Lee (2004) said that the purposes of vocational education were to cultivate the qualities of democratic citizenship by developing vocational knowledge, provide an opportunity for realizing one’s dreams through sensible decisions through vocational education programs based on the characteristics of individuals, and contribute to national development by fostering the manpower necessary for society. So, this emphasized that vocational education is aimed at achieving personal self-fulfillment
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and pursing happiness, rather than as a means of preparation for employment. Rather than developing a simple function, it is emphasized that the objective of vocational education is to develop general behavioral characteristics at a lifelong education level.
In other words, vocational education at the secondary level should serve as a way of pursuing personal and social development, as well as enhancing the vocational competency necessary for the transition of individuals to the labor market. In this context, this study established the vision of secondary vocational education in Korea as “secondary vocational education cultivating dreams and capacity.” To this end, there were four core values: demand-driven, openness, flexibility, and accountability.
Vision
Secondary vocational education cultivating dreams and capacity Core values
Demand-driven Openness Flexibility Accountability
Strategic priorities
1. Strengthening demand-driven secondary vocational education
2. Improving flexibility in learning pathways of secondary vocational education 3. Diversifying participants in operating secondary vocational education 4. Innovating career education to seek various career pathways
5. Creating a labor market for the sustainable growth of high school graduate employees
Figure 8-1 ❙ Vision and secondary vocational education
Focus on Demand, or Demand-driven means fostering talents with substantial capability for industrial settings through “learning experience out of school” by secondary vocational education that departs from knowledge-based and school-based education. To improve demand-driven vocational education, it is crucial to encourage the active participation of companies. It is well known that in North European countries such as Demark and Norway, the industry sector actively participates in vocational education so that there is higher demand-driven vocational education.
Program committees, which consist of representatives from labor unions and management in industry sectors, take the leading role in making the curriculum, caused by shifts in the industry sectors. They are also responsible for setting the standards for the qualification of vocational training courses and for issuing certificates. In that regard, both labor and management actively participate in constituting the curriculum of vocational education and developing the standards for qualifications. As a result, the qualifications acquired from vocational high schools gain a high value in the labor market (Lim, 2010).
Openness means mutual cooperation and exchanges that enable major participants, who are out of school and are needed to cooperate for the operation of vocational education in school-based vocational education, to take the leading role in operating vocational education. Also, only when parties surrounding secondary vocational education with various interests, including the industry sector, maintain strong relations with each other can Focus on Demand or Demand-driven vocational education function in itself. In particular, industry-academic cooperation is the most important factor for guaranteeing the quality of vocational education. For demand-driven education, it is necessary to promote the introduction of workplace-based education and the participation of industrial-educational teachers in operating school education, which is under way. In particular, an NCS-based vocational education curriculum is introduced to schools in terms of the mutual function of the industry sector and the relevant agencies outside of education, ranging from vocational education policy to the overall stage of the planning, operation, and assessment of the school curriculum.
Accordingly, cooperation between the relevant agencies and major participants is to be promoted out of school as well as in school vocational education settings. To do this, it is imperative to modify vocational education-related laws and regulations and develop cooperation among diverse relevant ministries, universities and industries, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Employment and Labor, Metropolitan and Provincial Offices of Education, and the Small and Medium Business Administration.
Flexibility means that in secondary vocational education, the operation of academic affairs and the curriculum should be flexibly implemented according to the conditions
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of the local community and the characteristics of students. In recent years it has been argued that the focus should be on high school graduates keeping their jobs and carrying out career development, rather than achieving employment right after graduating from high school. In this context, the improvement of flexibility in secondary vocational education provides high school graduate employees with various opportunities for advancement to universities later, and continuing education for the purpose of career development. At the same time, it is linked to the flexible operation of academic affairs and the expansion of the curriculum, which enables employees to study while working.
Accountability means that the implementation of vocational education enables students to achieve their goals and fix career pathways, while at the same time inducing companies into using the educational results of the students after receiving them as an objective signal mechanism (Jang et al., 2014b). For students to strengthen the basic competency needed for the working world and cultivate lifelong learning, it is necessary to operate vocational education that makes it possible for students to improve the competency of career development and lifelong learning capacity. In addition, as for the function of educational results as a signal, foreign countries operate assessment systems that enable them to manage the quality of the level of achievement based on performance criteria in the process of the curriculum of vocational education (Lim et al., 2012). Likewise, accountability can be obtained by building competency-based evaluation in the connection of an achievement evaluation system with the process of the curriculum and the assessment of learning.