Revitalising academic apprenticeship
Higher and vocational education is changing rapidly as a result of increased interconnectedness in the global economy and its effects within societies and national cultures. These educational institutions are expected to address the demand for skill sets required in workplaces and communities that are negotiating new global work practices, routines and relationships. They also confront these global effects in their own work organization, practices and staffing arrangements. The academic workforce sustains teaching and research, and coordinates academic activities and interfaces with industry, governments and communities. Today this workforce must not only serve its traditional clientele but also engage in processes of self-reflection and renewal in order to redesign its own skill sets in ways that support academic work on a global scale.
The challenge of organisational and cultural renewal in higher and vocational education has been taken up by governments, institutional managers and by researchers and professionals. The Bologna Process, directed toward the formation of a European Higher Education and Research Area, is complemented by energetic development of regional co-operations and cross-national networks amongst organisations and researcher-professionals around the world. Competition within the global economy has given these developments an entrepreneurial edge. Yet, at heart, the challenge is to support learning and change in existing workforces and to prepare the next generation of researcher-professionals who will carry higher and vocational education and training forward into the future.
The VET and Culture network has investigated these changes in educational work since its formation in 1993. A central question has been how to prepare researcher-professionals for global academic work. Alongside its conferences and book projects, the network has hosted a series of teaching experiments designed to support researcher-professionals as they investigate and develop the skills and teaching-learning strategies needed in global times. CROSSLIFE is the most recent of these teaching experiments.
The concept of a ‘revitalised academic apprenticeship’ is central to the work of CROSSLIFE. This recognises that global interconnectedness presents new challenges in becoming a researcher-professional in higher and vocational education. As in the past, it involves education and socialisation into academic cultures and work practices. Yet these are being reconfigured as academic work is re-scaled to embrace networked activities within national jurisdictions, global networks and local communities. The task for the current academic workforce is to develop learning pathways that induct junior researchers and students into globally connected academic work, while simultaneously developing and innovating in-house competencies and capacities in research, teaching and organisational work relevant to global-local scales.
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