefi ciary of vocational educational activity is expected
to be, or if it is too readily assumed that all possible benefi ciaries have identical
or broadly similar interests. Among the possible benefi ciaries of TVET are,

Students. The following list does not exhaust all the ways in which students
of TVET may be sub-classifi ed: gender, age, level of prior achievement ortraining, political status
(e.g. citizen, asylum-seeker, recent migrant),
socio-economic background, possession of particular skills (e.g. fl uency
in English, numeracy, driving licence), domestic status (e.g. married,
married-with-children, single, living with parents, carer), employment
history (e.g. school leaver, recently made redundant, long-term
unemployed).

Employers. These may be sub-classifi ed by industry/sector, size, key

technologies employed, form of ownership, and attitude to workplacebased
and other forms of vocational learning

Society as a whole. The most prevalent narrative in this respect continues

to be of the upskill-to-compete variety, usually in conjunction with particular
assumptions about things like globalization, the rate of social
change (which is often asserted to be happening at an unprecedentedly
rapid rate), the skills and challenges of the future (an issue that is of
great signifi cance for the investment-based approach of this book), and
human nature. However, there also exist a number of quite infl uential
alternatives that focus on notions of, for example, community or sustainability.
Quite unsurprisingly, perhaps, the view that TVET has a role to
play for the good of society seems to be more widely shared than is any
particular understanding of what the good of society actually means

Particular regions or constituencies within society, for example sites of

relatively high unemployment, or groups such as white working-class
boys. The possibilities are almost infi nitely variable. Headings may also
be combined to create an educational focus (e.g. white working-class
boys in the north-east of England).

Future generations. It is widely held that TVET has a bearing on the

prospects for subsequent generations, whether in terms of prosperity
versus poverty, environmental sustainability versus environmental catastrophe,
justice versus injustice, social inclusion versus exclusion, national
independence versus dependence, or something else. Each of these
oppositions is a source of controversy, not only about preferred courses
of action, but also about the meanings of basic terms.

Proposed benefi ts of TVET may also be expressed in more abstract terms.

For example, it may from time to time be argued that particular educational
initiatives are likely to:

Improve the education system in general.

Enhance national pride. Or, alternatively, bring an end to a state of
affairs deemed to be cause for national shame.

Serve the interests of social justice.

Serve the interests of individual freedom.
Enhance competitiveness.
 Exemplify and conserve an admired tradition. Or, alternatively, sweep
away antiquated practices and replace them with that which is new, fresh
and modern. We should note that clever compromises are also possible.
For example, at the time of writing the UK Jobs4U careers database
encourages young people thinking of taking up the traditional craft of
thatching to acquire information technology skills to help them, in due
course, to deploy this traditional craft within a modern, competitive
business

The content of TVET programmes may be described in terms of the

transmission of particular values or skills. Skills may be subdivided along a
spectrum from the highly specifi c (for example, recording a sale or changing
a car exhaust) through to the highly generic (for example, learning
to learn). Alternatively, one may speak of the acquisition by students of
particular personal characteristics, or of specifi ed competencies. In a somewhat
different but nevertheless clearly related sense, one may also discuss
content in terms of a balance between theoretical and practical knowledge.
In some circumstances discussions of the content of training may also entail
decisions about the treatment of prior experience, or prior learning of
various kinds.

Distinguishing possible variations in both the targeted benefi ciaries and

the content of TVET in this way provides an analytical tool. We might ask,
either in general terms or in a particular case: how are different forms of
content matched to the requirements of different benefi ciaries? What are
the important values that contemporary TVET should embody, from the
varied perspectives of students (of different kinds), employers (of different
kinds), or society as a whole? What are the crucial vocational competencies
that are needed to serve particular interests?

If social phenomena exhibited the regularity of physical nature, and if

the language we use to describe them exhibited (or was even capable of
exhibiting) the precision to which the language of the natural sciences
aspires, then these questions might yield fi rm answers. As a result, we might
be able to separately itemize the key values and skills required within
particular forms of training, the better to serve the distinct interests of
the student, employers and society over time. In reality, however, such regularity
and linguistic precision is lacking. Words and concepts often have
confused or confl ated meanings. Categories such as student and employer

are treated as homogenous when, as we have seen, in reality they are highly
heterogeneous in important ways. Skills and values sometimes turn out
to be implicit in each other. The following example illustrates some of these
diffi culties.

