Eighty-eight percent (1997: 71 per cent) believe that in the year 2020 vocational guidance will be a central task of bodies providing education and training. Seventy-three percent (1997: 62 percent) feel that the primary task of vocational instructors and trainers in the future will be to organize and moderate open learning arrangements. And 68 percent (1997: 53 percent) assume that traditional instruction at vocational schools will be superseded by project-based instruction and other practice-related forms of learning by 2020 at the latest.
Those experts who work in companies, trade chambers, inter-company vocational training facilities, schools, and government research centres are particularly certain of this. Experts from universities, universities of applied sciences and colleges of advanced vocational studies are more pessimistic about whether the division between work and learning will fade. They are also less certain that practice-oriented learning will supersede instruction in conventional vocational schools or that in-house training will acquire equal status with other forms of education (see Table 1). All in all however, the differences between the experts are relatively small. This is particularly true with respect to the marked increase in the positive attitude that occurred during the period between the two surveys. This growing optimism can be observed in all groups in the breakdown here (see Table 2).
Background on the survey
Germany's former Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology commissioned a Delphi study in 1997 to examine the effects of the knowledge society on education processes and structures. In the course of this "education Delphi" 669 experts were asked what education systems should be doing and how they thought education systems would develop by the year 2020. The questions revolved around general schools and the university sector. A total of 457 experts - 68 percent of the experts who had been approached as potential respondents - participated in the study.
The repeat survey conducted in the spring of 2004 was limited to eleven aspects of the vocational training system. The focus of this survey was on those aspects that the experts in the 1997 survey considered desirable but not very likely. This time 1,200 experts were contacted. A total of 939 experts - 78 percent of this group - agreed to participate in the survey.
The 2004 survey was conducted in conjunction with the Vocational Training Experts Monitor that is currently being set up. The Vocational Training Experts Monitor will be used in the future to survey experts on topical developments and problems. It is part of the Vocational Training Communications and Information System for Experts ("KIBB") that is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research ("BMBF") and realized in cooperation with BIBB's Needs Analyses, Training Supply and Demand Section (Section 2.1).
Authors:
- Bettina Ehrenthal
- Elisabeth M. Krekel
- Joachim Gerd Ulrich
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