TVET CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION (Tecs 2014) Lecture Notes

By: YUKE ABERA (PhD)

Chapter One: INTRODUCTION

1.1 History, definitions and concepts of TVET

Vocational education first appeared in China in isolated schools around 1870.

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge,
skills and attitude for the world of work.

The Second International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education held in Seoul in 1999 decided that
the best, most comprehensive.

TVET is any education, training and learning activity leading to the acquisition of knowledge, understanding,
skills and attitude which are relevant for employment or self-employment term to use is Technical and
Vocational Education and Training (TVET)

VET serves here as an overarching term to describe all kinds of formal, non-formal and informal training and
learning provided by or in all different institutions, providers and learning locations.

• competitive relationship between two types of competence reproduction;

1, safeguarding learning through practical experience and the imitation of the master monitored by the guilds,

2, the new type organized in schools based on the principle of a written prescription of work capacity.

The creation of city technology colleges and grant maintained schools Technical-Vocational Education and
Training (TVET) in the 1940s TVET was started in Ethiopia.
(i) Vocational training: Vocational training is a system which aims at providing recipients with the
necessary knowledge and skills to exercise a profession in order to be integrated in the labor market.
Vocational training includes; initial Vocational Training and continuing Vocational Training.
(ii) Technical Education: Technical Education is a structured system aimed at providing recipients with
the necessary knowledge and skills and attitude to continue their studies at tertiary education level or to
exercise a profession in order to be integrated into the labor market. Technical Education, on the other
hand puts more emphasis on theoretical education.
(iii) Continuing TVET: Continuing TVET refers to training activities in which people take part in order
to obtain knowledge and/or learn new skills and attitudes for a current or a future job, to increase
earnings, to improve carrier opportunities in a current or another field.

(TVET) refers to a range of learning experiences which are relevant to the world of work and which occur in a
variety of training context, including educational institution and world of work place.
Quality TVET is also recognized to be key for enhancing economic competitiveness for contributing
to the social inclusion, decent employment and income, and poverty reduction.

1.2 Foundations of TVET

a. Philosophy: Philosophy can provide resources also for thinking, reminding us of some of the
fundamental issues that are at stake. The philosophy Education raises questions about the relations of
theory and practice and particularly about the role of theory.
The Philosophy see “education” as all forms of deliberate interventions designed to bring about learning,
and “training” as interventions specifically aimed to achieve mastery of performance in specified roles or
tasks.
b. Psychology: Psychology is a relatively new science, having its early roots in the philosophy of mind,
of science and of language. Psychology is concerned with how humans process information, how they
react to situations and other people, how they feel, behave and think. Each of these aspects of
psychological study is of great interest within education.

Psychology would seem to be fundamental to the study of education and to the development of
educational practices. Understanding the very specific mental processes of teaching and learning is
relevant to both students of education and to intending teachers.

Educational psychology is particularly concerned with questions about what makes learning happen:
what are the factors involved in human learning? How do children learn? What kind of environment is
most conducive to learning? How can schools promote maximum learning for all their pupils, given all
their differences?
c. Economy: To consider the training it as an economic process makes it easier to not only transfer these
necessary ideas to the trainee, but also to the participating companies. Therefore, the training activity
itself becomes more efficient and more effective. For trainers and teachers, a basic understanding of
economic processes is very important.

d.) Vocational Guidance and Counseling Service the vocational counselor is for guiding trainees in
their choice of departments, gives the necessary support during training, makes TVET industry link and
make tracer studies after graduation and re-train to fill the gap.

Chapter Two

2.1 Competency Based Curriculum Development:

A more holistic approach to competence is being used. A competence is always seen in the context in which it
will be used and includes a functional component, a personal or behavioral component, a cognitive component,
and an ethical component.

Soar, (2015) defines the competence as a cluster of related knowledge, attitudes and skills that fulfill
several criteria:

a) Affects a major part of one’s job,

b) Correlates with performance on the job

c) Can be measured against accepted standards, and

d) Can be improved via training development.

 Competency includes both means and an end.

