JVER v25n2 - Editor's Notes

Editor's Notes

James R. Stone, III
University of Minnesota

In this issue, authors pursue three very different kinds of questions important to vocational education. P.J. Squire describes the vocational training needs of out of school youth in Botswana. Most, by his study, were undereducated and tended towards occupations in farming and building and construction. Most, he notes are unemployed. From his interviews with these youth, Squire offers four recommendations for the government to follow in its efforts to help these youth gain meaningful employment. In a study of university level programs in automotive technology, Frisbee, Belcher, and Sanders examine the question of how these universities recruit students. In a study of Canadian post secondary students, Chin, Munby, Hutchinson, and Steiner-Bell sought to determine the relationship between their participation in high school cooperative education and their post secondary professional programs.

Adolescents in an African nation, college students in the United States, and college students in Canada define populations of interest in this issue of the JVER . Vocational education is an international enterprise and the important questions seem to transcend borders: the problem of out of school youth, recruiting for baccalaureate level vocational education, and the efficacy of formal school to work connections.

A New Section

Beginning in this issue, the JVER will include a new section devoted to addressing issues of great concern to vocational education. We inaugurate this section by addressing what is perhaps the greatest issue confronting our field today. That is, what is vocational education in the United States today?

The criticality of this question is highlighted in two recent federal publications. The first comes from the Federal Register announcement of a competition for two new awards under the National Research Centers authority of the Perkins III legislation ( Federal Register, 1999 ). In this document, the name of the previous Center was changed to the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education and, among other things, was charged with helping to redefine vocational education. It is clear that the writers of this federal competition recognized that nomenclature, if not life, has changed for vocational education.

We find further evidence of federal recognition of this issue as expressed in the current NAVE ( National Assessment of Vocational Education, 1999 ) evaluation plan. Here the authors noted that:

Vocational education is a field in transition, prompted by sweeping changes in state and local education priorities. New goals, program offerings, and terminology increasingly characterize vocational education. ( p. 2 ).

Additional evidence of the importance of this issue comes from the field of vocational education. The National Centers for Career and Technical Education have engaged in a systematic effort to identify the professional development, dissemination and research needs of vocational education. One of the emergent issues is summarized in a forthcoming Centers newsletter:

The conversations with instructors, both secondary and postsecondary, reflected the variety of influences that are impacting their classrooms. Some asked, What is career and technical education today? How do we present students and their parents a clear picture of a field that is undergoing such rapid change? While generally supportive, of the name change from vocational-technical to career and technical , the teachers we talked with said the new term has increased the uncertainty about content and objectives of the field.

And the content is certainly changing. High stakes testing to ensure competence in basic academic skills is impacting all of secondary education. Career and technical teachers have the dual responsibilities of helping their students to pass these tests while still teaching the occupational content that employers say they need. Integration of academic and technical instruction is often proposed as the answer, but teachers need help and guidance, proven models and practices, if integration is to be achieved ( Lewis, forthcoming )

Why this confusion? Let me suggest that the definitional question arises out of nearly 15 years of education reform. Beginning with A Nation at Risk ( National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983 ), and the Forgotten Half ( W. T. Grant Foundation, 1988 ), Apprenticeship for Adulthood ( Hamilton, 1990 ) and culminating in the 1994 School to Work Opportunities Act, the relationship between schools and vocations has changed.

Reform efforts emerged driven by a focus on general education such as the Coalition of Essential Schools, the federal Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration initiative (CSRD), and the more general effort to implement standards to which all students are held accountable. Other reforms were driven by federal vocational legislation, most notably the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Act of 1990 and the introduction of Tech Prep. Other vocational education reforms, such as the High Schools that Work, arose outside of federal legislation.

The school-to-work movement of the 1990s led to other kinds of reform efforts targeted at connecting young people to their communities and to two-year colleges. At the same time, many schools, school districts and states initiated reform efforts unconnected to any particular movement or legislation. Academies and magnet schools, many born in the attempt to facilitate desegregation have been shown to provide benefits unanticipated in their early years (see Crain, Allen, Thaler, Sullivan, Little, and Quigley, 1999 ).

In addition to legislative and advocacy group reform initiatives, industry has moved to a more direct role to serve its ends. In an effort to meet short term needs for network administrators, Cisco, Microsoft and others are moving into the nation's high schools and two-year colleges with narrowly defined certificate programs that provide what some view as an archaic (but lucrative) training program model designed to move the completer directly into the workforce.

