A laminated, emergentist view of skills ecosystems
- Authors: Ramsarup, Presha , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , McGrath, Simon
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/370074 , vital:66295 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2022.2145768"
- Description: In this paper we present a model of vocational education and training (VET) that can be used to guide decisions relating to VET in Africa today. This model takes the critique of the neoclassical, neoliberal model of VET as its starting point. Guided by Bhaskar's Critical Naturalism, we use immanent critique to consider the adequacy of proposed alternatives to the neoclassical approach, such as: the heterodox approach, which foregrounds explanations based on human capital and political economy; and Hodgson and Spours' social ecosystem model, which addresses some of the limitations of the heterodox account by including, social and ecosystem elements. Finally, we offer a version of the social ecosystem model that, according to our analysis, explains more of the empirical evidence than previous models. Our version of the social ecosystem model differs from earlier versions in terms of its explicit reference to the critical realist ideas of position- practices and emergence.
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- Date Issued: 2022
Vocational education and training for African development: A literature review
- Authors: McGrath, Simon , Ramsarup, Presha , Zeelen, Jacques , Wedekind, Volker , Allais, Stephanie , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Monk, David , Openjuru, George , Russon, Jo-Anna
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182418 , vital:43828 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2019.1679969"
- Description: The SDGs mark the clearest global acceptance yet that the previous approach to development was unsustainable. In VET, UNESCO has responded by developing a clear account of how a transformed VET must be part of a transformative approach to development. It argues that credible, comprehensive skills systems can be built that can support individuals, communities, and organisations to generate and maintain enhanced and just livelihood opportunities. However, the major current theoretical approaches to VET are not up to this challenge. In the context of Africa, we seek to address this problem through a presentation of literatures that contribute to the theorisation of this new vision. They agree that the world is not made up of atomised individuals guided by a “hidden hand”. Rather, reality is heavily structured within political economies that have emerged out of contestations and compromises in specific historical and geographical spaces. Thus, labour markets and education and training systems have arisen, characterised by inequalities and exclusions. These specific forms profoundly influence individuals’ and communities’ views about the value of different forms of learning and working. However, they do not fully define what individuals dream, think and do. Rather, a transformed and transformative VET for Africa is possible.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Green skills research: Implications for systems, policy, work and learning
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ramsarup, Presha
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392875 , vital:68808 , ISBN 9780429279362 , https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429279362
- Description: This chapter brings the diverse contributions offered in the different sections of this book together into a pathway for new policy development research, new forms of critical skills research and ongoing engagement with education and training system development. The chapter first provides a meta-reflection on the different types of green skills research that are needed to, in combination, make a stronger impact on the national system of skills research and planning. Secondly, the chapter makes a strong argument for aligning green skills research to the Sustainable Development Goals, and their critical and contextual articulation at national level, with emphasis on working with the cross-cutting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, Target 4.7 that motivates for governments to include a focus on education and sustainable development across the lifelong learning system in order to enable and support learning and skills for enabling the other SDGs to be realised in practice. Lastly, the chapter considers the shift in the way that work is considered when political economy meets political ecology, and we argue that work transforms towards not only a productive focus, or a social focus, but also an ontologically grounded regenerative focus, much needed at the start of the twenty-first century.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Transitioning into work: A learning and work transitioning process perspective
- Authors: Ramsarup, Presha , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392944 , vital:68814 , ISBN 9780429279362 , https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429279362
- Description: Due to the relative newness and contemporary emergence of environmental concerns and sustainable development challenges, policies and forms of work, little is known about the transitioning patterns from education to work. As environmental occupations are found in multiple sectors, and at multiple levels, it is necessary to understand how diversity of disciplinary foundation, historical factors and the nature of the field-based occupation as it is emerging influence transitions into work, especially for highly specialised occupations that are in high demand, such as wildlife vets or wetland ecologists, and in critical occupations that shape sustainable development for whole communities, such as sustainable development employees in municipalities. This chapter utilises a complex notion of learning pathways as neither completely individualistic nor wholly structurally determined, and positions our interest in transitions research within a framing of critical vocationalism that seeks to address not only individual experiences of transitioning, or individual agentive factors, but also structural dynamics and structural processes that can help to ‘ease’ the transitioning process in these critical areas of green skills development.
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- Date Issued: 2019
The green economy learning assessment South Africa: Lessons for higher education, skills and work-based learning
- Authors: Rosenberg, Eureta , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ramsarup, Presha
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182765 , vital:43872 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-03-2018-0041"
- Description: The purpose of this paper is to share and analyse the methodology and findings of the 2016 Green Economy Learning Assessment South Africa, including learning needs identified with reference to the competency framings of Scharmer (2009) and Wiek et al. (2011); and implications for university and work-based sustainability education, broadly conceptualised in a just transitions framework. The assessment was conducted using desktop policy reviews and an audit of sustainability education providers, online questionnaires to sector experts, focus groups and interviews with practitioners driving green economy initiatives. Policy monitoring and evaluation, and education for sustainable development, emerged as key change levers across nine priority areas including agriculture, energy, natural resources, water, transport and infrastructure. The competencies required to drive sustainability in these areas were clustered as technical, relational and transformational competencies for: making the case; integrated sustainable development planning; strategic adaptive management and expansive learning; working across organisational units; working across knowledge fields; capacity and organisational development; and principle-based leadership. Practitioners develop such competencies through formal higher education and short courses plus course-activated networks and “on the job” learning. The paper adds to the literature on sustainability competencies and raises questions regarding forms of hybrid learning suitable for developing technical, relational and transformative competencies. A national learning needs assessment methodology and tools for customised organisational learning needs assessments are shared. The assessment methodology is novel in this context and the workplace-based tools, original.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Enabling green skills: Pathways to sustainable development
- Authors: Ramsarup, Presha , Ward, Mike , Rosenberg, Eureta , Jenkin, Nicola , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436702 , vital:73294 , ISBN 978-0-620-79605-7 , https://www.vetafrica4-0.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Green-Skills-Sourcebook-Jul18.pdf
- Description: The purpose of this source book is to support skills planning entities to work with employers to identify and anticipate green skills needs and to build these needs into occupational de-scriptors and sector skills plans. Thus, the source book com-plements the existing Enabling Document (DEA, 2010b) and provides guidelines to support Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) to embed environmental considerations, related occupations and green skills into their skills planning processes.
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- Date Issued: 2017