In South Africa’s current technical vocational education and training (TVET) system, local research, though dedicated, reflects not only a lack of professional practice at the country’s TVET colleges but also the potential to expand cooperation throughout the TVET sector to meet the needs of the labour market (Needham, 2019).
In response, the current challenges and needs facing TVET lecturers have to be identified in order to strengthen TVET and to design study programmes for the long term. This contribution is an impulse of the project “Professionalization of TVET Lecturer in South Africa (CAPE-VET)” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The binational, multidisciplinary team from South Africa’s Centre for Community Engagement and Work-Oriented Learning at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and from Germany’s Institute of Vocational Education, Work and Technology (biat) at the Europe University of Flensburg (EUF) examines the TVET sector in South Africa.
 Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, it became impossible to execute the originally planned method: to accompany TVET lecturers within situational participatory observations of their authentic work life. As an alternative, the method was adapted to allow the team members to meet and collaborate in online colloquia to explore their personal perspectives as part of a qualitative, esteem-oriented participatory approach to characterizing current challenges and needs based on insights of the TVET staff (Becker & Spöttl, 2008; Bless et al., 2006; Kawulich, 2005; Marshall & Rossman, 1989). Results will be implemented into recommendations for the design of academic study programmes for the professionalization of TVET lecturers. Moreover, the recommendations, emerging against the influence of developments on global TVET, will help to accommodate internationalization and the digital transformation, all of which impact demands for the education of TVET lecturers in South Africa.

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