In the context of the many, and often overlapping, reform efforts lies vocational education. With its roots in 19th century social and education issues, secondary vocational education saw enrollments dwindle and decline in the traditional content areas during the latter part of the 20th century while overall earned credits in high schools increased ( Levesque, K., Lauen, D., Teitelbaum, P., Alt, M., Librera, S., MPR Associates, Nelson, D., 2000 ). All the while, career academies, career magnets, career clusters and pathways were becoming important parts of the educational landscape. Some of these new education structures linked to traditional vocational education and its focus on education for and about work and pre-baccalaureate education. Many, however, began to focus more on what has come to be called the new vocationalism or education through occupations ( Grubb, 1995 ). Education through occupations, embodied in many of the New American High Schools, viewed vocational education as the context in which traditional academic learning might be given life, especially for those who do not prosper in the traditional academic environment. These schools are described helping students acquire the communication, problem solving, and technology skills needed to succeed in a global, information-based economy ( New American High Schools, 2000 )

The picture at the postsecondary level is more difficult to ascertain. Although half of all two-year college students majored in a vocational program in 1996, that percentage is down from the 54% just six years earlier ( Levesque, et al, 2000 ). Interestingly, about 60% of bachelor's degrees awarded are in vocational majors such as business, engineering, health occupations, education, and computer science ( Stern, 1999 ).

Here we are then deep into a new economy driven more by knowledge than by capital or labor. There is debate and discussion over the future of vocational education or career and technical education as it is called by many. Some voices argue that it's strictly a postsecondary activity; others argue that it rightly belongs in secondary schools as well. Some argue that we conceptualize vocational education too narrowly (work emphasis) and ignore other vocations in life, family and community, for example. Some argue that it is only a method and has no real content integrity (especially in the K-12 context). Some argue that it's only for "those" kids. The OVAE is presently crafting a career clusters model for career and technical education that eliminates the historic Smith-Hughes categories. Many voices, many perspectives. The JVER believes this is an appropriate time to bring our best thinkers together to address the questions of definition, purpose, and reform of vocational education.

To this end, a number of authors were invited to write on these questions. Over the next several issues, they will present their thoughts. In this issue, Richard Lynch draws on his recent work for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education to describe new directions for high school vocational education. In painting a picture of the current state of practice, he describes the forces driving vocational education reform in the United States and six components of this reform.

Richard Lakes presents an argument that vocational educators might think about good work and educational reconstructions. He suggests that it is important to teach the principles of holistic learning and living. That is, he says, students have to be prepared to distinguish between good and bad work and reject meaningless or nerve-racking work that dehumanizes the worker in favor of work that attends to the needs of the soul.

Future issues will include other voices, other perspectives. Some will address secondary vocational education, others postsecondary vocational education; still others will provide transcendent perspectives. You are invited to be part of this discussion. Consider your own views on these questions and share these with your colleagues through the pages of your journal. Manuscripts are invited that respond to what you read here, or that respond to what you believe these authors have missed.

References

Crain , R., Allen, A., Thaler, R., Sullivan, D., Little, J.W., & Quigley, D. (1999). The effects of academic career magnet education on high schools and their graduates (MDS-779). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.

Federal Register (1999). Office of Vocational and Adult Education, National Research Centers; Inviting Applications for New Awards for Fiscal Year 1999; Notice. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://wais.access.gpo.gov [note -- this link is no longer valid] on May 19, 1999.

Grubb , N. (Ed.).(1995). Education through occupations in American high schools. Vol I: Approaches to integrating academic and vocational education. Vol. II: The challenges of implementing curriculum integration. New York: Teachers College Press

Hamilton , S. (1990). Apprenticeship for Adulthood: Preparing youth for the future . New York: Basic Books.

Levesque , K., Lauen, D., Teitelbaum, P., Alt, M., Librera, S., MPR Associates, Nelson, D. (2000) Vocational education in the United States: Toward the year 2000 . Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education (Doc. NCES 2000-029)

Lewis , M. (forthcoming). Need Sensing-Future Scanning. CareerTech Correlations . The Ohio State University: The National Dissemination Center for Career and Technical Education.

National Assessment of Vocational Education (1999). Overview of evaluation plan. Retrieved December 1, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OUS/eval/NAVE/evalplan/overview.html

New American High Schools (2000). Retrieved December 4, 2000 from the World Wide Web. http://www.ed.gov/offices/OVAE/nahs/nahsfaq.html

Stern , D. (1999). Onward. Centerwork . Berkeley, CA: The National Center for Research in Vocational Education, The University of California-Berkeley.

William T. Grant Foundation (1988). The forgotten half: Non-College Youth in America . Washington, D.C.: Commission on Work, Family, and Citizenship, William T. Grant Foundation.