Kakavelakis et al. (2008) used techniques of participant observation to

study the training of sales staff within a chain of fi tness clubs. A preliminary
point revealed by their work is that the complexities already discussed here
are reinforced by a further set of issues about how we perceive and report
the facts of any particular case. What one sees depends in large part on the
methodology one uses to look. Hence, these researchers note, there has
been a tendency in the past for survey-based research into vocational learning
to pre-defi ne its topic in terms of the acquisition of knowledge through
formal training, and so to neglect issues both of the nature of training, and
of informal learning that occurs outside any structured setting. At the same
time, interview and case study based research have often seen learning
as primarily a product of participation in the workplace, so tending to
understate and under-represent the signifi cance of formal instruction.
Observational techniques, these researchers argue, provide a way to address
these diffi culties.
A key skill forming a focus of training within the Kakavelakis et al. study
was the deployment of instrumental empathy. This refers to the establishment
of a relationship of trust between sales staff and potential customers,
focused on an understanding of the latters particular needs, the better to
secure their custom. As Kakavelakis et al. (2008, p. 211) note: These programmes
tend to conceive the sales process in paradoxical terms, as
they simultaneously employ two confl icting idioms: the commercial and
the service idiom. In a service idiom it is the needs of the customer that
are paramount. In a commercial idiom the dominant purpose is the achievement
of a sale. While one might debate whether, in principle, these idioms
are always and everywhere contradictory, the researchers were in no doubt
that in this particular case it was the commercial idiom that dominated
within training, through the instruction of staff in the use of sales scripts.
Such scripts sought to achieve instrumental empathy through a number of
devices. These included,

matching and mirroring: the salesperson adopts similar mannerisms

and language to the customer
hurting and rescuing: any problems the customer may have are
identifi ed and emphasized, with the product then being proposed as a
solution

handling objections according to a procedure designed to make them

diffi cult to sustain
presenting prices in the most attractive ways

However (and happily), the researchers found a very strong tendency for
sales staff to ignore or modify this training in their place of work. This they
did for two main classes of reasons. First, some believed that the approaches
they had been trained in were unethical. Second, some held that those
approaches were actually unworkable and inappropriate in their own
particular working environment.

A number of interesting points arise from this case. The training received
by sales staff was conceived and delivered by the employers in terms of
acquisition of particular skills. Yet these skills turned out to be inseparable
from questions of value. Further, although the skills in question were
defi ned for the purposes of training in a highly specifi c fashion, yet sales
staff often modifi ed them in the workplace in line with wider, more generic
skills set that they already possessed. For example, one sales person adjusted
her approach to presenting prices from that laid down in training in the
light of her own knowledge of the likely preferences and spending power of
potential customers in her particular area of Birmingham. She was showing
considerable skill at judging the wider context of the business. Finally,
therefore, and as Kakavelakis et al. note, these were training processes that
greatly underestimated the agency of trainees.

In light of the foregoing, it might reasonably asked whether the declared

aim of this chapter to develop an analytical framework the better to understand
TVET is a waste of time. Regularities are scarce, apparent facts turn
out to be contested and words prove slippery. However, the answer to this
question is no. In fact, the point at issue has been well-understood since at
least the time of John Stuart Mill (1836/1994, 57), who wrote,

The conclusions of Political Economy, consequently, like those of

geometry, are only true, as the common phrase is, in the abstract That
which is true in the abstract, is always true in the concrete with proper
allowances. When a certain cause really exists, and if left to itself would
infallibly produce a certain effect, that same effect, modifi ed by all the
other concurrent causes, will correctly correspond to the result really
produced. (Emphasis in original)

The subject matter of social enquiry is always complex, but that means
neither that we should abandon the search for evidence of cause and effect

nor that we should hide behind unquestioned and overly-simplistic assumptions.

Causes are many, effects are contingent on the interplay of causes,
simple causal inter-relationships are scarce: we simply have to deal with it.
This is just as well, as there are a number of other dimensions along which
TVET may be analysed.

