Vocational education and training - new challenges
This special edition singles out some of the current subjects to be discussed within the professional community and by the interested public at national, European and international level. The articles assembled in this issue focus on new challenges in vocational education and training and cover recent topics like “New focus of learning in the digital age” and “The recognition of foreign professional qualifications”. By pointing out these topics and publishing them in English, we hope to give you an insight in trends and progress within the German system of vocational education and training (VET) and to encourage the discussion on many levels.
The key challenges for vocational education and training (VET) are demographic change with all its consequences including the implications for securing the skilled workforce, and internationalisation in business and society and the associated task of integration. We must bear these aspects in mind for the continuing development of the VET system – that was one of the central messages at the 2011 BIBB Congress in Berlin. What are the likely repercussions for the continuing development of the model of the recognised occupation? Within the framework of communication between research, policy and practice pursued at BIBB, this question was explored in order to gather answers from the principal players in VET policy, who influence the future elaboration of recognised occupations. This yielded a range of comments that are not only interesting but also practicable, and are presented in this article.
Recognition of foreign professional qualifications
Many members of the working population in Germany possess professional qualifications which they have gained abroad and which are urgently needed on the German labour market. In the past, these people could often not be optimally employed due to the absence of standards and procedures to assess their qualifications. The Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Professional Qualifications Act (“Recognition Act“), which entered into force on 1 April 2012, introduces a standardized national procedure and criteria for the assessment of foreign professional qualifications – at least for professions that are regulated by Federal law. It improves the opportunities for people who gained their qualifications abroad to work in their trained profession. The Act also makes Germany a more attractive workplace for international skilled staff. This article provides background information on the history of the legislation, introduces some of the most important contents and finally identifies further action required to implement the Act.
People who are trying to obtain recognition of a foreign qualification so that they can work in Germany require a great deal of information about the legal bases of the various possible recognition procedures, and about the German vocational education and training system and labour market. Only then can they work out whether a procedure is worthwhile and where they can apply for an equivalency review. The article points out the challenges faced by individuals on the way to applying successfully for recognition of their occupational qualifications, and what information and advisory provision is available to support them.
According to the 2011 labour-market report from the German Association of Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK Arbeitsmarktreport 2011), the number of companies seeing a skills shortage as one of the greatest economic risks has doubled since 2010. To tackle this problem, companies are weighing up a variety of strategies including stepping up the recruitment of skilled migrants already resident in Germany as well as potential future immigrants. The questions pursued in this article are to what extent human resources management in companies is attuned to this group of employ ees, and how the new Recognition Act can help companies in the recruitment, employment and individual support of qualified skilled workers with biographies involving migration.
The original purpose of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was solely to facilitate standardised international comparisons of statistics across education systems. Over the course of decades it proved so useful that, more recently, it has also been invested with an evaluative function and treated as a reference standard which informs the development of new qualifications, qualification frameworks or entire education systems. Nevertheless, it only gives a limited reflection of the reality within education systems and the diversity of existing qualifications, and even the new version of ISCED approved at the end of 2011 in no way alters that fact. The aim of the article is therefore to understand the underlying basis of the ISCED classification and the comparative scales and values that may be used to map a qualification to a level. Ambiguities mainly arise at the point where a qualification’s valence, in the sense of rigour and complexity of content, justifies the mapping of a qualification to a particular level.
The Internet has become a staple element of information and communication infrastructures throughout society and culture, including the workplace. Low-cost, high-performance mobile devices coupled with the universal Internet accessibility and simple applications (apps) have brought about marked changes in our information and communication habits. In response to these changes, new forms of learning have emerged in step with these developing technologies. This article introduces several of these new forms of learning – mobile learning, social learning and game-based learning – and reflects on their potential for vocational learning.
Analyses of the frequency and type of media use in persons up to 30 years of age prove that the socalled Digital Natives do not exist. Their media use is a leisure pursuit only, and is not being transferred to learning; it principally serves the purpose of communication with peers, the most important part in the socialisation of young adults. Against this background, the article sheds light on the nature and function of media use in young adults and argues that the learners’ individual motives and dispositions most decisively influence the use of new media in learning contexts.
The fundamental economic transformation of the past few decades has caused seismic shifts in the interrelationship between geographical mobility and qualification, the conditions, forms and consequences of which are mapped out in this article. The great mass migrations of the 19th and 20th centuries were characterised by the movement of people with low qualifications to become a “cheap” and “willing” workforce for the extraction and exploitation of the natural resources specific to their destinations. Although it is a valid observa - tion that migration has commonly been associated with gaining qualifications, in that era knowledge transfer due to the movement of specialists was only ever marginal in scale by comparison to the mass migrations of unqualified workers. In view of the accelerated pace of structural economic change since the Second World War, however, and the increasing level of professionalisation and specialisation in the most diverse fields of work, the acquisition of qualifications has since become a considerably more significant factor.
In Germany there is a broad consensus among the partners involved regarding stays abroad during the individual's vocational training. Stays abroad are considered the ideal way to acquire the international occupational competence which is needed for many jobs today. Despite the importance attached to stays abroad, it had not how ever been known to date how many persons undergoing initial vocational training complete a phase of their learning in another country per year. A study conducted on behalf of the Education for Europe – National Agency (NA) at BIBB examined this question. The following article presents key findings from this study. It also examines what action would have to be taken so that the widelyaccepted practice of completing a phase of learning in a foreign country can be incorporated into the vocational education and training field as a normal, integrated learning segment.
The aim behind the principle of “training for all” is to enable all young people to achieve integra tion into employment and society through an initial vocational qualification in a skilled occupation. It is the vision of inclusive education to give all young people access to high-quality education, putting everyone in a position to develop his or her potential. In the UNESCO “Education for All” pro gramme this is formulated as a universal aspiration, irrespective of a person’s gender, social and economic conditions or particular learning needs. This article looks at which steps have been taken, what has been achieved so far and where further action is needed in order to progress towards this goal. It also asks how important the concept of inclusion is for the assistance of disadvantaged individuals in the vocational training system.
The concept of inclusion has become established in various fields such as special needs and mainstream school education, social work, migration research and the sociology of education. Even in business administration and management theory, the inclusion of diversity is attracting ever in creas - ing interest, not least from an economic viewpoint. The question this raises, however, is whether this interest is not just “old wine in new skins”? Why did integration dominate the discourse until quite recently, and why the growing emphasis on inclusion today? This article compares the concepts of inclusion and integration and looks at the different logic of educational practice entailed by each concept. Attention is also directed to the structures and mechanisms of an exclusive German educa tion system. The implementation of an inclusive pedagogy calls for changes to these precise aspects, which will be outlined in the conclusion.