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Information for TVET Practitioners

TVET and Culture?

Cont...Page 2

We may have overlooked the role culture plays as an agent of change.

 

 

 

 

Culture is so complex in its various manifestations in social roles, interactions, relationships, values and aspirations. TVET’s tendency to shun academic research has led to a dearth of knowledge on the impact of cultural norms in TVET development. What do people think about TVET? Is it better to have an unemployed lawyer as a son than an employed construction supervisor? Is it better to have an daughter earning almost nothing as a teacher or working for international wages in a factory as a electronics technician?  

Business/industry is not as dynamic an agent of change as most TVET specialists claim. They seek to externalize HR costs if possible and if they are a global player, they will look for the least expensive solution, including outsourcing 3 and 4 times rather than invest in local change. Local industry  which is integrated into culture (Hyundai in Korea, Toyota in Japan, Daimler Benz in Germany, is almost always eager to be a partner in TVET development...in the home country. In the developing world they are much less helpful usually limiting help to token samples of their products. However, industry does give TVET in the developing world a very important model. Successful businesses respond to current fashion and future trends. They are not locked into history as so many TVET systems are. Equally, global business responds to the culture of each country. MacDonald is massively different in China than in Chicago! Yet so many  TVET specialists only replicate the model of their own country, with no adjustment for a local culture.  Even worse, TVET often tries to duplicate the existing school system with iron clad pre-requisites and inflexible academic achievement levels that bear no relationship with the reality of what is to be learned...or the learning styles of many potential TVET success stories. As an example, in Cambodia or Lao, TVET cannot be successful if it is to be just a duplication of either Scotland or Australia or Koreas' model. Nor can it be successful if it just duplicates all of the walls and restrictions of the existing academic model in that country.

The conclusion is that the designers and advisors to designers of TVET systems must be very sensitive to local culture and do far more research into the relationship between TVET and the value structure of the target country. While models from thee academic world may not be useful, that does not mean that academic research on culture and social anthropology should be ignored as design inputs. To TVET specialists...do your homework on culture BEFORE you develop your grand design.

 

 

 

 

We often look at what is logical but what is logical may not  work.