02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Paper
Way Forward from Ground Zero: Identifying Stakeholder Views for VET Curriculum Development Model in Agriculture for Northern Part of Cyprus.
Ozge Altay
Bahcesehir Cyprus University, Cyprus
Presenting Author: Altay, Ozge
At first glance, vocational and technical education in agriculture can be perceived as an obvious matter. It might be summarised as the educational process that include "the study of technologies and related sciences, and the acquisition of practical skills, attitudes, understanding and knowledge relating to occupations in agriculture" (Jones, 2013). Various occupations and related skill sets have been defined that can operate under agricultural value chains. However, it is a more complex exercise when it comes to identify these occupations economically in relation to labour market demands, to determine the occupational standards to finally decide who can practice these occupations and how how these individuals will be trained.
In the face of macro problems such as environmental concerns, food security, climate crisis and feeding the world population, what will determine the course in the coming years is the question of what competencies and skill sets the practitioners of agricultural activities or farmers should be equipped with. The overwhelming gravity and urgency of problems mentioned above make it difficult for all professional groups operating in agricultural systems to transfer the necessary scientific knowledge into practice swiftly and effectively.
The necessity of transferring scientific knowledge in a research-intensive field such as agriculture into practice and competing against time in this regard also concerns curriculum development studies related to agricultural training since the curricula need to be constantly reviewed and updated in terms of objectives, content, teaching-learning processes and assessment.
This study is situated in such a context. In the absence of VET programmes to train qualified and skilled workforce in the existing agriculture systems, a model for the development of a vocational and technical training curriculum in agriculture is necessary. As a preliminary step, the views of various stakeholders in agriculture were identified to provide a comprehensive dimension of needs assessment. The purpose of this study is to identify the views of the primary stakeholders of agriculture on agricultural vocational education and training in order to establish a wider model on which the curricula that are likely to be used in formal or non-formal education will be based. The findings of this study will be used as a dimension of needs assesment process to inform a model to develop VET curricula in agriculture. To this end, the answer to the following research question was sought:
How do the stakeholders define (i)needs, (ii)priorities, (iii)preferences and (iv)recommendations for the development of VET curricula in agriculture for northern part of Cyprus?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study employs a qualitative methodology to explore the views of various stakeholders in agri-food sector for a VET curriculum development model in agriculture for northern part of Cyprus. In order to explore the needs, priorities, preferences, and recommendations identified by representatives from various stakeholder groups, a semi-structured Interview Form developed by the researcher was employed as data collection tool. The form included close-ended and open-ended questions and was developed following a four-phase process. The first phase comprised of literature review and forming of concept maps as well as the initial pool of questions on the assessment of needs for a VET curriculum in agriculture. Secondly, the questions were discussed with two different curriculum development experts and a set of 16 questions were pre-selected to be included in the interview forms. The questions were checked for grammatical correctness and semantic clarity by a Turkish linguist and were included in the final interview forms. Three participants among the study group were invited to initial interviews as a pilot exercise to test the efficacy of the Interview Forms. The feedback obtained from the pilot interviews were reflected to the final version of the Interview Form.
Sample triangulation was aimed in order to obtain different points of view in depth. The study group consists of a total of 26 participants from various stakeholder groups that are actively involved in their area of expertise/vocation. These include a representative from VET authorities of Ministry of Education (n=1), representatives from Ministry of Agriculture (n=4), representatives from various farmer NGOs (n=4), academics from universities that deliver agricultural training (n=4), representatives from Chambers of Trade, Industry, Shopkeepers and Artisans (n=3), practicing farmers from different sectors (n=8) and curriculum development experts (n=2). The interviews are completed and lasted for an average of 70 minutes for each interview.
Consistent with the objectives of the study a qualitative data analysis is targeted. Content analysis will be conducted once transcription and the coding process of the data set is completed.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe data analysis of the study is not yet concluded. The transcriptions of the interviews are ongoing. Certain themes were prominent and recurring during the interviews related with digitalisation and digital literacy in agriculture, climate crisis in relation to agricultural practices and capitalisation of niche agricultural products for northern part of Cyprus (prickly pear) and markets.
ReferencesAcker, D., and L. Gasperini. (2009). Education for rural people: The role of education, training and capacity development in poverty reduction and food security. Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.
Augère-Granier, M. L. (2017). Agricultural education and lifelong training in the EU. Retrieved from https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/608788/EPRS_BRI(2017)608788_EN.pdf
Bhat P, Bhat S and Shayana A. 2015. Retaining youth in agriculture- Opportunities and challenges. International Journal in Management and Social Science 3(2): 1001-1015.
Goller, M., Caruso, C., & Harteis, C. (2021). Digitalisation in agriculture: Knowledge and learning requirements of German dairy farmers. International journal for research in vocational education and training, 8(2), 208-223.
Jones, K. (2013). The Role of Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Developing Countries: A Review of Literature, Issues and Recommendations for Action.
02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Paper
Implementing the Competence-Based Approach in Chinese and Russian Vocational Curricula: Lessons Learned From Teacher Interviews and Classroom Observations
Pujun Chen1, Anastasia Goncharova2, Junmin Li1, Matthias Pilz1, Dietmar Frommberger2
1University of Cologne, Chair of Economics and Business Education, Germany; 2Osnabruck University, Chair of Vocational and Business Education, Germany
Presenting Author: Chen, Pujun;
Li, Junmin
Particularly in efforts to link vocational education and training (VET) offerings more closely to the demands of the labour market, the approaches of competence-based education are gaining importance for the planning, implementation, and assessment of educational processes in vocational education and training worldwide (Argüelles & Gonczi, 2000, p. 9; Hodge et al., 2019, p. 28). At the same time, the concepts of competence-based VET also contribute to linking the didactic orientation to vocational requirements with pedagogical needs for learners’ development opportunities in training processes (Frank & Iller, 2013; Reusser, 2014). In this respect, the concepts of competence-based VET represent extensive didactic approaches for achieving quality development and upgrading vocational education. Despite their increasing concernment in the global reform efforts in the VET field, there have been few studies to date that could be used to make robust statements about the effects of these innovative approaches in vocational education processes, not to mention in a comparative perspective.
Against this backdrop, the focus of this contribution[1] was to address the research question of to what extent and how the competence-based approaches are actually enacted in the teaching and learning processes of the vocational curriculum in the selected countries, Russia and China. The reason for choosing these two countries is that both the Russian and Chinese VET systems are school-based and state-driven, although they have different structures. In addition, both of them are active in the process of introducing and implementing the competence-based approaches as a means to modernize their VET system. Therefore, the key concern from a comparison standpoint here was to identify the most notable contrasts and similarities between the competence-based approaches implemented in the chosen national contexts.
[1] This contribution is a part of an international research project (CodeVET) conducted in cooperation with German, Russian and Chinese universities, and represents a comparative study focusing on the investigation of the competence-based approach in the planning and implementation of educational processes in VET programmes of Accounting and Logistics in Russia and China. This project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and was completed on 31.10.2022.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedTo answer this question, semi-structured interviews and structured lesson observations were conducted with the teachers of vocational education institutions in different regions of Russia and China. Those teachers who are responsible for the delivery of professional courses in the accounting and logistics programs were selected as interviewees, and 24 lesson hours from these interviewees were observed. Both interviews and observations focus on the implementation of different didactical principles of the competence-based approaches (conceptualised on the basis of the Revised Comprehensive Competence-based Education Model from Sturing et al. (2011), such as practical learning in an authentic environment, coaching, and cooperative learning, etc.) in the teaching-learning processes. The data collected was further analysed using the method of qualitative content analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results portray a concrete picture of the realization of the competence-based approach in the teaching practice through both teachers’ and researchers’ perspectives in both national contexts. It can be revealed that there are discrepancies between teachers’ beliefs and their practice. For example, some teachers interviewed claimed that their lessons were student-centered and their roles in the lessons have been changed from knowledge transmitters to learning coaches. However, many lessons observed were still teacher-centered, i.e. learners behaved as passive receptors of teaching content. Moreover, the results provide in-depth insights into the teaching and learning processes of VET curricula regarding the concept of competence-based education. For instance, it has been noted several times that at least the practice-related characteristics of competence orientation are less observable in the teaching and learning processes of more general and theoretical content. In addition, the findings will contribute to exploring good practices of the implementation of the competence-based approaches in the teaching practice, such as the use of innovative learning formats for conducting practical learning in a simulated vocational environment.
