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Reframing skills ecosystems for sustainable and just futures

Author

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  • Ramsarup, Presha
  • McGrath, Simon
  • Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

Abstract

The current dominant approach to vocational education and training (VET) does not work in theory, policy or practice in current contexts of unsustainability and global inequality. Nor is it fit for future purpose. Drawing on a large-scale research collaboration between four universities, funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund, with co-funding and funding in-kind from global south partners, this paper is a contribution to imagining new VET futures. It looks iteratively, reflexively and expansively at how our experience of VET system development involving boundary crossing between formal and informal VET systems interfaces with recent Northern work on the conceptualisation of social skills ecosystems, and how this concept can be expanded to address the challenge of skills for just transitions in the global South. We advance the skills ecosystems approach ontologically by drawing on critical realism (a growing trend in VET and development research). This allows us both to move beyond the structure-agency divide that has bedeviled the field, and with it the tendency to monoscalar analysis. Rather, we argue that accounts of VET and development must address both structure and agency, and their interplay, and must be multiscalar. This reading allows us to focus on the central importance of relationality. We argue that it is through networks and relationships that the precarious worlds of learning and work are brought together.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramsarup, Presha & McGrath, Simon & Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, 2023. "Reframing skills ecosystems for sustainable and just futures," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:injoed:v:101:y:2023:i:c:s0738059323001128
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102836
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joan G. Dejaeghere, 2020. "Reconceptualizing Educational Capabilities: A Relational Capability Theory for Redressing Inequalities," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 17-35, January.
    2. McGrath, Simon & Yamada, Shoko, 2023. "Skills for development and vocational education and training: Current and emergent trends," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    3. Maurer, Markus & Haolader, Faruque A. & Shimu, Sheikh Shahana, 2023. "VET for all: Assessing the case of Bangladesh," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
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    1. McGrath, Simon & Yamada, Shoko, 2023. "Skills for development and vocational education and training: Current and emergent trends," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).

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