POLICY LEARNING APPLYING THE CHANGING LEARNING PARADIGM FOR POLICY ADVICE ON VET REFORMS

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POLICY LEARNING APPLYING THE CHANGING
LEARNING PARADIGM FOR POLICY ADVICE ON VET
REFORMS

• Sören Nielsen, ETF
• 11 June 2007, Vilnius

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• What is the ETF ?
• Agency of the European Union
• Centre of Expertise in VET, LM (plus HRD)
• Assisting EU neighbouring countries in reforming
• education and training systems, through
• - dissemination of EU policies and good
  practices
• - policy advice/learning and capacity building
• - information and analysis

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ETFs partner countries
Acceding and candidate countries Croatia,
Macedonia, Turkey
Eastern Europe and Central Asia Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
South Eastern Europe Albania, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo
EU Member States
Mediterranean region Algeria, Egypt, Israel,
Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, West
Bank and Gaza Strip
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The EU Policy context

• The LISBON STRATEGY
• Global strategy for economic and social
  development as a response to current and future
  challenges
• Information society / ICT and increasing role of
  knowledge in all processes
• Globalisation / delocalisation, economic
  restructuring, e-commerce and economy
• Acknowledgement of the important role of Human
  Capital / Education and Training

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The LISBON STRATEGY

• New strategic goal for Europe
• to become by 2010 the most
• competitive and dynamic
• knowledge-based economy
• in the world capable of sustainable economic
  growth with
• more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.

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The LISBON STRATEGY

• European education and training systems as a
  world reference for quality by 2010 (Barcelona
  Council)
• Investment in people became central in Unions
  policies
• Decisive contribution of education and training
  to the success of the Lisbon strategy recognised
• Better Interaction/coordination of economic,
  employment and HRD policies

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EU Policy coordination

• Flexible approach - comprehensive strategy
  subsidiarity principle
• Political cooperation on common goals
• Agreement on quantified objectives (benchmarks)
• Clear timeframes
• Voluntary and decentralised implementation
• Support by Community programmes
• Steering and monitoring role of the EU Council
  and the EC

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EU Education and Training Policy

• Bologna process in Higher education (1997)
• Lifelong Learning (2001)
• Objectives 2010 process in Education and Training
  (2001)
• Copenhagen process in VET (2002) political
  endorsement to EU cooperation in VET
• Converging processesEQF

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VET POLICY DEBATES IN THE EU

• From subsidiarity to flexible policy
  co-ordination
• From no harmonisation to convergence
• From we are the champions to what can we learn
  from each other

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VET POLICY DEBATES IN THE EU

• Lisbon goals to be achieved through
• Organising convergence towards shared objectives
• Open method of policy co-ordination
• voluntary and decentralised joint action
• setting European benchmarks
• time bound (target of 2010)
• support by Community programmes

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POLICY LEARNING

• Policy is about visions for development and the
  ways to achieve goals
• Policy learning concept developed in a critical
  discussion with more traditional approaches to
  policy transfer and policy copying
• Basic assumption active engagement of national
  stakeholders in developing their own policy
  solutions

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POLICY LEARNING

• Policy learning as seen by ETF is a cultural and
  social construct
• Result of a critical mass of learning experiences
  
• Educationalists the need for teachers to shift
  from being transmitters of expert knowledge and
  skills to students towards becoming facilitators
  of learning processes of persons that want to
  become competent themselves
• Derive guidelines from new learning paradigm for
  their application in the policy-making field?

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The lessons learned from Lithuania

• Four international VET Teacher Training projects
  running in parallel in 2000-01
• Danish funded project
• Finnish funded project
• ETF project
• Leonardo da Vince funded pilot project (first
  project led by Lithuania)
• Kaunas University steered the whole process
  through the LdV project where they were in the
  drivers seat

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ETF experience from partner countries

• Countries must develop capacities to formulate
  national reform agendas and to shape own reform
  intiatives
• Focus to be placed on how to organise policy
  learning environments and policy learning
  platforms
• EU membership does not reduce the need for policy
  learning the challenge of policy interpretation
  as broad EU objectives have to be translated into
  own institutions embedded in national contexts

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Policymakers as learners?

• For policymakers learning is more than cognitive
  processes learning is practice
• Their learning is situated learning and an
  integral and inseparable aspect of their social
  practice
• The context-boundness of policies is always
  existing and completements the situatedness of
  learning
• Policymakers we (ETF) see as active learners who
  try to make sense of their always, always
  changing - policy environment

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EC instruments and policy learning

• EC instruments for assistance and co-operation
  can be used within a variety of conceptions and
  approaches
• They are instruments and not an end in themselves
• The fundamental issue is what are the expected
  learning outcomes and how are these instruments
  used in practice to achieve these outcomes?
• More reflection is needed on a better use of
  existing instruments within a policy learning
  perspective rather than on developing new ones

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Policy Learning in External Aid Context

• Guiding principles
• There is no best model for organising the
  education system, each system is based on
  historical, cultural, socio-economic and
  political factors
• The importance of institutions for embedding
  policy reforms

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Policy Learning in External Aid Context

• Three Lessons
• Local ownership
• Embeddedness (institutional fit into context)
• Sustainability

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Policy Learning in External Aid Context

• ETF Approach
• From policy copying and policy taking to policy
  learning
• Knowledge sharing and exchange of good practice
  to enable decision-makers to design and implement
  their reform
• Evolution more than revolution
• Reform projects need to reflect local reality,
  take institutional structure into account and
  involve all relevant stakeholders
• VET Reform process is at least as important as
  the final products

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• What does this mean for ETF?
• Facilitating systemic VET reform
• implies a new approach
• From knowledge and answers that
• are disseminated and transferred
• to the partners (controlling task master)
• Towards a broker/learning facilitator role
• (an enabling helper)

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Thank you for your attention
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For further information on the ETF and our work
Visit our website www.etf.eu.int Email
sni_at_etf.europa.eu