Technicism, teachers and teaching quality in vocational education and training

Abstract

This paper explores the paradoxical position of teacher/trainer professionalism in the current English vocational education and training context. It juxtaposes two dimensions in the current discourse. The first is the rhetoric of post-Fordism. People are the most important resource in any organisation, and it is only through their development that learning organisations can survive as part of a learning society. Teacher/trainer professionalism would seem to sit very well within this rhetoric, which advocates empowering core workers and giving them responsibility for their own development. Yet current government policies for the management of vocational education and training are dominated by technical rationalism, which treats teachers/trainers as technicians to be controlled. This technicism is reinforced by competition and funding mechanisms where inputs and outputs are counted and rewarded (or penalised). Currently, vocational education and training in Britain resembles neo-Fordism, a potentially malign combination of the two, where technicism dominates, but is legitimated by a rhetoric of post-Fordism. To improve training quality, we need to break out of the neo-Fordist discourse. In so doing, teacher/trainer professionalism appears as a central concern.