Session Information
SES F 04, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
With the development of European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and European Credit System in Vocational Education and Training (ECVET), the concept of competence toward the common model has become important and has raised the vital question as to whether the different models are sufficiently compatible with what Ensor labels as the “one-size-fits-all” (Ensor 2003, p. 344) or Heikkinen “old wine in a new wine skins (Heikkinen 2008).”
Nevertheless, it is a fact that any individual, educational institution or national education system cannot operate as if it is isolated from the outside world. As Critchley has mentioned, governments have the freedom to refuse to involve a humor, a structured form of EQF, but it might produce a false of harmony among the European Countries (Critchley and Cederström 2009, 48).
In this respect, it is important to decipher the different roles of the inter-government agencies, the government, the market, the labor market organizations, and the academic providers. With a view to understanding different politics of knowledge, the power relations within and around social partnerships among multi-leveled actors should also be scrutinized and analyzed so as to arrive at social and political cohesion under the influence of neo-liberal governance.
Therefore, the purpose of this research is to (1) investigate and elaborate the Qualifications Framework (QF) and Quality Assurance System (QAS) in Finland, Switzerland and South Korea and (2) to find out how different tools and logics underpin solutions to QF and QAS of these three different countries. The main consideration for choosing these three OECD countries is that little is known and understood about the concept of quality of education and their relations with and consequences to work and occupations happening in the culturally different traditional and social contexts.
The hypothesis is that, despite the fact that the subsidiarization of social policy is converging reality in the context of globalization, which wants to transcend the boundaries and imbalances of the education systems; the impact of process varies according to the specificities of the respective regulatory frames at the supranational, national, local, institutional levels. Hence, the effect is that policy ideas are diffused while different actors from different levels try to affect policy. In this process, the problem of denationalization and regionalization is strengthened but this reduces national identities. My argument will be suggested by addressing and analyzing the effect of different educational systems on vocational and adult education under the context of transnational socio-cultural process and spiral adaptive network theory. We can finally come to the conclusion that in what way multi-leveled actors contribute the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and QAS and promote the social, political, and educational well-being.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
CEDEFOP (Eds.) (2009). Sectoral Partnerships. Luxemburg: Cedefop.
CEDEFOP (2009). Competence Framework for VET Professions. Luxemburg: Cedefop.
Critchley and Cederström (2009). Philosophy in the Boudoir and the Streets: An Interview with Simon Critchley. Ephemeraweb, 9(1), pp. 44-51.
Ensor, P (2003) The National Qualifications Framework and Higher Education in South Africa: Some Epistemological Issues. Journal of Education and Work, 16(3), 325-346.
ESU (2008). The European Qualifications Framework from a Stakeholders’ Perspective. Brussel: ESU.
Heikkinen A. (2008). Paper for Seminar on Trans-nationalizations of Qualifications. Available on-line at:
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