Vocational-technical
education has been lifted from
relative obscurity to a place of prominence in
the
ongoing debate surrounding schol reform.
The 1980s have been characterized by education researchers and policymakers as the decade of reform. Not since the days of Sputnik in the 1950s has the country been so fixated on the quality of education. The publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 energized, mobilized, and gave national focus to the education reform movement in the United States. State efforts focused on the college preparation curriculum with special attention to strengthening graduation requirements, statewide testing, and increasing teacher standards. At the local level, schools increased attendance standards, demanded more homework, and required longer school days and years. Unfortunately, there was little impact on student achievement.
More recently, new kinds of reports have appeared, focusing on occupationally oriented education and particularly the skills required to improve the quality of the work force of the future. The publication of reports such as America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages; Workforce 2000, and reports from the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills have shifted the debate away from a narrowly defined set of "academic abilities" toward a broader array of academic or general competencies, technical and job specific skills, interpersonal abilities, and behavioral traits, including motivation. These reports and the attendant attention given them has lifted vocational-technical education from relative obscurity to a place of prominence in the ongoing debate surrounding school reform.
The United States is a large and complicated society. Its magnitude and complexity are mirrored in its vocational-technical education system, which is not comprised of a uniform curriculum and agreed-upon accountability measures. This results partly from a decentralized decision-making structure: decisions about education have historically been considered the province of individual states, rather than of the federal government. State governments, in turn, have delegated much of their responsibility for education policy-making to locally elected school district governing boards. Thus three major competing policy forces have forged vocational education programs as they exist today--the unique needs of the local community, the policies and purposes of each state, and the overarching goals of federal programs.
In vocational-technical education, the commonality of programs across state and local lines, to the degree such commonalty exists, largely derives from 75 years of federal government leadership. The initial creation of a national policy on vocational-technical education was in response to multiple concerns. First and foremost, vocational-technical education was seen by the Congress as an integral element in building a strong work force as part of the overall national defense strategy. Additionally, economists decried the shortage of skilled labor. Furthermore, the start of World War I cut off a traditional source of the highest skills--highly skilled artisan immigrants from Europe. Educational reformers responded to these demands by arguing for the establishment of "comprehensive high schools" in which students would learn both theory and practice and in which the dignity of manual work would be valued.
As it turned out, the comprehensive secondary schools of educational reformists' dreams, with very few exceptions, were comprhensive in name only. Most schools gradually evolved into the United States version of a "dual system," consisting of one branch for pupils who planned to enter postsecondary educational institutions and one for students who were preparing for the world of work. Reformers' early fears about separation and stratification were slowly realized.
The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 was the first vocational education act, and it contained several specific elements which contributed to the isolation of vocational education from other parts of the comprehensive high school curriculum. For example, in order to receive federal funds under Smith-Hughes, each state was required to establish a state board for vocational education. This requirement led, in some states, to the establishment of a board separate from the State Board of Education. Thus two separate governance structures could exist at the state level. This in turn fostered the notion of vocational schools as separate and distinct from general secondary schools, and of vocational education as separate from "academic" education. The Smith-Hughes Act tended to promote a segregated curriculum, with Agriculture, Homemaking, and Trade and Industrial Education segments separated not only from "academic" programs, but all other vocational programs as well. The impact of this separation has been felt through subsequent decades in the development of separate teacher training programs, separate teacher organizations, and separate student organizations.
These earlier provisions are now suddenly and dramatically at issue because of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Act of 1990 (Perkins II).
In the late summer of 1990, Congress passed new legislation, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act (Perkins II), which represented the most significant policy shift in the history of federal involvement in vocational-technical funding. For the first time in federal vocational legislation, emphasis was placed on academic as well as occupational skills. For the first time, the Act was directed toward "all segments of the population." The Congress, in enacting Perkins II, set the stage for a three-pronged approach to better preparing a highly skilled work force. Perkins II emphasizes:
All of these changes represent a major shift in the ways vocational-technical education has historically been provided in the United States. Earlier provisions, initiated and promulgated by the Congress and accepted by vocational educators since the days of the Smith-Hughes Act, tended to separate and isolate vocational-technical teachers, students, and curriculum from the rest of the school community.
In addition, there are two more components of the new Act, both marking serious departures from past practice, which deal with funds distribution and accountability. As a result of problems perceived to exist under prior legislation, the Congress, in Perkins II, bypassed state agency decision makers by allocating the vast bulk of the moneys directly to local education agencies, thus removing virtually all distributional discretion from state officials. In addition, the Act explicitly requires states to develop systems of performance measures and standards for secondary and postsecondary vocational education.
