The project VET-Net made use of a pragmatic approach in the Further Education of VET pedagogues in Sub-Saharan Africa (and elsewhere). Some remarks and open questions related to it:
Vocational education is dominated by academic disciplines all over the word. VET pedagogues need to teach their learners technical science, economical science and other academic disciplines which are reduced didactically. Following this idea, it seems obvious that the pedagogues need to have appropriate academic knowledge in technical, economical and other sciences. This means that VET pedagogues are mainly professionals, who have more or less pedagogical or didactical knowledge and lack appropriate methodological skills. Further Education programmes of these VET pedagogues could focus on updating academic and pedagogical knowl- edge and on updating didactical and methodological skills.
Parts of Germany (mainly Northern Germany) and other few countries, e.g. re- gions in China (mainly in Beijing) are questioning the academic scientific ap- proach on Vocational Education and are arguing for a vocational scientific ap- proach instead5. The (relevant) vocation ⫺ the relevant and prospective pro-
fessional tasks⫺must be in the focus of the Vocational Education. The learners should acquire competencies independently, which enable them to (co-)shape their professional tasks in future.
Vocational knowledge, combined with technical and economical knowledge, is necessary for this and must be applied reasonably after having taken possible alternatives into account. The relevance of this knowledge is put to test “practi-
5 Concerning the debate between a vocational science approach and an academic science approach as basic orientation of vocational education and the further education of teachers see Hartmann u. Eicker, 2001.
cally” while acting. It will be even better if every action is justified individually and in general (social justification, operational justification, etc). Educators must arrange the processes for the learners to acquire shaping competence. The lear- ners must be put into situations in which they have to acquire shaping com- petence for themselves with the help of the educators. This educational approach, which is orientated on vocational sciences, does not simply require a professional VET pedagogue, who has (isolated) pedagogical, didactical and methodological skills and knowledges. Rather, educational tutors are needed, who are able to fol- low the whole (complex) educational path: Starting from specific working pro- cesses (which are or will be relevant for learners), to main working and learning tasks (which need to be identified) and the arrangement of educational situations (where the learners solve the tasks and acquire the relevant competencies while solving the tasks). This can be done in the classrooms, in suitable educational environments, through suitable educational media and by using the full potential of the educational environments of schools, companies and other environments; or by using the joint potential of all the various environments (see Eicker, 2006, more detailed in Eicker, 2007, especially p. 22, and Eicker, 2009). To follow this path, VET pedagogues in Sub-Saharan Africa need to acquire these complex (working and teaching) competencies at first through Further Education in order to tutor their learners in the acquisition of shaping competence.
On the one hand, the projects in Mozambique, Ethiopia and South Africa have developed much acceptance for the vocational scientific approach. The justification for this was that only a shaping-/competence-based approach in Vocational Edu- cation can lead to real education, and that the main focus of Vocational Education of professionals and workers must be on working processes (and not on tech- niques etc.). The reasonable consequence was to develop a constructivist edu- cational concept (based on scientific theories), which deals with working processes as an action and therefore learning/shaping is a social and individual action. This approach formed the fundamental basis of the planned educational concept, which still needs to be tested in practice. First steps could realize this (see Eicker & Haseloff, 2013).
For this constructivist/vocational scientific approach, relevant competencies are needed or need to be developed sustainably under the pre-existing conditions for Further Education in the near future. The projects proved that these competencies could hardly be found in the universities of Maputo, in the project-related branches, in Jimma and in Johannesburg respectively in the university towns (apart from the participants of the project and selective educated VET teachers in VET schools).
The problem is that vocational pedagogues with various educational backgrounds work at the universities in particular. The spectrum of the competencies expands from restricted competencies solely in academic sciences to restricted competenc- ies solely in the pedagogical or didactical/methodical field.
The projects made clear that an academic orientation and a vocational scientific orientation cannot be seen as alternatives for each other (they are not mutually
exclusive). The further development of the (regional, national and international) VET systems includes the universities and makes use of their leading (scientific) role, it includes the Vocational Education and Further Education of vocational scientists and vocational pedagogues and it includes the education and training of the trainees. Therefore, it can be expected that, basically, work processes will be taken into account in the context of educational expectations, which include related professional, technical, economic and/or social knowledge, and which lead to the acquisition of action competence or even better to shaping competence.
Fundamental and more or less open questions are: How can (prospective) work be taken into account, as it will be justified by (prospective) vocation? How can the relevant academics/academic disciplines still be included appropriately with- out losing acknowledged academic knowledge? How can it be achieved that shap- ing competence will really be acquired (and that not only any action is the aim but⫺ as alternative ⫺shaping with regards to future expectations)? What basic consequences derive from a justified basic position, which is defined in that way, for the (further) development of VET and for the education and Further Education of VET pedagogues (with regards to the real possibilities of implementation and realisation)? Further questions still need to be solved.