Higher vocational education as a work of art

Gale, T. (2022) Higher vocational education as a work of art. In: Knight, E., Bathmaker, A.-M., Moodie, G., Orr, K., Webb, S. and Wheelahan, L. (eds.) Equity and Access to High Skills Through Higher Vocational Education. Series: Palgrave studies in adult education and lifelong learning. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, pp. 291-317. ISBN 9783030845018 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-84502-5_14)

Abstract

This chapter provides a cultural analysis of higher vocational education’s (HVE’s) positioning within higher education, informed by a reading of its various expressions within Australia, Canada, Chile, England, Germany, Scotland, South Africa, and the USA. With a regard for higher education as a cultural good, this chapter’s central proposition is that HVE’s legitimacy and status as a form of higher education depend on it being seen in a similar vein as we might regard a work of art, with its own claim to importance and recognition. Much rides on this aesthetic judgement if equity agendas are to be advanced and benefit students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Throughout, claims of HVE’s distinction are subjected to Bourdieu’s (1984) social critique of the judgement of taste: as pure or popular. Building on Bourdieu, the possibility of HVE’s distinction is theorised having regard for within-field power relations and positional autonomy. This chapter concludes with two possibilities for repositioning HVE within the cultural field of HE: for the field’s autonomy to give way to heteronomous ways of working from the fields of economic and political power; or for practice as a way of knowing to secure the status of a science. This chapter argues that it is the latter that will lead to vocational institutions having greater control over HVE’s production and consumption and with the greatest prospect of its distinction.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Gale, Professor Trevor
• Authors: Gale, T.
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General); H Social Sciences > HM Sociology; L Education > L Education (General); L Education > LB Theory and practice of education; L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• ISBN: 9783030845018