Beyond Qualification: The Issue of Emancipation in the Pedagogy of Vocational Education and Training

General summary

International organizations have emphasized the importance of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in promoting skills and competences for the labour market. They have particularly stressed the importance of the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups on a worldwide scale. In line with this specific labour market orientation, little attention has been paid to the issue of emancipation in VET-practices.

To fill that gap, this research provides a detailed analysis of the emancipatory potential of VET practices, while tracing the roots of that particular educational field, its association with the preparation for employment, and later on with empowerment discourses. This study theoretically and empirically examines pedagogical practices, while describing and interpreting pedagogical relations among the teacher, the students, and the content, using the conceptual/heuristic framework of Freire and Rancière, two well-known authors that elaborated on emancipatory education.

The main findings reveal the kind of emancipation that is typical in VET contexts and practices. The research criticizes the widespread assumption that qualification and socialization approaches, typical for VET, disregard subjectivation/emancipation processes and outcomes. I rather argue that there is a very specific kind of emancipation in connection with socialization and qualification practices in VET.

However, I also question the position of VET when reduced to a socio-economic utility-seeking function, while general education is supposed to be the field where critical thinking is allowed. I claim that this division of education resembles the classic division of labour and the distinction between manual and intellectual labour.

The study concludes with some challenges and remarks for VET practices and policies. Based on this empirical research, there is a clear interest to orient further studies towards the educational/pedagogical conditions for emancipation in practice, and towards the theoretical development of the emancipatory potential of VET.