Congress has thus provided a template for the vocational-technical education portion of the emerging strategy for preparing the work force of the future. Its three core approaches mark a significant departure from past vocational-technical education acts by emphasizing not the separation and segregation of vocational-technical education but its integration--with academic instruction, between secondary and postsecondary institutions, and with business and labor. The historical separation of vocational and academic education is a powerful barrier to integration and the ultimate success of this new initiative will depend on the willingness of policy makers and practitioners at the federal, state, and local levels to stay the course.
This article is taken from The Changing Role of Vocational
and Technical Education in the United States
by Gerald C. Hayward and
Charles S. Benson
This year, through the collaborative efforts of the Dissemination Program staff at the University of California at Berkeley and their colleagues at NCRVE's Teachers College consortium site, six synthesis papers will be produced and distributed to the readers of CenterWork as a new series, CenterFocus. This year's topics will include, among others, classrooms that work, teacher collaboration, and cooperative education. Issues of CenterFocus will be brief but thorough distillations of research, development, evaluation, and practice knowledge on a specific topic. They will not be summaries of the work of a single person, although, understandably, they will draw heavily on Center work.
CenterFocus will be developed primarily for practitioners but will be useful to policymakers and researchers as well. We intend that these syntheses facilitate the effective application of new knowledge to practice in education, policy, research, and business. In fact, we encourage readers to make multiple copies of CenterFocus for more widespread dissemination locally.
Additionally, these syntheses will be electronically archived on VocServe, the Center's electronic bulletin board system which will become operational sometime this fall. Over time, this collection of CenterFocus issues will provide an authoritative reference for all of us involved in the vocational education enterprise.
Knowledge synthesis is a process as well as a product. The Dissemination Program has begun to design a knowledge syntheses process which will be inclusive, collaborative, and consensual in nature, involving a broad array of stakeholders, including vocational and nonvocational educators, policymakers, researchers, and representatives of the workplace, all of whom are alternately producers of knowledge, knowledge transfer agents, and knowledge users.
Through this inclusive, collaborative, and consensual process, knowledge will be shared and transformed into new knowledge in which all stakeholders share ownership, again with the intent to facilitate the effective application of new knowledge to practice in education, policy, research, and business.
Thus, by recognizing knowledge synthesis as both a product and a process, the Center recognizes that a person's change in behavior--not the transmission of tangible outcomes per se--is the primary goal when translating new knowledge into improved practice.
What should the education of vocational teachers look like in the future? How do we prepare vocational teachers for the 21st century schools as well as prepare them to prepare others for a changing workplace in a global economy? What can be done to revitalize vocational teacher education? What are colleges and universities doing to meet the challenges of a reformed and redirected vocational and technical education delivery system?
Beginning in the fall, NCRVE's Dissemination Program will initiate a discussion group on UNIVOC, NCRVE's BITNET/Internet discussion list, for use by all those interested in talking about vocational teacher education. Topics might include: vocational teacher education in the future, possible new conceptions, graduate study, integration with other subject and pedagogical areas, research, etc. Richard L. Lynch, Director of the School of Leadership and Lifelong Learning at the University of Georgia, will serve as the discussion facilitator.
If you have access to the Internet or BITNET, you can participate! Send the following e-mail message to listserv@cmsa.berkeley.edu (or to listserv@ucbcmsa if you are on BITNET):
subscribe univoc firstname lastname
For example, if your name is Jane Doe, and you have an Internet e-mail address, send the following message to listserv@cmsa.berkeley.edu:
subscribe univoc Jane Doe
If you have questions about joining UNIVOC, contact David Carlsonat (800) (old phone deleted) or send e-mail to dcarlson@uclink.berkeley.edu. If you have questions or suggestions about the content of the upcoming discussion, contact Richard Lynch at the University of Georgia at (404) 542-3891 or send e-mail to rlynch@uga (if you are on BITNET) or rlynch@uga.cc.uga.edu (for Internet).
Even a cursory glance at the infrastructure of vocational education would indicate that inequity is alive and well. Women and minorities within vocational education are underrepresented throughout the system, and not surprisingly the under representation discrepancy becomes larger the higher one looks up the organizational ladder. Why does this pattern still exist? Two projects at the University of Minnesota are trying to shed some light on this issue.
The first project is looking into the unique challenges women and minorities face when climbing the ranks within vocational education. By identifying (through a nomination process) successful women and minorities in administrative and leadership roles the project hopes to obtain data on specific challenges faced and strategies used in meeting the demands required to be successful.
The second project is a continuation of a five-year effort to develop a leadership instrument which evaluates individuals' leadership characteristics. The instrument, Leader Attributes Inventory (LAI), has been extensively tested in terms of reliability and validity, and has proven to be sensitive enough to detect training effects. The current year's project will acquire data to develop norms based on individuals within vocational education. A special effort is being made to collect data to determine whether there are variations associated with gender and ethnic background either in the attributes leaders are perceived to possess or in their effectiveness.
