Session Information
23 SES 03A, Reconstructing Education and Health as Neo-Liberal Human Service Work: Disturbing Borders of Work, Occupational Politics and Agency
Symposium
Time:
2008-09-10
14:00-15:30
Room:
B1 116
Chair:
Terri Seddon
Contribution
National systems of vocational education and training have provided established modes of school to work transition with cultural anchors for young persons as well as for the adult educational professionals, who are structuring, guiding and teaching through this stage, which is critical for the individual biography as well as in terms of social inclusion. These established modes of transition are disturbed by
• a globalised distribution of labour
• changing work organisation
• neo-liberal welfare reforms
• changing paradigms of teaching and learning
• growing demands for individual agency.
In the case of Germany these changes can be illustrated by the way how the educational space between general and vocational education is reconceptualised as local networks of social agencies (vocational schools, youth centers, private education institutes, chambers of commerce and industries, social services and local administration) step in to move young people with no or low school degrees into employment. These joint activities however allow little opportunities for individual or collective agency or resistance of the young boys and girls, since they are dominated by the idea of matching a person to a job and the mantra of effectiveness.
A transnational and transdisciplinary perspective on theses procedures allows to identify how new modes of transition are developing. Growing demands for individual agency – as life-long self-responsible learners – are going along with these reconfigurations, while at the same time the space for agency is narrowed by the emerging networks of guidance and work based training.
This paper will 1. describe these changes using Germany as an example; 2. identify the dilemmas coming along with them by adopting a transnational perspective and 3. ask for the implications for educational professionals. Together with the established structures and institutions of teaching and education their professional actors are challenged. Their work identity, work place security and hierarchies and their ideas of “good” education are in question. Is there a collective “we” in the community of (German) educational professionals? How are the boundaries constructed, kept up or dissolved between teachers, educators vocational trainers, social workers, guides and counsellors? What does this tell about remaking/disruption of power relations?
References
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