Analysis by Mode of Delivery

The most appropriate choice of mode of delivery will depend, among other
things, on the intended content of learning, and on the intended benefi -
ciary. At a general level, education and training may take place through
formal, non-formal or informal modes. For present purposes these terms
are defi ned following Fien et al. (1999):

Formal education takes place within systems operated by schools,

colleges and universities.
Non-formal education takes place outside the formal school system but
within other settings organized specifi cally for the purpose. Those who
may provide it include businesses, public-sector organizations, government
agencies, not-for-profi t organizations and trades unions.
Informal education takes place outside organized settings. It may involve,
for example, the acquisition of attitudes, beliefs and expectations from
mass media, or the development of tacit knowledge through learning-bydoing,
whether individually or in a social workplace context.

Once again, while this is certainly a useful classifi catory framework, the
boundaries between these categories are often blurred in practice, and are
probably becoming more so with the passage of time. It has long been common
for businesses to accept students, as part of their formal education, on
work placement schemes of a variety of kinds. Businesses and public bodies
also commonly make use of higher education staff for training purposes, and
such arrangements may take on a high degree of formality. For example, the
Higher Educational Funding Council for England (HEFCE), a body that
distributes public money for teaching and research to more than 130 institutions,
issued the following statement on 27 November 2008:

HEFCE will no longer provide fully-funded additional student numbers

(ASNs) for provision that responds to employers workforce development
needs. Growth in provision that facilitates employer engagement will now

be on a co-funded basis. Co-funding means employers contribute a

proportion of the full-time equivalent grant (25 per cent to 50 per cent)
in addition to any fees (which may be paid by employer or employee).
www.hefce.ac.uk/econsoc/employer/cofund/

HEFCEs intention is to develop, within the formal sector, provision that

is non-formal to the extent that it is partly owned by, and meets the specifi c
needs of, commercial organizations. Similarly, informal education is at best
imperfectly distinguished from other kinds, a point illustrated by Farrar
and Troreys (2008) fascinating study of learning by exponents of the craft
of dry stone walling. Findings from some respondents in this study suggested
that formal, rule-focused instruction achieved little or no educative
purchase until it was refl ectively examined in an informal, workplace context.
These authors are cautious in their conclusions, noting that dry stone
walling is in many ways an unusual skill, and that the methodology of their
research may have tended to overstate the signifi cance of certain kinds of
responses. Nevertheless they are clear that emotional factors, as these relate
both to students self-perceptions and the social context of learning, are of
major importance. We might conclude that a formal description of an
educational process is likely never to be complete by itself. Students do not
simply learn what they are taught. Still less do they necessarily learn that
which is set out in curriculum documents or prescribed in policy texts: and
even if they do learn these things, that is not all they learn.

Across the dimensions of formal, non-formal and informal education,

mode of delivery may also vary according to whether learning is full-time or
part-time, whether it occurs face-to-face or at a distance, and what technologies
it employs. A great many permutations and techniques are possible.
On the one hand, particular teaching arrangements may tend to indicate
the use of particular forms of technology: for example, it may seem natural
for anyone designing a part-time distance-learning course for international
students to consider making use of an online virtual learning environment
(VLE). On the other hand, information technologies also create opportunities,
in terms of both pedagogy and course design. Hence, for example,
the acquisition of new learning and teaching technologies may lead to
modifi cations in the design of formal, full-time programmes. Further, ICT
has benefi ts in terms of both teaching and administration that may enhance
the possibilities for economically-viable fl exibility in delivery, and for a corresponding
customization of training. As one instance of this among many,
the author is currently involved with a foundation degree in sports performance
that incorporates an entirely discrete and dedicated mode of block
delivery designed exclusively for judo practitioners.

If we approach this aspect of mode of delivery from a technological

perspective, we might identify the following possibilities (UIITE, 2003):

ICT may be: the focus of the curriculum; a delivery mechanism for
the curriculum; an instructional tool within the curriculum; or, a complement
to instruction by other means.
ICT may be used in specialized ways for: the development of particular
attitudes; the development of particular skills; workplace training;
study-at-home training; assessment and evaluation; informal skills
development; prior learning assessment; and, virtual internship.
ICT may facilitate programme support in terms of: programme administration;
programme design and development; careers guidance; provision
of labour market information; placement activities; information search
and retrieval; and, communication.

