Higher and Further

Abstract

Increasingly, educators find themselves accountable to “make good” on the promises of policy makers about the social and political intentions of education. In the case of Technical and Vocational Education (TVE), delivering policy-driven promises can be a complex task. Internationally negotiated and ratified educational intentions of TVE by bodies such as UNESCO provide a relatively common promise of what TVE should achieve in knowledge-driven economies. However, there are stumbling blocks on the path to success in that mission. The range of contexts and stakeholders encompassed by TVE compounds the complexity, as does the recent blurring of historic divisions between further education and higher education. The chapter reveals that deeply entrenched values around forms of knowledge and their sense of educational “place” get disturbed in the process of change, and educators for TVE must now critically reflect on how to improve the knowledge structures required to meet the educational promises of the 21st century.