The underlying objective of the two research projects is to explore underrepresentation and to perhaps shed some light on those variables associated with successful leadership.
For more information on these two projects, please contact the following individuals at NCRVE, University of Minnesota, 1954 Buford Avenue, R-460, St. Paul, MN 56108:
Caroline Turner or Gary Leske (Women and Minorities in Administrative and Leadership Roles in Vocational Education: Strategies for Overcoming Barriers to Access and Success)Jerome Moss, Jr., or Judith Lambrecht (Preparing a Leadership Assessment Instrument for Professional Development)
The following new reports are available from the National Center's Materials Distribution Service. You may order these documents by phone (800) 637-7652, by email msmds@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Internet), or by sending your request and/or purchase order to: NCRVE Materials Distribution Service, Western Illinois University, Horrabin Hall 46, Macomb, IL 61455.
Academic-Career Integration in Magnet High Schools: Assessing the Level of Implementation--B. Tokarska, Y. P. Si, R. Thaler, R. L. Crain
According to the New York Times, "New York City's beleaguered public schools are now being held up as the best in the county for something--creating a network of magnet schools that do not end up segregating by race or class." The Times was referring to a series of NCRVE reports which focus on New York's magnet school programs. The newest in this series of reports is Academic-Career Integration..., MDS-415, which examines the degree to which New York City has been able to create programs with a dual emphasis on college preparation and career education ("academic career magnets") and the degree to which students have responded to the opportunity to attend such schools.
MDS-415 | DECEMBER 1992 | $5.00
Assessment in Education: A Search For Clarity in the Growing
Debate--J. Latting
School reforms have proliferated over the past decade, and innovators are constantly under pressure to justify the success of their reforms, to show improved outcomes, and to prove to legislators that their funds are well spent. But it has been unclear how to measure outcomes. Certainly conventional academic tests are inappropriate if the goal is to develop hybrid programs, combining both "occupational" and "academic" content. This monograph describes current developments in assessment and is intended to help teachers, administrators, and policymakers make sense of the variety of efforts now taking place.
MDS-254 | DECEMBER 1992 | $2.75
Classrooms That Work: Teaching Generic Skills in Academic and
Vocational Settings--C. Stasz, K. Ramsey, R. Eden, J. DaVanzo, H. Farris,
M. Lewis
Can "generic skills"--problem solving, communication, teamwork, higher-order reasoning--be taughT in secondary schools as well as skills and knowledge specific to a single academic discipline or occupational field? This report argues that such skills can be taught in both academic and vocational classrooms, and provides a model for designing classroom instruction where teaching generic skills is an instructional goal.
MDS-263 | DECEMBER 1992 | $10.00
Integrating Academic and Vocational Education: Teaching Generic Skills
in Academic and Vocational Settings--B. J. Schmidt, C. L. Jennings, L. A.
Beeken
This document was prepared with input from secondary school principals and administrators from across the United States. It was written for individuals and school divisions that are contemplating or are in the process of integrating academic and vocational education. The document also contains a consolidated list of references and transparency masters.
MDS-297 | DECEMBER 1992 | $10.50
Integrating Academic and Vocational Education: Lessons From Eight Early
Innovations--S. Bodilly, K. Ramsey, C. Stasz, R. Eden
This study explores the practices and policies that define reform efforts aimed at integrating vocational and academic education. It describes how eight high schools have attempted to implement integration reforms and examines the implications of their experience for educational policy.
MDS-287 | DECEMBER 1992 | $6.00
Making High Schools Work: Patterns of School Reform and the Integration
of Vocational and Academic Education--E. Nielson Andrew, W. N. Grubb
Research by NCRVE has clarified that the integration of vocational and academic education is not only a way of reshaping vocational education but also an approach to reconstructing the high school for all students. However, there are numerous other reform movements now taking root in schools across the country, and an obvious question concerns the ways in which the efforts at integration are consistent with--or possibly inconsistent with--other reforms. To answer this question, the authors surveyed various reform efforts to clarify the similarities and differences between them and efforts to integrate vocational and academic education.
MDS-253 | DECEMBER 1992 | $9.00
Novels and Short Stories About Work: An Annotated Bibliography--K.
G. Koziol
This paper contains an annotated bibliography of novels and short stories from English, American, and international literature that deal with work. The works included in the bibliography articulate the lives of men and women who run the machines, plow the fields, sign the contracts, sew the clothes, and work the assembly lines. It is hoped that teachers can use the literature cited to help secondary and college level students develop critical thinking skills, language and communications skills, and explore issues such as values and character. The bibliography is supplemented with a resource section that covers the teaching of noncanonical literature and the social aspects of work.
MDS-484 | DECEMBER 1992 | $4.50
The Role of Family in the Educational and Occupational Decisions Made By
Mexican-American Students--K. Clayton, G. Garcia, Jr., R. Underwood, P.