 The means are knowledge, skills, or abilities and
 The end is to effectively perform the activities of a given occupation or function to the standards
expected in employment. They also assert that the term competency loses its true meaning if the
end is ignored
  The concept of competence is used in two different ways:
 first, as a capacity or ability, and
 Second, as a province of responsibility or field of authority.
The ‘competence-based approach' or ‘competence-based education and training' (CBET) can only be
understood as a curriculum strategy which aims at an encoding of intended abilities and facilitating
dispositions.

The responsibility for the success of the learning process lies predominantly with the learner, and the
learning process itself is subordinate to the successful learning outcome.

2.2 North American Perspectives

There are major theme of debates on the international scale has to do with the changed demands on
employees in the context of a globalized, comprehensive labor market which involves increased risks of
friction due to intensified adaptation problems and, as a consequence, can produce considerable
mismatches on the labor market.

The curricular solution for this international risk of friction here under

• Experience Requirements (Training);

• Worker Requirements (Basic Skills, Education, Cross-Functional Skills);

• Worker Characteristics (Abilities, Occupational Interests, Work Values, Work Styles);

• Occupational Characteristics (Labor Market Information);

• Occupation-Specific Requirements (Work-related Knowledge, Skills, Tools, Equipment);

• Occupational Requirements (Generalized Work Activities, Organizational Context)

DACUM" (Developing A Curriculum). The DACUM approach is intended to facilitate the analysis
and description of needs and skill profiles, the following three “logical premises” are taken into
consideration in this approach

:( 1) Expert workers are more capable of describing and defining their job reliably than anyone else. In
so far, as they do their job in the context of normal employment, they can be called "expert workers";

(2) the most effective way to describe a job is to define areas of responsibility and the tasks and
individual steps involved. But the worker behaviors accessible and the knowledge of such behaviors do
not suffice.

3) Expert workers are able to explain their knowledge and skills, i.e., to train others to be experts; the
knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes required for the work are now regarded as variables (“enablers”)
of work successfully carried out.

The development of the profile is furthered by moderation techniques which take recourse to meta-
planning techniques such as brainstorming, clustering, comparing, evaluating, etc. An open
experiential exchange between the occupational practitioners is ensured by the facilitators, who take care
that the major categories of analysis are used precisely and unambiguously.
2.3 European Perspectives and Approaches: the Concept and Development of Modularization: The
authors state that in light of the European attempts at establishing control mechanisms of curricula
during the last quarter of a century.

Were focused on external processes of knowledge production. Among such attempts, the following are
especially noteworthy:

1’ the (formal) demand for lifelong learning, brought forward by the OECD and UNESCO during the
1970s and especially influential in Europe;

ii) The emphasis on self-responsibility in the demand for a self-organized and self-regulated learning
process in widely divergent general and specific contexts;

iii) The frequently emphasized necessity of e-learning for more effective use of learning time and
minimizing costs.

. In order to ensure freedom of movement within the European education and labor markets and
the comparability of processes of knowledge production, these authors assert that debates on
aspects of control mechanisms have centered on issues of standardization in their treatment of
traditional educational institutions. Such debates have resulted in the (further) development of the
following structures: a harmonization of degrees and the establishment of a credit system. At a formal
level, the authors illustrate that, these control mechanisms facilitate interconnections between the
following goals in VET:

Transparency,

Comparability,

Permeability,

Support for mobility,

Reevaluation of informal learning processes,

Individualization and rationalization of courses of study,

Creation of a basis of trust between educational providers and their clientele at home and abroad,
and quality control.

Within the European context, curricular control mechanisms are put into practice in two main
ways:

1, pertaining to organizational and structural aspects, and,

2, to a certain extent, content-related curricular control mechanisms:

The structural control mechanisms focus on modularizations in nonacademic and, more recently,
also in academic institutions of education and further education.

The term modularization refers to widely divergent models of opening up courses of study and
making them more flexible with respect to organizational, temporal, and content-related structures.
These authors state that an example of modularized vocational education has been implemented in
Great Britain with the system of National Vocational Qualification (NVQ). NVQ provides for the
individual compilation of various partial certificates in a ‘qualification portfolio’ and facilitates
access to employment already on the basis of partial certification.