Finally, an example which well illustrates both the interconnections

between mode of delivery and technology, and the potentialities that can
arise, is that of the Australian Flexible Learning Frameworks Flexible
Learning Toolboxes Project. This provides ICT-based resources within that
countrys Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. The resources
are designed for use by training providers, industry and business. They
make recognized training packages available to the vocational education
and training sector, and can be customized to meet the particular requirements
of users. Toolbox materials are available either in CD format or in
smaller, downloadable units or learning objects. Hence they can readily
be employed within almost any mode of delivery. Alternatively, they might
provide a starting point from which a course designer with a particular
brief might begin. The following is a description of just one of these
toolboxes:

Panel Beating
The Toolbox has been designed to be highly graphical and interactive to
meet the hands-on approach to apprentice training

The content of the Toolbox is organised by the competencies. Each

competency has a number of simulated tasks supported by a number
of informative Teach Me About resources. The arrangement of the
content has been specifi cally designed to be easily imported into an
online learning management platform.

Learners are able to navigate through the competencies by selecting

the jobs and tasks associated with them from the Jobs sheets for each
competency. (http://toolboxes.fl exiblelearning.net.au/series5/503.htm)

This focus on competencies brings us naturally to our next set of

categories.

Analysis by Methods of Evaluation and Assessment

Evaluation happens to courses, programmes, units of study, modules,
curricula and innovations. It involves the making of judgements about
whether a particular activity has achieved its objectives. In a perfect world,
perhaps, it would be possible to report that educational interventions were
always evaluated against the aims and objectives they began with: but it is
not a perfect world, and it is not at all unknown for the focus of fi nal
evaluation to differ quite radically from the intentions that everyone had
when they started. This is simply a fact of educational change and change
management (Fullan, 2001). It may happen because circumstances alter in
one way or another. It may happen because there was confusion in the fi rst
place about, either: exactly what outcomes were desired; or, the compatibility
of particular desired outcomes with each other. For example, courses in
travel and tourism are found in TVET institutions all over the world. The
individual student studying such a course is likely to be looking for returns
in the form of future employment and income. However, the government
may have invested in the TVET tourism sector for the subtly different
reason that it wants to see, in years to come, an adequate supply of labour
to a growing and competitive tourism industry. There is a signifi cant
possibility that success for the government in these terms (plenty of labour
available at competitive rates) will be at odds with success on the individuals
terms (plenty of well-paid jobs available). Further, the tourism industry
may see the purpose of TVET as the provision of a trained workforce,
possessing those skills most needed in the business context at the moment
they graduate, rather than at the time when training is instigated. Given the
rapid pace of change in technology and other business parameters, this is
likely to seem unfair to TVET practitioners, who may think it unreasonable
if they are held to account, in effect, for failing to predict labour-market
futures that are, in fact, largely unforeseeable. Each of these different
perspectives suggests an alternative focus and approach to evaluation.
Further, and so to speak, it is also possible for the evaluation tail to wag
the educational dog (Gough, 2000). This can happen where a desire to
produce clear cut evaluation results leads to inappropriate requirements
(for example, for the identifi cation of measurable objectives) being
imposed in advance on curriculum design. There is nothing whatever

wrong with measurable objectives as such. But it is possible, in a fi eld

such as TVET, to have objectives that are very diffi cult to measure. This
applies, for example, to recent work on learning cultures (Hodkinson
et al., 2007). That culture is resistant to quantifi cation is not a reason for
ignoring it when it is clearly of importance. Nor, we should note, is lack
of quantifi cation the same thing as lack of evidence (Katayama, 2009).
In short, sensible evaluation requires a robust answer to the question:
evaluation of what? This, in turn, requires clarity about who the desired
benefi ciaries are.

Assessment happens to students. It involves the making of judgements

about their knowledge, progress, skills, potentialities and so on. Clearly,
what is assessed should correspond quite closely to what has been taught.
This does not always happen, however, and anyone with experience of
examining is likely to have encountered the kind of situation in which, for
example, students have been taught how to perform a particular task but
assessed on their ability to design a presentation about it. Assessment may
take many forms, and generates a great many issues of a technical nature
concerning the design, operationalization, administration, ability to discriminate
and fairness of procedures. It may be summative or formative,
and may employ feedback from teachers, employers, public bodies or other
students in various formats. What is appropriate in any given circumstances
is likely to depend upon the particular confi guration of benefi ciaries,
content, and mode of delivery that is present.

