TVET@Asia Issue 4: Mitigating TVET quality and standards as a basis for harmonising its systems at the national and regional levels
East and Southeast Asia are experiencing a rapid pace of economic development that call for continuous review of education and training systems. TVET reform processes at the national and regional levels are addressing the question of quality and standards. During the past decades a vast variety of different approaches in TVET were developed or introduced. These approaches were often inspired through transfer or adoption from other regions of the world. In consequence, a vast variety of TVET-systems were implemented in different countries in the region and may require continues review and adaptation. Some states have no coherent national TVET-system with a common underlying concept of quality. A vast variety of TVET approaches consequently employ different concepts of quality and quality management in TVET.
Standards in TVET differ from the concept of quality. In order to enhance the mobility of labour force, especially with respect to ASEAN Economic Community 2015 and ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), standards will gain a wider importance at the regional level. Mutual recognition of learning outcome or certificates will only be achievable with standards that have similar underlying concept or structure.
The 4th issue aims at enhancing the discussion with respect to a coherent understanding of TVET quality and its underlying concepts. The editorial team of the 4th issue received and selected relevant articles comprising research-, practice-, and policy-based papers with respect to TVET quality and standards as covered in the following questions:
- What can be learned from the vast variety of TVET-approaches and their underlying concept and understanding of quality and/or standards with respect to the quality of labour force?
- What concepts of quality and/or standards in TVET exist?
- How can quality be measured and the results be used for further development and innovation?
- What systems of quality management are being employed and how are they used to enhance continuously the quality and to steer the TVET system?
The articles cover topics as described below:
GERT LOOSE and GEORG SPÖTTL establish a symbiosis of assessment-oriented and experience-oriented training in the course of implementing “intelligent standards” as reliable benchmarks. Fourteen main principles comprise orientation marks, as well as the importance of high flexibility to even out regional disparities. The application of practical experience provides the context of attaining the competences required by the labor market.
With the goal of accomplishing an effective governance of the TVET sector and thus improving the evolvement of highly-skilled human resources to stabilize Malaysia’s econo¬my, MOHAMAD SATTAR RASUL, ZOOL HILMI MOHAMED ASHARI, NORZAINI AZMAN and ROSE AMNAH ABDUL RAUF give a comprehensive insight into Malaysia’s TVET-sector transformation policy and governance issues and its resulting challenges and difficulties.
CAROLINA LASAMBOUW describes the current research management process in Bandung State Polytechnic (POLBAN), emphasizing the need to lower barriers and increase the efficiency of research in vocational higher education in Indonesia based on nine problematic aspects. These aspects are of mayor importance in order to support education and community service duty and call for the decentralization policy as a part of higher education autonomy.
MUSTAFA and STEFANIE PETRICK introduce QMSiS as a practical example from a voca-tional high school in Makassar, Indonesia that achieves a better TVET-quality. Considering the eight Indonesian education standards, QMSiS additionally combines characteristics of ISO 9001:2008 with the concept Q2E1, allowing vocational schools to develop their own quality management standards (QMS). The internal and external school processes as well as the industry linkage have been improved under QMSiS.
MOHD BEKRI RAHIM explains how e-portfolios, which are used in Malaysian Skill Certifi-ca¬tion (MSC), provide an efficient method for students’ competence evaluation, give descrip-tions of students’ development process, work as a storage of artefacts, facilitate assess¬ments and enable online learning. In a modified Delphi-study of three rounds, twenty two indicators for virtual learning and five indicators for competency assessment were identified as impor-tant to MSC.
THOMAS SCHRÖDER provides a theoretical basis for inter-institutional and cross-regional research activities on vocational education in East and Southeast Asia. The resulting concept of “Scientific Coaching” offers a holistic and work process-related approach and enables scientific capacity building in the field of vocational education on the grounds of targeted and experience-based competence development.
Thank you to the contributors. Enjoy reading!
The Editors of Issue 4
Paryono Paryono, Georg Spoettl, Phil Loveder, and Chin Wei Keh
Citation
Paryono, P., Spoettl, G., Loveder, P., & Chin, W.K.(2015). Editorial Issue 4: Mitigating TVET quality and standards as a basis for harmonising its systems at the national and regional levels. In: TVET@Asia, issue 4, 1-2. Online: https://www.tvet-online.asia/issue4/editorial_tvet4.pdf (retrieved 30.1.2015).