In the modularization model used in Denmark and the Netherlands, the degree also functions as
the sum of the partial certificates obtained.

The basic variants of modularization currently under debate encompass the following three
perspectives:

A, the supplementation model develops from temporal sequencing;

B, the fragmentation model develops from the combination of agency and certification;

C, the differentiation model is more strongly oriented towards curricular considerations.

The variability of the control mechanisms is based on various traditions concerning curriculum
development and its theoretical basis.

German curriculum development in VET is based on a didactic curricular understanding which is

fundamentally characterized by the selection and organization of subject-specific content and areas
of learning. To put this way, whether learners are able to develop the required dispositions depends
on the adequate selection and logical organization of content in the curriculum. Thus, this
curricular perspective is both input and output-oriented

. . In contrast, the international approaches favor an explicit output orientation with their focus on
the identification and certification of application-oriented abilities.

In contrast, they stated, the concept of competence in the international context is directed toward
the simple characterization of desired behaviors and activities.

2.4 Curriculum Development Process in TVET: The next to DACUM, popular competency based
curriculum development is the Systematic Curriculum and Instructional Development (SCID).
Norton (1992) states that to provide structure for developing curriculum for Competency Based
Education (CBE), an effective and efficient model, Systematic Curriculum and Instructional
Development (SCID), has been devised.

SCID has five phases:

Analysis,

Design,

Development,

Implementation, and

Evaluation

. Phase 1, may involve needs analysis, job analysis, task verification, and task analysis. In

Phase 2, task performance information collected during analysis is used to specify the job skills,
knowledge, and attitudes the program will develop in the learner. During this phase, decisions are
made regarding the appropriate training settings, entry-level qualifications, and the sequencing of
learning objectives. Phase 2 concludes with the preparation of a training plan.

Phase 3, results in the production, review, and revision of instructional materials.

Phase 4, Implementation involves putting the education or training program into operation. After
pretesting, the training is conducted as planned and learner performance is evaluated with progress
and posttests.

Phase 5, gathers data on the overall instructional process, program outcomes, student follow-up
data, worker productivity data, and cost-effectiveness data, to conduct a summative evaluation.
Ethiopian competency based curriculum also follows this process.

Recognition of prior learning in TVET: Industry indicated a desire to offer recognition of prior
learning to identify skill gaps and to avoid unnecessary training through recognition of current
skills gained via on-the job training.

Students said they applied for recognition of prior learning because they have some work
experience and did not want to repeat their training, as well as wanting to fast-track through a
qualification, thereby saving time and entering the workforce sooner.

Knight (2005) also states that Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) provides formal recognition for
vocational knowledge or skills gained on-the-job or as a result of other informal or unstructured
learning experiences.

He says that RPL, if granted, can count towards completion of recognized vocational qualifications.
RPL is primarily concerned with the type of learning, that is, learning which is achieved outside the
mainstream education and training, and it aims to validate and give credit for achievements
acquired outside the classroom.

A similar trend is being followed in Ethiopian TVET system that students who acquired skills
informally outside formal training can take Centre of Competence exam and be certified.

Difference betwwen CBT and Traditional training.

Competency Based TVET

In CBT, training is divided into learnable units or elements of competence

Targeted towards specific skill development.

CBT training is flexible, not time-based and learning is student-centered, Furthermore, CBT

Training is flexible, not time-based and learning is student-centered

The role of the instructor is that of a coach, mentor or facilitator.

CBT is organized in modules, performance-based, practically-oriented, and theory is taught

Mainly as underpinning knowledge usually at a workshop and workplace or in a simulated

Environment.

Traditional training
Traditional training is often generic, and not so

Much focused on bridging specific skill gaps to improve job performance.

In the traditional programmers, training is centered on

Subject contents, and the instruction is time-based and teacher-centered

The role of instructor is typically restricted to that of the expert, while class size is large and the teaching
style is lecture-oriented.

Many traditional programmers merely focus on the acquisition of large amounts

Of knowledge, with a small emphasis on structured practical activities often performed

Simultaneously by all class members within a classroom setting.

In the traditional training, there is no structured system of recognition of prior learning (RPL)

And that credit for prior learning is open to interpretation.