Group 10: Lifelong learning and national/regional CVET policies

lifelong learning - continuing vocational education and training (CVET)

Since the mid of the 20th century, within globalization national and regional economic systems and labour markets have been showing profound changes owing to unemployment, transformations in the organization of work and workers’ qualifications, competences and skills. To deal with these changes an increased emphasis has been put in adult education and lifelong learning. Continuing vocational education and training (CVET) is considered a main tool of lifelong learning. From a policy-maker viewpoint, CVET is not only a mean of increasing productivity, economic growth, employability, innovation and competitiveness, but also of improving equity, social cohesion and participation of disadvantaged groups in the labour market and in society. For firms, CVET is considered important in terms of up-dating and renewing the knowledge, skills and competences of their workers, responding to increasing global competition and adapting to fast-changing technological and socioeconomic devel-opment. For individuals, CVET is supposed to contribute to employ-ability, employment status and professional and social development.

However, CVET presents different kinds of arrangements across countries and regions according to different welfare regimes and relationship among State, market and civil society. In this comparative group we expect students:

1. to identify similarities and differences in CVET policy dis-courses
2. to compare the role played by state, market and civil society in CVET forms of provision
3. to identify and compare the most relevant CVET target groups and their definition

Comparative research question:

How can national/regional CVET policies discourses be characterised according to the types of arguments, forms of provision, providers and target groups?

Context of comparison:

The context of comparison privileged in this Group Work will be the national/regional level, namely CVET policy discourses (laws, regula-tions, financed programmes); CVET providers (State, market and civil society) and target groups (employed, unemployed, women, migrants, older workers, low skilled workers,…).

Categories of comparison:

1. CVET national/regional policy discourses – discourses in general and policy discourses in particular not only describe social reality but they actively contribute to it production, namely by the problems they address, the solutions they propose and the type of arguments they mobilize to justify policy action (laws, regulations, programs, initiatives, forms of provision).
2. CVET providers – According to countries/regions, state (na-tional, federal, regional,municipal), market (firms/ enterprises, employers’ associations) and civil socie-ty (NGO, trade unions) play different roles and are respon-sible for different CVET forms of provision.
3. CVET target groups – CVET policy discourses and forms of provision construct different target groups defined by spe-cific attributes (individual, educational, social, economic, ethnic).

References:

Nilsson, Staffan and Nyström, Sofia (2013). Adult learning, educa-tion, and the labour market in the employability regime. European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 4 (2), pp. 171-187; Bohlinger, Sandra (2015). Governing Vocational Education and Training in Europe. In Sandra Bohlinger, Ulrika Haake, Christian Helms Jørgensen,Hanna Toiviainen and Andreas Wallo (Eds), Working and Learning in Times of Uncertainty Challenges to Adult, Professional and Vocational Education (pp.209-222). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Prof. Natalia Alves, University of Lisboa, Portugal

Natália Alves is an assistant professor at Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa. She holds a PhD on Sociology of Education. Her main fields of research are school to work transitions and IVET and CVET policies, forms of provision and practices.