The value of vocational education and training

This edition is the last that we are editing in this journal. The time has come after eight years to pass the editorial baton to new editors. It is fitting therefore that the papers included here should speak to the value of vocational education and training (VET) and VET research. Issues on this theme continue to be raised and debated frequently in most countries, and in almost all (exceptions being the Germanic-speaking nations) the concerns revolve around perceived low status and how it could be elevated.

In the European Union, two recent surveys provide very interesting reading on Europeans’ views about initial VET (Cedefop, 2017) and adult learning and continuing VET (Cedefop, 2020). The first survey involved 35,646 face-to-face interviews with citizens of the Member States. It provided data on citizens’ opinions on awareness, attractiveness, experience and effectiveness of VET in the EU. Results revealed considerable variation between countries on awareness of VET, ranging from 46% to 91% of respondents acknowledging that they know what VET is. The research indicated that EU citizens tend to have a positive attitude towards VET, its quality and effectiveness. Respondents valued upper secondary VET as a way to find jobs, strengthen the economy, help reduce unemployment and tackle social inclusion. However, it continues to suffer from lack of esteem: VET is often perceived as a less attractive learning option compared with general education and it is still considered a second choice for second-rate students. VET is often seen as a type of education that can lead to a job quickly but not necessarily a well-paid, well-regarded job (p. 16).

The second survey focused on adult learning and continuing VET (CVET), defined as any learning activities undertaken by adults (employed or not) with the intention of improving their knowledge or skills. More than 40,000 interviews were held with a random sample aged 25 and over in the European Union, Norway and Iceland. At least two-thirds of the adults in every Member State agreed that their government should prioritise investment in adult learning. Some 70% believed that adult learning and training would become more important to career progression over the next decade, and 88% stated their job required them to keep their skills constantly up to date. The benefits they saw were stated as support for their personal development, necessary for career progression and when seeking a job, a path to a higher income and a help in reducing unemployment. They expressed positive perceptions of availability, access and information. In most countries, family was regarded as the key source of support for participating, though in the Netherlands, UK and Norway it was the employer, in France, professional or sector associations, and in Luxembourg, government. Despite this positive image of learning and training, adults in 22 of the 30 countries stated that their main reason for not participating was that they had no need! The report concludes that this response is not because they are negative about adult learning and CVET but because of lack of incentive. Thus, the positive image of CVET can provide policy-makers with a strong basis for strengthening adult learning and CVET, while recognising challenges will include the requirement for complex institutional and governance arrangements, shifts in teaching and learning paradigms and modes beyond standard training provision, and ensuring synergies between the different policy areas supporting CVET systems.

Many of these issues have their echoes resounding in Australia. One of the most recent reports, the Joyce Report (2019), conducted a health check of the Australian VET sector to determine how ready it was for the challenge of training more Australians, now and in the future. The review found that most participants were very passionate about the vocational training model and believed that ‘learning while you earn’ was critical for a fast-changing work environment (p. 1). Yet there were also many who were concerned over whether the current VET systems and processes could deliver the sort of flexible work-based learning models that would help Australians obtain necessary skills for the work of the future. The report therefore argued for a significant upgrade to the VET sector’s architecture and proposed a new vision for vocational education in Australia. It recommended a six-point plan for change: strengthening quality assurance, speeding up qualification development, simpler funding and skills matching, better careers information, clearer secondary school pathways, and greater access for disadvantaged Australians. With a roadmap to accompany these points to show how they could be achieved, the report concluded the plan would go a long way to lifting the confidence of employers, students and trainees in the VET sector, and elevate the status of VET to see it perch genuinely alongside higher education in the ambitions of young Australians and their communities (p. 2). Several other recent reports have also proclaimed the need for reimagining, revitalizing, rethinking, refreshing and reforming VET such that a genuine tertiary education sector comprising both VET and higher education could be instituted in Australia (Business Council of Australia 2018; Australian Industry Group, 2019; Dawkins et al., 2019; Maddocks et al., 2019; Parker et al., 2018). Regrettably, thus far such a vision for an inter-connected tertiary education sector, so strongly advocated by the Bradley Review (Bradley et al., 2008), has not materialised.

