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“A Cross-cultural Analysis on the Trans-nationalization of Quality in Learning, Education and Training: The Vocational Higher Education Sector in Finland and South Korea”
Last modified: 2011-08-04
Abstract
LEE, Dong-Seob
University of Tampere
The diversity of educational traditions and systems is currently challenged by the transnational lifelong learning rhetoric, which reveals the dynamics of various actors/sectors at different levels showing the converging reality at macro-level and diverging character at the micro-level. It makes it even more challenging to define the identity of professionals and individual learners. This poses delicate questions for the issue of who is to and how to demarcate, justify and reframe the different sectors of education in line with lifelong learning and how different actors/sectors with accustomed negotiation mechanisms have developed their strategies to protect their status and ownerships while influencing, co-creating, reinforcing and challenging the relations with others on a linear timeline.
In this paper, the different roles of the inter-government agencies, the government, the market, the trade unions, the academic and training providers, the professionals and the individual learners will be reconfigured in the process of a paradigm shift to learning and find out in what way the vocational higher education sector in the course of historical development of industries and economy has been entangled and diffused in different educational settings for lifelong learning in order to promote the quality of learning, education and training. When analyzing how vocational higher education sectors of Finland and South Korea in a cross-cultural context have changed, re-constructed and located multiple identities at an individual and collective levels embedded at different times and spaces, the following fundamental and significant insights can be gained for the social progress; (1) how to widen participation amongst researchers, policy makers, and practitioners who have different perspectives, concerns and issues, (2) how to embrace different views of various actors/sectors together, and (3) which actor should initiate, design and implement the innovative plan for advancing research, policy and practice.
University of Tampere
The diversity of educational traditions and systems is currently challenged by the transnational lifelong learning rhetoric, which reveals the dynamics of various actors/sectors at different levels showing the converging reality at macro-level and diverging character at the micro-level. It makes it even more challenging to define the identity of professionals and individual learners. This poses delicate questions for the issue of who is to and how to demarcate, justify and reframe the different sectors of education in line with lifelong learning and how different actors/sectors with accustomed negotiation mechanisms have developed their strategies to protect their status and ownerships while influencing, co-creating, reinforcing and challenging the relations with others on a linear timeline.
In this paper, the different roles of the inter-government agencies, the government, the market, the trade unions, the academic and training providers, the professionals and the individual learners will be reconfigured in the process of a paradigm shift to learning and find out in what way the vocational higher education sector in the course of historical development of industries and economy has been entangled and diffused in different educational settings for lifelong learning in order to promote the quality of learning, education and training. When analyzing how vocational higher education sectors of Finland and South Korea in a cross-cultural context have changed, re-constructed and located multiple identities at an individual and collective levels embedded at different times and spaces, the following fundamental and significant insights can be gained for the social progress; (1) how to widen participation amongst researchers, policy makers, and practitioners who have different perspectives, concerns and issues, (2) how to embrace different views of various actors/sectors together, and (3) which actor should initiate, design and implement the innovative plan for advancing research, policy and practice.
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