ReferencesArgüelles, A., & Gonczi, A. (Hrsg.) (2000). Competency based education and training. A world perspective. Editorial Limusa.
Frank, S., & Iller, C. (2013). Kompetenzorientierung-mehr als ein didaktisches Prinzip. REPORT-Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung, (4), 32–41.
Hodge, S.,Mavin, T., &Kearns, S. (2019).Hermeneutic dimensions of competency-based education and training. Vocations and Learning, 13, 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-019-09227-y
Reusser, K. (2014). Kompetenzorientierung als Leitbegriff der Didaktik. Beiträge zur Lehrerinnen-und Lehrerbildung, 32(3), 325–339.
Sturing,L., Biemans,H., Mulder,M.,and Bruijn,E.(2011) The Nature of Study Programmes in Vocational Education: Evaluation of the Model for Comprehensive Competence-Based Vocational Education in the Netherlands. Vocationsand Learning, 4(3), 191–210.
02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Paper
Distinction or Distinctiveness: Making Sense of Diversity in Education for High Skills
Sue Webb1, Elizabeth Knight2
1Monash University, Australia; 2Victoria University, Australia
Presenting Author: Webb, Sue
What are the implications of the growth of programmes for high skills (at bachelor’s level) offered by vocational education providers? Over the last twenty years, new and different forms of higher education have developed beyond the university sector to meet the expanded educational demand from new and different students for high level skills in Europe, the UK, Australia and North America, among other places (Teichler 2008; Knight et al. 2022). Accordingly, this expansion of higher education by the entry of institutions with a tradition of offering vocational education and training is leading to a more diverse system. Yet diversity can create tensions and challenges to homogenous systems.
The paper considers these tensions and challenges through exploring empirically how the bachelor degrees in vocational institutions have been understood and valued by students in the context of Australia. The paper asks: 1. Why are students choosing degrees in vocational institutions? 2. What do students, providers and others in the system (including those offering guidance to students and other providers) perceive to be the distinctiveness of these degree offerings? 3. What worth or distinction do these degree offerings hold for students in a hierarchically organised higher education system?
The paper builds on the authors’ earlier work that has shown that the landscape of non-university higher education in Australia is different from that of university providers; the degree offerings are more like those found in the non-university sector or university of applied science provision in Europe, the UK and North America (Knight et al. 2022). These differences relate firstly, to which students and what courses they are following; secondly, the position of vocational institutions within a stratified field of higher education; and thirdly, the message system of higher education in non-vocational providers and its links to the notion of vocationalism. With more than 50% of the age cohort participating in higher education in its various forms the paper contends that there are important tensions and challenges for equity in such diverse mass systems of higher education, which appear unified in principle, but are significantly hierarchical and stratified in practice (Marginson 2016). The paper considers the equity question by exploring how institutions distinguish themselves in the competition for students and how students navigate and choose different institutional degree offerings. In other words, the paper’s focus is on what students in non-university higher education understand by distinction.
