Anti-work, TVET and employer engagement

ABSTRACT

The paper brings together a range of debates on the left that address TVET’s future in current context. At the heart of these debates rest two issues. The first addresses competing views of capital and the second focuses on the contradiction between the interests of capital and workers. The paper argues that capital is not all of a piece and that decent work that validates human flourishing is not completely unknown. However, as with other forms of waged labour, such work is predicated on capitalist relations and interests and it is important not to overlook waged labour as a site of struggle and contestation. Consequently, when circumstances alter as a result of the development of new technology, itself is a social process, or when the balance of power shifts in favour of capital, such labour may be dispensed with or become so deskilled that it is hardly recognisable. The paper is structured in the following way. The initial sections address the paper’s genesis, a discussion of corporate social responsibility and anti-work that enables an engagement with differing conceptualisations of capital. The subsequent sections, Restrictive and Expansive Learning and Thinking about TVET focus on the contradictory interests of workers and capital. The paper closes with a discussion of TVET and considers responses to current conditions that necessitate an engagement with an earlier tradition of adult and community education.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-work
• TVET
• employer
• post-work
• capitalism
• restrictive learning
• expansive learning
• corporate social responsibility

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the reviewers for their careful reading and at times challenging comments on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. VET and TVET are used as equivalent terms. I have used one or other depending on the source of the argument and the terms use by cited authors.

2. “Education and Employers is an independent UK-based charity launched in 2009. We want all our young people to become excited by learning and their potential, to see what is possible, and to make informed decisions about their futures.

We work with state schools, employers, the national bodies that represent them and a wide range of other partners including the government and third sector organisations”. (https://www.educationandemployers.org/about-the-charity/)

The Edge foundation’s web site states, “We are the independent foundation working to inspire the education system to give all young people across the UK the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need to flourish in their future life and work.

We believe in a broad and balanced curriculum, interactive and engaging real world learning, high quality technical and professional training and rich relationships between education and employers”. (https://www.edge.co.uk/about-edge/

3. Biesta (2005), Biesta (2022) has drawn a distinction between the language of learning and education with the later terms embodying an expansive and more open understanding of education.

4. It is outside the remit of this paper to address the potential contradictions and tensions that could be present in a post-capitalist society other than to acknowledge that in such a society new forms of antagonism and conflict may arise.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Avis

James Avis is an Emeritus Professor at the University .of Huddersfield and Professor of Post-Compulsory Education at the University of Derby. His research interests lie in post-compulsory/post-secondary education and life-long learning. He has written extensively on the policy contextualisation of further education, addressing curriculum issues, methodological questions, teacher professionalism, as well as the lived experience of teachers and learners. He has a keen interest in the political economy of this sector. His most recent book is Vocational Education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Education and Employment in a Post-Work Age.