Being a Vocational Educator: A Guide for Lectures in FET Colleges

This SAIDE publication has been described by Dr Jeanne Gamble, an internationally recognised expert in the field of vocational education, as being on:

“The cutting edge of new thinking about the vocational curriculum. It is an essential study guide for educators interested in the theory and practice of learning, teaching and assessment. Such guide is long overdue. It addresses the crucial shortage of study material available to vocational educators and trainers and deserves to be widely used.”

One of the editors, Maryla Bialobrzeska provides a synopsis of the guide.

South Africa has an artisan shortage of about 20,000, according to research done by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in 2004. At the same time the spectre of mass unemployment is growing. The HSRC research also found that each year approximately one million youth leave school. Of these only about 19% go into further or higher education and training, the rest – 81% or 826, 000 – enter the labour market armed only with Grade 12 or lesser qualifications. The research also points to the dearth of skilled vocational educators in South Africa and the urgent need for a more credible and higher-quality technical and vocational education system.

In February this year, the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor described the new government mood in relation to Vocational Education and Training (VET) as follows:
There will be a massive campaign to reform further education and training programmes to reinforce the institutional reform project started in our public further education and training colleges. This will involve better matching of the requirements of SETAs [Sector Education and Training Authorities] and the employers they represent with public institutions providing further education and training. The recapitalisation of FET colleges remains a priority to ensure the best articulation of our national skills strategy with the programmes provided by colleges. (Pandor, N. 2005. Statement by Minister of Education at the GCIS Parliamentary Media Briefings, 14 February 2005. www.info.gov.za/speeches/2005/05021412451001.htm).

As a result of this increasing recognition of the importance of VET, there are two points that it seems we must take seriously when we think about the role of FET colleges.

1. The primary role of a FET college is to support the transition of young people from education to work, but an additional and important role is to prepare young people for further learning.
2. VET bridges education and training. It should provide its students with a solid foundation of knowledge, using sound educational principles of teaching and learning, and it should train for the workplace by getting students to put what they have learned into practice. As workplace conditions change, the way in which students apply this knowledge needs to change as well. FET colleges therefore need to be constantly finding innovative ways to expose students to the working world.

Being a Vocational Educator, aims to provide an orientation to the broader role of VET within society. It will assist lecturers in FET colleges to locate themselves within the challenges facing our country in developing the necessary skills and knowledge for social and economic development.

SAIDE, supported by funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), embarked on the project to develop this guide, it intended that it be used to support the professional development of FET lecturers to meet the challenges of the new college landscape. The guide supports the delivery of formal professional development in a variety of educational modes, from predominantly distance to predominantly face-to-face education. It is also envisaged that this guide will be useful for supporting the professional development of lecturers in FET colleges on an informal basis.

Visits to various FET college campuses and meetings with management and lecturers provided greater depth of understanding of the college context and facilitated the case study research used in the guide.

Overview of content
Chapter 1: What is Vocational Education and Training? – Focuses on contextualising VET in South Africa at the present juncture. The chapter also reflects on some of the complexities in matching skills and knowledge to the demands of both learners and the labour market in an effort to make lecturers more aware of the choices and needs of learners in their colleges.

Chapter 2: Scenes from FET college – Consists of five case studies that illustrate some of the typical conditions and dilemmas that lectures face in the FET college environment, including some of the problems experienced, and some of the ways that lecturers engage creatively with them.

This chapter serves to help the reader identify with one or more of the people portrayed here, and to learn from the way in which the lecturers in the case studies see their situations. It is also intended as a mechanism for reflecting on professional identity as a VET lecturer.

Issues raised in the five case studies are threaded through the next three chapters (chapters 3–5) and help to exemplify key points.

The remaining chapters of the guide focus on the roles of the vocational educator in:

• Learning and teaching – In order to teach effectively, it is important to have a basic understanding of “how students learn”. In this chapter, some ways in which people learn are explored. The chapter then provides an opportunity to examine what this tells us about how to teach. The question, “What is distinctive about learning and teaching in TVET?” is also explored.
• Understanding curriculum – Seeks to understand what we mean when we talk about “curriculum” and to appreciate the complexity of curriculum, in particular, to understand the tension between curriculum planning and practice. It explores different approaches to curriculum design and identifies how social and political changes influence curriculum. Debates about what kinds of knowledge should be included in a vocational curriculum are opened and the lecturer’s role in curriculum is explored. An approach to analysing and interpreting curriculum documents and unit standards is also provided.
• Assessment – Takes account of the central importance of assessment for teaching and learning. It also considers ways of integrating assessment with teaching and learning that focus on learning goals. Some common and unique aspects of assessing in vocational education are identified and understanding the complexity of assessment and the role of judgment and interpretation in assessing are investigated.

This guide operates as a “teacher” (especially for anyone working through it on their own). It structures learning and explains concepts – providing a learning pathway that is easy to follow. It is filled with activities that help to make the learning process an active one in which the learner is provided with the opportunity to apply learning to their working context and to reflect on such implementation.

For further information or to order a copy of Being a Vocational Educator, contact Alphy Mamabolo at SAIDE on 011 403 2813. or download a copy from the SAIDE website http://www.saide.org.za.