Session Information
02 SES 03 A, International Perspectives on VET II: Reforms
Paper Session
Contribution
Skills development and vocational education systems lie at the confluence of a unique set of contesting social forces and institutional logics - capital, organised labour, the state, national and international education systems and discourses, social values, and social structures such as race, class and gender, all intersect and shape the way societies organise the preparation of citizens for work. How the system takes shape and what institutions emerge over time provides a unique insight into social change and social formation, particularly when a society is undergoing processes of radical and rapid reform. This paper examines the case of vocational education reform in South Africa during the final decades of Apartheid-colonialism and the first decades of emergent democracy in order to understand how and why institutional arrangements that make up the VET system are often unresponsive to the changing context.
The five decades from 1970 and the present day represent a period of radical, on-going systemic change. However, education and training institutions have remained surprisingly resilient and resistant to change, ensuring continuity across many features of society and undermining (actively or inadvertently) many attempts at redressing historical inequalities and social injustice.
This paper will provide a historical-sociological account of a part of South Africa’s history that has not been documented thus far (bar McGrath's 1996 PhD study), but will also provide broader insights into processes of social contestation and change that will be of wider interest to social scientists studying institutions, education policy, and vocational education and skills formation. The latter is particularly salient at a time when technical and vocational education is viewed internationally and nationally as key to addressing a range of social and economic challenges in developing and developed societies (to wit the UN’s SDG 4, the UK’s skills system reform, and South Africa’s National Development Plan Chapter 9).
Method
This paper draws on data that is part of a larger, longer term project investigating the development of the South African vocational system over a fifty year period. The methodological framework is derived by bringing together two bodies of theory. The first is Neo-institutionalist perspectives, in which institutions (understood as durable social structures comprising activities and resources that provide meaning and stability to societies) are constituted through a) regulative, b) normative and c) cultural-cognitive processes. The second conceptual lens focuses on the policy processes, drawing on Robertson and Dale's (2015) Critical Cultural Political Economy of Education framework. This locates educational reforms within a broader context of political, economic, and cultural processes - locally, nationally and globally. The conceptual framework was utilised to analyse data from a series of vertical case studies (Bartlett and Vavrus 2014). These are defined in terms of: scale (micro-, meso-, and macro-levels); across locations; and across time. The chronological overview is accessed through primary documentary analysis and secondary literature, and provides a backdrop to the study. The regulative sphere, i.e. the formal policy and the rules that establish certain practices, is accessed through documents such as Green Papers, White Papers, Ministerial Committees and legislation, as well as economic reports, statistics and evaluations. Analysing the the normative values that shape but also stand in tension with the regulative aspects, and how certain understandings are internalized by individuals and communities, is much more complex. These are accessed from documentary sources in part (submissions to committees, letters to the press, reports of protests, social media etc) as well as through analysis of the discourse surrounding some of the formal regulatory aspects. However, as Chisholm (2005) notes, this will not provide a lens on the contests between individuals and groups involved in the process, the tensions between efficiency and social justice imperatives faced by researchers and policymakers (Ball 2006), and the effects of the policy decisions on organisations and individuals in the system. Therefore it was necessary to draw on qualitative methods such as interviews to draw out perceptions and memories from key informants. Life history and oral history methods were used to interview senior officials in state departments, statutory bodies, ministerial committees, commissions of inquiry, and political actors will all be key, but so will college level educators, industry managers, shopfloor trainers, trade unionists, non-governmental NGOs, consultants and international development workers.
Expected Outcomes
The paper will explore why, despite the significant and ongoing social change accompanied by reform, so many aspects of the VET system have not changed. It will present conclusions on what elements of the institutional landscape are key to reforming the system
References
Allais, S. (2012). ‘Economics imperialism’, education policy and educational theory. Journal of Education Policy, 27(2), 253–274. Kallaway, P. (1989). Privatization as an Aspect of the Educational Politics of the New Right: Critical Signposts for Understanding Shifts in Educational Policy in South Africa during the Eighties? British Journal of Educational Studies, 37(3), 253–278. https://doi.org/10.2307/3121281 Lowndes, V. (2005). Something old, something new, something borrowed… How institutions change (and stay the same) in local governance. Policy Studies, 26(3–4), 291–309. Meyer, H.-D., & Rowan, B. (2006). The New Institutionalism in Education. SUNY Press. Thelen, K. (1999). Historical institutionalism in comparative politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 2(1), 369–404. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.2.1.369 Vally, S. (2007). From people’s education to neo-liberalism in South Africa. Review of African Political Economy, 34(111), 39–56. Wedekind, V. (2014). Going Around in Circles: Employability, responsiveness, and the reform of the college sector. In Saim Vally & E. Motala (Eds.), Education, Economy and Society. Pretoria: UNISA Press.
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