From labour market to labour process: finding a basis for curriculum in TVET

This paper draws on research conducted under the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership, a research consortium led by the Human Sciences Research Council, and funded by the Department of Higher Education and Training, South Africa.

Abstract

In the sociology of education the relation between education and work is analysed in many ways and, since the rise of neoliberalism, increasingly in market terms. Skills are the dominant labour market currency, described in terms of competence profiles that seek to link educational qualifications directly to work. Contrary to the widespread appeal of competence-based curriculum approaches, this paper argues that the vocationalist impulse of the neoliberal era impacts as negatively on technical and vocational education (TVET) as it does on general education in its destruction of a basis for curriculum that includes knowledge and not only skills. The paper draws on a recent empirical study of labour processes in four industry sectors in South Africa to show why work-related curricula need to foreground knowledge not just in terms of its applied qualities but as a necessary ingredient of technical systems complexity.

Keywords:

• Sociology of education
• curriculum
• vocational knowledge
• competence
• work

Notes

This paper draws on research conducted under the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership, a research consortium led by the Human Sciences Research Council, and funded by the Department of Higher Education and Training, South Africa.

1. I am endebted to Jim Hordern (2016) for a diagrammatic depiction of education-work relations intended to emphasise ‘the distinctive logics and parameters of the two “domains”’ (2016, p. 2). Hordern, in turn, acknowledges his debt to Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’ (2016, p. 5).While I follow both Hordern and Bernstein in a three-level typology, I do not imply a necessary hierarchical relation between the three levels (Bernstein, 2000, p. 28). My interest is more in horizontal relations at any level.

2. In this literature a distinction is drawn, in Marxian terms, between ‘education and production’. At the level of curriculum and pedagogy, this translates into a distinction between ‘school and work’ or ‘school and the “world of work”’ (Bernstein, 1977; Moore, 1985).

3. See, for instance, Muller and Gamble (2010) for a discussion of this time period in relation to the work of Basil Bernstein.

4. See, for instance, Burke (1989); Gonczi (1994); Jones and Moore (1993, 1995); Wheelahan (2007).

5. The breakdown between contemporary labour market rhetoric and labour market realities is discussed extensively in (Brown, 2013; Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2008; Brown et al., 2011).

6. Education’s broader concern with the ‘whole person’ is not intended to be minimised by an exclusive focus here on knowledge transmission.

7. In the discussion that follows the paper draws on a range of literature from the early 1980s to 1990s that coincides with the rise of competence-based approaches in Anglophone countries. Northern European approaches and traditions are not included in the discussion as they draw on different philosophical and historical traditions (Brockmann, Clarke, & Winch, 2009; Deissinger, 2005; Green, 1995).

8. Cohen finds what she calls ‘an echo of Taylor’s “one best way”’ (Cohen, 1995, p. 50) in the work that the authors of procedures manuals do when they impose discursive order on the ‘flux of organisational life’ to create precisely defined work procedures that reflect a ‘smooth linearity’ and a ‘seamless procedural rationality’. These procedures are subsequently taken up by management as the ‘right way’ (1995, p. 55).

9. See, for instance, Fowler (1987); Miller (1989); Keenoy (1990).

10. Philosophical and sociological discussions about work often distinguish between work and labour (Arendt, 1958/1998; Standing, 2009; White, 1997) I use the two terms interchangeably to refer to work that is related to the ‘production of marketable output or services’ (Standing, 2009, p. 6)Philosophical and sociological discussions about work often distinguish between work and labour (Arendt, 1958/1998; Standing, 2009; White, 1997) I use the two terms interchangeably to refer to work that is related to the ‘production of marketable output or services’ (Standing, 2009, p. 6)Philosophical and sociological discussions about work often distinguish between work and labour (Arendt, 1958/1998; Standing, 2009; White, 1997) I use the two terms interchangeably to refer to work that is related to the ‘production of marketable output or services’ (Standing, 2009, p. 6)