Although assessment and evaluation are related to each other, they should
not be confused. They are related because assessment outcomes provide a
source of data for evaluation purposes. How well the students did is an
important question in establishing how good the programme was. But it is
not the only question, and designing a good assessment is not the same as
designing an informative and objective evaluation.

There are, it is true, TVET approaches of a particular kind that appear to

align assessment and evaluation criteria in large part, and so to render most
of the foregoing, if not irrelevant, then at least excessively fussy. These take
as their focus the acquisition by students of particular skills or competences.
Assessment procedures test whether these have been learned and if, in the
aggregate, they have, the programme is evaluated to be a success. As we
have already noted, skills not only continue to be a major policy focus, but
the reach of skills-oriented policy-making is now extending into educational
areas from which it was previously largely absent. Competence is a somewhat
wider concept concerned with the functionality of individuals in
employment situations.

The history of skills and competence discourse in the UK has been

extensively documented. A concise and informative summary is provided
by Winch and Hyland (2007), who present a carefully-argued case that the
appeal these conceptions have for policy makers lies in their apparent ability
to provide quick and convincingly justifi able solutions to an entrenched
and complex problem. This problem is: how should we best educate for a
future that is not only diffi cult, but actually impossible to foretell with certainty,
since it depends on variables that are many, interrelated, capricious
and incompletely specifi ed? Rather ironically, the problem itself remains
constant over time, but is caused by the propensity of a great many other
things to change continuously.

Of course, no one is saying that skills are a bad thing. Nor is it being
suggested that we should regard with indifference, the difference between
competence and incompetence. What is at issue is whether these notions
provide suitable foundations for TVET. One diffi culty is that already mentioned,
of knowing what the future holds. Pick any date in the last hundred
years and ask yourself what courses would best have been provided, on that
date, to enable a young person who was then eighteen years of age to be
ideally skilled and competent twenty years later. The correct answer may be
apparent with hindsight, but probably was not without it. It is not clear
why we should think we can do better today. One response to this is to insist
that adaptability to uncertainty be itself included as a skill in the form, for
example, of learning to learn. Again, being a good learner is clearly advantageous.
However, as Winch and Hyland (2007) note, there are problems if
we try to classify this aptitude as a skill alongside, for example: the ability
to perform particular occupational tasks; abilities of an (arguably) generic
nature such as problem-solving or planning; and, value and personality
orientations such as considering others views or being proactive. The
word skill has too much work to do: or, to put it the other way about,
the word skill may appear extremely attractive because it offers to do work
that cannot, in fact, be done. If there was a common-denominator linking
all the desirable attributes of an ideal workforce then TVET planning would
be rendered much easier: but, notwithstanding the facility with which the
word skill suggests itself in both cases, and even though they are certainly
not mutually-exclusive, being proactive and being able to hang wallpaper
are just not the same sort of thing. Further, there is no very convincing
reason to think that a person who is proactive in one sort of setting will be
similarly inclined in all other settings.

The foregoing suggests that the word skill will not serve a commondenominator
across all those human attributes that are of signifi cance for the world of work. However, it seems
that sometimes an even stronger claim is
being made that all such attributes are a form of skill, and that the essence
of a skill is the ability to perform particular, specifi able actions. Such a behaviourist
view accords knowledge and understanding an entirely instrumental
role in relation to the world of work. This is inconsistent with contemporary
research evidence on TVET (Winch and Hyland, 2007; Hodkinson et al.,
2007; Kakavelakis et al., 2008 ). It is also in a foundational sense, and as we
shall see anti-educational. For these reasons, therefore, we retain here the
expectation that a full classifi cation of TVET according to methods of evaluation
and assessment has the potential to be complex.

Analysis by Context
Mention has already been made of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International
Centre, which exists to assist UNESCOs member states strengthen and
upgrade their TVET systems. However, while UNESCOs total membership
numbers, at the time of writing, 191 countries across the globe; and while
this book has as its focus TVET provision in general; UNEVOC retains a
primary focus on developing countries, countries in transition, and countries
in confl ict or post-confl ict situations. Some contextual issues arise for
TVET almost everywhere, some are very specifi c to particular sets of circumstances.
Some generally-occurring issues take radically different forms in
different settings. The following message, sent to the UNEVOC online
forum in 2008, illustrates one such set of concerns, relating to business
education and national development:

