Reframing skills ecosystems for sustainable and just futures

Ramsarup, P., McGrath, S. and Lotz-Sisitka, H. (2023) Reframing skills ecosystems for sustainable and just futures. International Journal of Educational Development, 101, 102836. (doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102836)

Abstract

The current dominant approach to vocational education and training (VET) does not work in theory, policy or practice in current contexts of unsustainability and global inequality. Nor is it fit for future purpose. Drawing on a large-scale research collaboration between four universities, funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund, with co-funding and funding in-kind from global south partners, this paper is a contribution to imagining new VET futures. It looks iteratively, reflexively and expansively at how our experience of VET system development involving boundary crossing between formal and informal VET systems interfaces with recent Northern work on the conceptualisation of social skills ecosystems, and how this concept can be expanded to address the challenge of skills for just transitions in the global South. We advance the skills ecosystems approach ontologically by drawing on critical realism (a growing trend in VET and development research). This allows us both to move beyond the structure-agency divide that has bedeviled the field, and with it the tendency to monoscalar analysis. Rather, we argue that accounts of VET and development must address both structure and agency, and their interplay, and must be multiscalar. This reading allows us to focus on the central importance of relationality. We argue that it is through networks and relationships that the precarious worlds of learning and work are brought together.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This paper draws on a large-scale research collaboration between four universities, funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund, with co funding and funding in-kind from global south partners (VET Africa 4.0 Collective).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: McGrath, Professor Simon
• Authors: Ramsarup, P., McGrath, S., and Lotz-Sisitka, H.
• Subjects: L Education > L Education (General)
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education > People, Place & Social Change
• Research Centre: Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre (ARC) > Global Sustainable Development
• Journal Name: International Journal of Educational Development
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0738-0593
• ISSN (Online): 1873-4871
• Published Online: 20 June 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Authors
• First Published: First published in International Journal of Educational Development 101:102836
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence