Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore different planning rationalities in current vocational and further education and training. This is done by analysing the assumptions about learning and learners in different approaches to planning of education and training.

Methods

First the paper explores the general shift in educational policy in the last 25 years from a strong belief in central state planning to a current more decentralised and market based regulation and a growing interest in life long learning. This shift places the local actors: businesses, vocational colleges and individual learners at the centre of interest - still though in the Danish context in collaboration with trade unions, employers organisations and the state.

Secondly the paper examines different conceptions of planning of vocational education and training in a number of developmental projects in the Danish manufacturing industry. The projects had the aim of furthering and improving the training and education of employees in collaboration between employers, employees and technical and further education colleges.

Results

Three different conceptions of planning were identified.

1. A goal-rational ideal of planning mainly based on the demands of the businesses and their strate-gies. This approach focussed on the technical and formal procedures of the planning process. It relied on a notion of skills needs assessment as a neutral method, which was often supported by external experts and planning tools. This approach to planning was focussed on identifying the employees' deficits and considered education and training as means to reach pre-determined or-ganisational goals.
2. An interest-based logic of planning based on negotiations and struggles between divergent social interests in vocational education and training. This approach recognised the existence of compet-ing interests in education and training among different groups of employees and managers. It conceived of planning as a social process that aimed at combining and mediating between these divergent interests. Though more inclusive to multiple types of training needs, this approach as-sumed learning to be a result of rational planning, and assumed organisational change to be a re-sult of the employees´ acquisition of new knowledge.
3. An emerging conception of planning that recognises the limited scope of goal-rational planning relation to learning - due to tacit, unrecognised and unconscious dynamics in interactions be-tween learners and organisations. As a consequence the emerging conception of planning seeks to overcome the problems relating to separating planning from learning, planners from learners and educa-tional means from educational goals.

The result of the third approach was paradoxical: on the one hand it fundamentally questioned the possibility of any traditional forms of planning of learning. On the other hand it evolves at a time where more efficient, customised and Just-in-Time learning is demanded, as education and training is assigned a key role in political strategies for a learning society and business strategies for knowledge based production. The paper sketches a possible solution to this paradox by presenting and discussing an example of educational planning 'from below' in an attempt to develop a concept of reflexive planning or 'planning as learning'.

Bibliography

• Beck, Ulrich, 1994: The reinvention of politics: Towards a theory of Reflexive Modernization, in Beck, Ulrich, a.o. (eds), 1994: Reflexive Modernization, Polity Press, Cambridge.
• Gleeson, Brendan, 2000: Reflexive modernization: The re-enlightenment of planning?, i International Planning Studies, Vol 5, no. 1, Carfax Publ., Abingdon.
• Jørgensen, Christian Helms 2002: Better jobs through training and education, in: Jefferys, Steve & Beyer, Frederik M & Thörnqvist, Christer (eds.) European working lives: continuities and change in management and industrial relations in France, Scandinavia, and the UK, Northamp-ton, Mass., Edward Elgar.
• Jørgensen, Christian Helms 2006: Utbildningsplanbering - samspel mellan utbildning och arbete, (educational planning - interplay between education and work) Lund, Studentlitteratur.
• Fischer, Frank & John Forester (Eds), 1993: The argumentative turn in policy analysis and plan-ning, Duke University Press, Dur¬ham, N. C.
• Wilson, Arthur & Ronald Cervero, 1997: The song remains the same, The selective tradition of technical rationality in adult educa¬tion program planning theory, i International Journal of Lifelong Education, Vol 16, nr 2.

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Christian Jørgensen, Roskilde University, Denmark Paper #461 - "Paradox of planning in vocational education and training" - ECER 2008, session_4b

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Christian Jørgensen, Roskilde University, Denmark Paper #461 - "Paradox of planning in vocational education and training" - ECER 2008, session_4b