Just a general observation based on a 25 year career as a US Foreign Service

Science Offi cer: Its the societal and governmental infrastructure
that is absolutely the key. A working, reasonably honest government; a
trustworthy banking and fi nance system; no great societal distortions in
income equality; caste oppression; crime; corruption; tyrannical external
restrictions (from culture or religion or repressive governments or local
gangs or . . . etc) these make all the difference. It doesnt have to be
perfect and the history of the Asian tigers after the 50s shows how having
the right soil allowed the economic plant to grow. (Message quoted by
permission of Teresa Chin Jones)

Quite clearly, the design of TVET in terms of benefi ciary, content, mode of
delivery, assessment and evaluation will need to take account of relative

societal strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas. On the other hand,
if all the required infrastructure is present another set of design issues arise
which, while they may in some senses be less extreme, nevertheless require
careful treatment. Another 2008 message to the UNEVOC forum provides
an insight into the complexity of partnership working between specialized
institutions in Ireland.

In Ireland we have a Standards Based Apprenticeship System in operation,

the curriculum for this system was developed utilising a partnership
model which involves the participation of the educations (Institutes of
Technology), Training (FAS national training authority) representatives
from industry, trade unions and other professional organisations. This
system is delivered, assessed and accredited by the Institutes of Technology,
FAS and the Further Education and Training Awards Council
(FETAC). (Message quoted by permission of Aidan Kenny, Dublin Institute
of Technology)

We should also note that contextual factors operate at a number of different

social levels. We have, for example, just noted an aspect of the context
of TVET in Ireland. This takes place within a wider context of European
Union policy, and one important aspect of that is the Lisbon Agenda, which
follows from an agreement of March 2000 between EU heads of state
and government, and aims to make the EU the world-leading knowledgebased
economy, characterized by both improved social cohesion and sustainable
economic growth. These goals remain in place, notwithstanding
the recent economic downturn. On the 4 February 2009, the European
Commission website noted that:

Signifi cant reforms in initial education and training in several Member

States are improving opportunities for young people and over time will help
provide employers with a highly skilled and adaptable future work force.
But there is not enough progress yet on increasing lifelong learning
for adults. The continuing wide gender pay gap is unacceptable. Many
Member States also need to do more to put environmental protection
and environmental technologies at the centre of their reform agendas
and in particular to cut emissions. [http://ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs/
faqs/developments/index_en.htm]

This very focused set of interventions at the policy level has a number of
implications that the Irish partnership-model (or any other approach used

within an EU country) must, at the very least, acknowledge. First, it prioritizes

particular educational content, for example skills relating to information
and environmental technologies. Second, it identifi es desired economic
and social benefi ts at the European level as the basis of educational design.
Third, it employs a range of terminologies that are both contestable and
open to varied interpretation. These include, for example, sustainability,
globalization, and solidarity. Further, both competitiveness and cooperation
are highly valued, raising the question of the circumstances under
which one might be preferred to the other, and how the ideal employee
within the knowledge-based economy should best decide this in any given
case. Finally, and in consequence of all this, it extends the requirement for
partnerships upwards. TVET design, within Europe at least, not only
involves a range of institutions at roughly the same organizational level
within states, it also involves collaborations across national boundaries, and
up and down the policy-making and implementation hierarchy.

In summary, we might say that the context in which any particular instance
of TVET occurs requires, and is amenable to analysis. However, such
analysis is also likely to be complex, and to invite confusion where it is
incomplete or imperfect.
Other Dimensions of Analysis: Management Style;
Pedagogy; Disciplinary Orientation

There are, fi nally, a number of other parameters along which TVET provision
may be analysed. These are discussed in a summary way here, but this is
not because they are unimportant or simple. On the contrary, they are
so fundamental that each is associated with a very extensive literature
(or more than one literature). They will be touched upon in the rest of
the book where this is appropriate, but a full review lies beyond its scope.
In the briefest of outlines, therefore, there is an analytic concern with,

Management of people, resources, curriculum, and educational processes.

Management be: inclusive, participatory and collegial; hierarchical and
directive; or, a mixture of these. It may incorporate, either explicitly or
tacitly, a number of metaphors, for example: TVET organizations may
be thought of as being like machines or like organisms; change may be
thought of as a journey from A to B, or as an exploratory adventure;
interactions between organization members may be described in family,
sporting, or even military terminology.