Transcript No Slide Title

POLICY LEARNING – APPLYING THE
CHANGING LEARNING PARADIGM FOR
POLICY ADVICE ON VET REFORMS
Sören Nielsen, ETF
11 June 2007, Vilnius
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
ETF’s partner countries
Acceding and candidate countries:
Croatia, Macedonia, Turkey
South Eastern Europe:
Albania, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia,
Montenegro, Kosovo
Mediterranean region:
Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon,
Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, West Bank and Gaza
Strip
Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
Ukraine,
Uzbekistan
EU Member
States
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
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.
The LISBON STRATEGY
European education and training
systems as a world reference for
quality by 2010 (Barcelona Council)
Investment in people became central in
Union’s policies
Decisive contribution of education and
training to the success of the Lisbon
strategy recognised
Better Interaction/coordination of
economic, employment and HRD policies
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
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 processes…EQF
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’
VET POLICY DEBATES IN
THE EU
Lisbon goals to be achieved through:
 Organising convergence towards
shared objectives
 Open method of policy coordination
1.
voluntary and decentralised joint action
2.
setting European benchmarks
time bound (target of 2010)
support by Community programmes
3.
4.
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
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?
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 driver’s seat
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
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
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
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
Policy Learning
in External Aid Context
Three Lessons:
•
Local ownership
•
Embeddedness (institutional
fit into context)
•
Sustainability
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
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)
Thank you for your attention
For further information
on the ETF and our work
Visit our website: www.etf.eu.int
Email: [email protected]