There is the real possibility that the COVID pandemic may force a critical re-think about the value and status of VET given the dire need for skilling, re-skilling and upskilling. In a recent McKinsey Global Survey, 87% of executives said they were either experiencing skill gaps in the workforce or expected them within a few years, yet while nearly all respondents cited closing potential skill gaps as a priority for their organisations, less than half of the respondents had a clear sense of how to address the problem (Agrawal et al., 2020). Covid-19 has only made this issue more urgent.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a trend in workplace dynamics that was already underway through automation and AI, shifting marketplaces, and changing workplace roles. To respond, leaders should pursue a broad reskilling agenda that develops employees’ digital expertise and their cognitive, emotional, and adaptability skills. (Agrawal et al., 2020)

It is here that VET providers can have a very important role to play. The learning landscape has changed in ways that will foster the teaching of new skills to employees, wherever they may be and whatever phase of working life they are in.

The refereed research papers in this final edition for 2020 pick up on these themes of the value and status of vocational education and training, the prioritising of investment in adult learning and the importance of innovation and research. In the first paper, Genevieve Mosely, Cara Wrigley and Tom Key reflect on how tertiary education, particularly VET, has radically changed over the past 20 years. So in order to assist our understanding of the current situation, they investigate the business models of 50 Australian tertiary providers and through content analysis cluster them into seven types. They argue that the business models of VET providers are becoming outdated and ill-equipped to meet the changing needs of the twenty-first century. If VET providers are to arrest declining enrolment numbers and meet changing skill demands of the future, their current business models need to innovate in order to stay relevant, continue to meet Australia’s skill demand and contribute to the nation’s economic prosperity. Their paper explores potential ‘white space’ opportunities for such innovation.

Another area for enhancement is training providers focusing more on improving quality and relevance. Joel Mullan and Caine Rolleston examine India’s informal economy which is characterised by low levels of skills and considerable barriers to skills development for workers. Through a systematic review, their study identified the key barriers to upskilling informal sector workers and isolated four key challenges that have important implications for policy and practice: improving access to training; improving skill acquisition (the quality of training); improving skill utilisation; and improving system capacity. They found that training is often inadequately linked to labour market and learner needs. Despite policy initiatives, evidence on skills development remains weak, access to and quality of training (especially for women) are serious limitations, and skills are often under-utilised. They contend that government needs to raise its investment in training, while recognising that overcoming many of these barriers, and thereby ensuring that more of the training delivered is worthwhile and effective, also requires changes outside the skills system. Reforms focused solely on skills development, without due regard to the wider operating environment, would not be sufficient.

The third paper’s setting is Nigeria, where the study reports on how VET teachers foster the employability skills of their learners. Ugochukwu Okolie, Elisha Elom, Paul Igwe, Chinyere Nwajiuba, Michael Binuomote and Igu Ntasiobi state that, while there is general agreement that employability skills are important and that employers are increasingly valuing them, concerns have been expressed over whether TVET graduates are developing these skills. Interviewing 35 TVET teachers from 19 developing countries and employing thematic analysis, they illustrate how TVET teachers do use a wide variety of innovative strategies to ensure that students are offered the appropriate support to enable them to develop employability skills, gain employment, create small scale businesses, become responsible citizens, compete in the world of work and contribute to society. However, the authors found that teaching techniques used by TVET teachers to impart employability skills have not been well supported by TVET curriculum or by their institutions in many developing countries. As a result, only TVET teachers who are highly experienced can adopt these innovative methods to improve students’ learning outcomes. They conclude that education systems in developing countries need pedagogical re-engineering from being certificate-driven to skills-driven to produce competent graduates capable of competing in the world of work.