The paper’s starting point is that distinction is a term that is best understood through the concept of heteroglossia, that is, it can be understood in different ways (Bakhtin 1981) In applying the term in social science analysis, heteroglossia has come to mean recognising how different voices reflect and attach different meanings to similar linguistic terms. For example, Dorothy Smith (1998, 63) explaining why she draws on Bakhtin, rather than Foucault, states that heteroglossia enables her to ‘explore discourse as local practices in which people are active’. Bourdieusian analyses of distinction in education highlight a process through which tastes are ’markers of class” (Bourdieu 1984, 2). Thereby, the taste for the most elite universities in a globally differentiated system gives distinction to those dominant groups that invest in this form of education and ensures they retain their dominant position and the social reproduction of inequalities. In contrast, this study of non-university higher education in Australia shows that students and college protagonists’ understandings of distinction, were very different. Whilst they recognised the distinction or good taste associated with study at elite institutions, their taste was for the different form of higher education available in the non-university providers; that is a taste for a distinctive vocationally focused degree offering.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe paper draws on data collected for the Australian Research Council Discovery project Vocational Institutions, Undergraduate Degrees: Distinction or Equity? undertaken between 2017-2020. For the project as a whole, a multi-method approach was used to collect and analyse national quantitative data, qualitative case studies of TAFE institutes (the publicly funded providers of vocational degrees) and the perspectives of employers and education policy actors. A multiple-case study design was used, with deep case sites in Melbourne and Sydney and shallow case sites in all TAFE sites across Australia. In the deep case sites, data was collected through interviews and a survey with current students, interviews with recent graduates and employers, and with vocational institution managers and teachers, along with publicly available marketing messages and statistical data. This paper draws on data from the two deep cases studies. These data include narratives from 63 students and graduates from bachelor degrees in vocational institutions who outlined their decision making in following a non-traditional higher education pathway. Additionally, interview data from the institutional and teacher perspectives from these two sites and the perspectives of staff from three alternative university providers in each of the two geographical locations where the students studied are explored. These ‘line of sight’ data help to contextualise the decisions and accounts provided by the students particularly because for these students, choice to attend a vocational institution (as opposed to a university) is often positioned in relation to the university alternative in terms of what the qualifications and experiences are perceived to offer students.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWhen making sense of the expansion of degrees in vocational institutions the social equity problem is that students’ choices may misrecognise the differential rates of return on the educational capital associated with degrees in a diverse system. In a hierarchically stratified higher education system where access to the distinction attached to most elite forms of higher education is limited, those that develop a taste for the less prestigious institutions, such as the TAFEs studied in this paper, may simply be rationalising or accommodating themselves to the more easily obtainable because of their more limited navigational capacities (Gale and Parker 2015). A Bourdiuesian analysis would also suggest that the role different institutions play in enhancing the development of social, cultural and symbolic capital, rather than just human capital, are the elements that confer distinction. Yet, our data shows the use value to students of the baccalaureate is a function of the economic and social capital that an individual can employ to exploit it, rather than being a value signified by the low symbolic capital of the vocational institution. Our data reveals students who see a use value in the distinctive vocational pedagogical experience that supports their learning and they value the distinctive exchange value of a qualification that develops applied high skills that appeal to employers.
In contexts where the baccalaureates are available in non-university institutions with a vocational tradition, close to people’s homes, and often at lower cost relative to a university degree, these offerings are attractive to some students. The offerings have the potential to disrupt habitual ways of acting; disrupt the meaning of distinction and overcome misrecognition. When disruption or a crisis unsettles taken-for-granted views, the doxa may be seen as an imposed orthodoxy and give rise to ‘the existence of competing possibilities’ (Bourdieu 1977, 169).
ReferencesBakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the Novel (M. Holquist, & C. Emerson, Trans.). In M. Holquist (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination (pp. 259-422). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bourdieu, P.1977.Outline of Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P.1984.Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Gale, T. and Parker, S. 2015. To aspire: a systematic reflection on understanding aspirations in higher education. Australian Educational Researcher,
Knight, E., Bathmaker, A.M.. Moodie, G., Orr, K., Webb, S., and Wheelahan, L. (Eds.) 2022. Equity and High Skills through Higher Vocational Education, Cham, Switzerland, Springer Nature , Palgrave Macmillan.
Marginson, S. 2016. High Participation Systems of Higher Education. The Journal of Higher Education. 87, 243-271.
Smith, D. E. 1998. Bakhtin and the Dialogic of Sociology, an investigation. In Michael Bell and Michael Gardiner (eds) Bakhtin and the Human Sciences (pp63-77) London: Sage.
Teichler, U. 2008. Diversification? Trends and explanations of the shape and size of higher education. Higher Education, 56(3) 349-379.
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