TVET Teaching in the Time of Digitization

Abstract

Digitization is fundamentally altering our world and, with it, the roles, requirements, and potential of TVET. While its definition and scope will undoubtedly change – one very possible scenario is for there to be no discrete TVET sector in a few decades’ time – the demand for work-related skills provision will be massive, multifarious, and lifelong, and this will need to be met, imaginatively, efficiently, and equitably. The necessity is to reinvent TVET for our times, and the central challenge is to conceptualize and create TVET structures, methodologies, and arrangements appropriate to these dramatically new digital age circumstances. This calls for a redefined and high-status TVET, delivered from various (often virtual) kinds of centers, each dynamically responsive to trainees’ aspirations and to forthcoming market requirements. All should be staffed by competent, confident, cheerful, and well-respected instructors, working effectively in tandem with the best-suited technology, to guide the learning rather than to dictate it. Life skills should be redefined for the digital age; well-informed creativity should be emphasized; the moral dimension – worldwide imperfections, rampant inequalities, and the shame of migrant labor – should be addressed. The selection, preservice, and lifelong professional development of TVET instructors should similarly take advantage of contemporary technology. TVET instructor education should model digital age teaching and learning and, in addition, play a key role in recreating and repositioning the sector.