McEndree
Students who drop out of school already cost society billions of dollars each year in lost income and tax revenues, and it is expected that more than three-fourths of the new entrants into the workforce will be women and minorities--groups that, historically, have been underutilized and undereducated. Additionally, there are the human costs of wasted potential and limited opportunities. This report focuses specifically on Hispanic families: their concern about their children's education, and the major influence the family tends to have on decisions made by the children. Educators are encouraged to capitalize on the educational aspirations that parents have for their children. The report also explores how financial considerations impact upon educational aspirations.
MDS-412 | DECEMBER 1992 | $5.50
Stretching the Subject: The Subject Organization of High Schools and
the Transformation of Work Education-- J. W. Little
Proposals to integrate vocational and academic education challenge long-standing dichotomies between academic study and "real world" work. They challenge, too, the well-established subject hierarchies that privilege academic studies but accord vocational studies and work education only marginal status. This paper explores the ways in which perspectives on subject matter teaching and investments in departmental structure serve as resources or obstacles in the pursuit of more closely integrated vocational and academic goals. The paper introduces the "legacy of subject specialism," summarizes contemporary challenges to subject specialism, and relates some of the struggles that teachers experience and the compromises they forge in the pursuit of a more credibly integrated secondary education. The intent of this paper is not to offer definitive findings, but to contribute to discussion and debate, and to the design of local experiments.
MDS-471 | DECEMBER 1992 | $4.00
Building Bridges: How Postsecondary Institutions Are Integrating Academic and Vocational Content--W. N. Grubb, E. Kraskouskas
The authors surveyed more than 200 postsecondary institutions across the United States to find out how they're handling integration of academic and vocational education. This article gives a brief overview of some of the benefits to postsecondary students from the integration of academic and vocational education; some of the barriers to achieving this integration; and some of the approaches colleges and universities have used in implementing this integration. This three-page article originally appeared in the February 1993 issue of the Vocational Education Journal.
MDS-734 | REPRINT | $1.00
The following new documents are now available through ERIC, as well as through NCRVE's Materials Distribution Service (MDS). You may order them by phone (800) LET-ERIC. If you would like to receive a complete listing of all NCRVE documents in ERIC, contact NCRVE at (800) (old phone deleted) or send a written request to: NCRVE, 2150 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1250, Berkeley, CA 94704-1058.
ED 352 555--Academic-Career Integration in Magnet High Schools: Assessing the Level of Implementation (MDS-415)
ED 352 553--Alternative Approaches to Outcomes Assessment for Postsecondary Vocational Education (MDS-239)
ED 352 452--Alternative Perspectives of Instruction and Cognitive Theory: Implications and Proposals (MDS-256)
ED 352 554--Black Americans and Vocational Education: Participation in the 1980's (MDS-308)
ED 352 465--Education and Training for Work in the Fifty States: A Compendium of State Policies (MDS-184)
ED 352 483--Educational Needs and Employment Trends of Environmental Hazardous Materials Technicians and Related Workers (MDS-249)
ED 352 466--Effective Vocational Education for Students with Special Needs: A Framework (MDS-112)
ED 352 467--A Guide to Assess Institutional Excellence in Vocational Education (MDS-281)
ED 352 468--Helping Teachers to Understand Their Roles in Integrating Vocational and Academic Education: A Practitioner's Guide (MDS-276)
ED 352 555--Influences on Adolescents' Vocational Development (MDS-268)
ED 352 508 --New Designs for the Comprehensive High School--Volume I (MDS-282)
ED 352 509--New Designs for the Comprehensive High School--Volume II (MDS-282)
ED 352 556--Novels and Short Stories About Work: An Annotated Bibliography (MDS-484)
ED 352 453--Opportunities Lost and Lessons Learned: Inside a Workplace Literacy Program (MDS-252)
ED 352 557--Parental Aspirations for Children and Children's Aspirations: A Longitudinal Study of Educational and Career Aspirations Among Hyperactive and Non-Hyperactive Children (MDS-246)
ED 352 454--Preparing Adult Immigrants for Work: The Educational Response in Two Communities (MDS-072)
ED 352 484--School/Work: Economic Change and Educational Reform (MDS-098)
ED 352 485--Teacher's Role in the Integration of Academic and Vocational Education (MDS-275)
ED 352 469--Teaching for Transfer of Learning (MDS-257)
ED 352 455--Teaching Problem Solving and Technical Mathematics Through Cognitive Apprenticeship at the Community College Level (MDS-468)
ED 352 456--Using Professional Development to Facilitate Academic and Vocational Education Integration: A Practitioner's Guide (MDS-277)
CenterWork
National Center for Reserach in Vocational
Education
University of California at Berkeley
Address all comments, questions, and
requests for additional copies
to:
NCRVE
2150 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1250
Berkeley, CA 94704