Knowledge, Curriculum, and Preparation for Work: (10 The Knowledge Economy and Education)

In Knowledge, Curriculum, and Preparation for Work, the editors offer a timely collection of chapters approaching debates on economic and social change and employment within different types of economies. Considering questions of knowledge and curriculum, these works interrogate ways of thinking about relationships between different forms of work and education. The focus is both on the curriculum – the ways in which different types of knowledge affect the quality and organization of curricula that are intended to prepare for work – and the factors influencing and constraining what education can do to prepare for work, as well as how these factors shape and limit the role of educational preparation for work.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 Stephanie Allais and Yael Shalem 1 When Is Vocational Education Educationally Valuable? 13 Yael Shalem and Stephanie Allais 2 From Labour Market to Labour Process Finding a Basis for Curriculum in TVET 30 Jeanne Gamble 3 Applied Theoretical Knowledge and Professional and Vocational Education Informed Know-How in a Non-Intellectualist Framework 51 Christopher Winch 4 Recontextualisation and the Education-Work Relation 68 Jim Hordern 5 Current Trajectories of the South African Economy and Labour Market 89 Sam Ashman 6 The Idealisation of Apprenticeship 104 Volker Wedekind 7 What should Vocational Qualifications Look Like if the Links between Qualifications and Jobs Are So Weak? 127 Leesa Wheelahan and Gavin Moodie 8 The Radical Realism of Creative Policy Hybridity How Skill Formation Systems Can Improve Low-Income Country Employment 147 Andrew Lawrence 9 The Unbearable ‘Applied-Ness’ of Engineering Knowledge 167 Reneé Smit 10 Theory and Practice in the 21st Century Engineering Workplace 182 Karin Wolff 11 Conversion or Diversion? Curriculum and Non-Cognate Master’s Degrees in Applied Disciplinary Fields 206 Lynn Hewlett 12 Understanding Transitions between Work and Formal Qualifications The Case of RPL 228 Linda Cooper, Judy Harris and Alan Ralphs Afterword: The Challenge of Bringing Different Worlds Together 249 Michael Young Index 261

About the Author :
Stephanie Allais is the Research Chair for Skills Development at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour, University of the Witwatersrand. She is the author of Selling Out Education: National Qualifications Frameworks and the Neglect of Knowledge (Sense, 2014). Yael Shalem is Associate Professor of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand. She co-edited Retrieving Teaching: Critical Issues in Curriculum Pedagogy and Learning (Juta, 2010), in memory of Professor Wally Morrow, the founder of educational theory in South Africa.