The conundrum that VET can lead to lucrative and fulfilling careers and play a vital role in skilling workers for contemporary workplaces and yet suffers from low status is also a theme that pervades the fourth paper by Sarojni Choy, Darryl Dymock, Anh Hai Le and Stephen Billett. With many countries now seeking to raise the status of VET to increase its uptake by school-leavers, these authors focus on the factors that shape students’ decisions about post-school options and their views about promoting VET as a viable post-school option. Using interview and survey data from 176 students from 11 schools and three VET institutions located in metropolitan and regional communities in Australia, they found that students’ decision-making is influenced mainly by information received from familiars (parents, teachers and friends). The findings highlight the necessity for schools to provide more detailed, comprehensive and impartial information about VET programs and occupations, including those supported by VET programs. Furthermore, clear pathways between VET and university studies would help students to plan for their study and career trajectories. For VET or university, students need to be clear about the careers, related qualifications, enrolment processes, delivery options, ongoing support, resources, duration and pathways. Detailed information is also needed for parents so they can be better informed about the occupations served by VET. The authors underscore the importance of accurate details and model examples about VET and the occupations it serves.

The fifth article focuses on skill transfer in safety training in the preparation of personnel for offshore emergencies. Jennifer Smith, Mashrura Musharraf, Allison Blundon and Brian Veitch in Canada draw on pedagogical frameworks and data-mining methodology to provide empirical and modelling evidence to inform offshore and maritime industries on how to deliver training and how to assess trainee performance using virtual environment technology. The authors concentrate on three factors that are arguably the most relevant for training organisations: trainee characteristics, training design and the work environment such as transfer climate and the opportunity and support from management to allow workers to apply their training. Their three-phased experiment collected performance data during skill acquisition (phase 1), retention and retraining (phase 2) and transfer of training to new emergencies (phase 3). Data from the first two training phases were used to model participants’ decision strategies in the form of decision trees (DTs), which are useful behavioural modeling tools to evaluate the efficacy of training transfer. The DTs were then used to predict training transfer in the third phase. Thirty-eight participants completed all three phases of the experiment. Results from the DT analysis identified gaps in the design of the training curriculum. The data suggest that DTs can push the boundaries of existing training by highlighting its shortcomings and challenging instructional designers to develop training that prepares people for emergencies, rather than for the somewhat nominal requirements of regulations.

The sixth paper is the co-editors’ swansong! We thought it would be fitting to conclude our time at the editing helm (after eight years) with an analysis of this journal to highlight significant trends over its 27 years of existence. Berwyn Clayton and Roger Harris examined all 350 papers published in the journal from 1993 to 2019 in the strong belief that academic journals are the representative academic ‘voice’ for a discipline, reflecting its knowledge base. They communicate research findings, share knowledge and stimulate debate. This paper analyses the 462 authors, article types and methodological characteristics, and their key themes and sub-themes. Analysis of authorship over time reveals rises in the proportions of females publishing, of international contributors from 30 different countries, of contributors affiliated with universities and of multiple authorship. Two-thirds of the articles were qualitative research or expository. Key themes were on political, organisational and structural change and on students, followed by vocational knowledge, learning and instruction, and vocational teachers. What is a revealing insight is that study of the themes and sub-themes over time illustrates how their relative popularity in research tends to parallel policy developments in the VET sector.

The VET sector needs high quality, relevant and robust research. This journal needs sound, coherent and well-written manuscripts, as well as hard, critical and balanced reviews. In this way, the value and status of VET and VET research can be assisted. The journal has steadily become more international, and risen gradually from Quartile 4 to Quartile 2, and the challenge now is to maintain that upward trajectory towards Quartile 1. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time as co-editors, but the time has arrived to now pass the baton to the new co-editors: Professor Sarojni Choy (in Australia) and Dr Selena Chan (in New Zealand). Selena has been one of our associate editors for a few years now and so there is continuity there, while Sarojni has had experience with other journals and knows the ropes. Both are very familiar with the VET sector and have been long-time VET researchers. They will do a fine job and we are confident that the IJTR remains in capable hands. We wish them well and very much look forward to reading future issues under their leadership.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roger Harris

Roger Harris is long-time researcher in the Australian VET sector, and now retired. Roger is Emeritus Professor at the University of South Australia, which is in Adelaide, South Australia.

Berwyn Clayton

Berwyn Clayton is long-time researcher in the Australian VET sector, and now retired. Berwyn is Professor Emerita at Victoria University, which is in Melbourne, Victoria.