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Vocational Education Curriculum

Contemporary vocational education is oriented to preparing people to perform successfully in the workforce. Its roots stretch back thousands of years. Once the U.S. vocational education movement emerged in the late 19th century, educators have used diverse curricula to prepare citizens for work. The field of vocational education has evolved from scattered 19th-century manual training initiatives focused on work processes and moral reform to comprehensive and systematic curriculum focused on labor needs and concrete outcomes. Workforce education includes varied curricular strategies, educational philosophies, and cultural beliefs. Yet an enduring principle that distinguishes it from other fields is its close relevance to the world of work. Vocational educators argue that the diverse activities that constitute vocational curriculum should be directly relevant to a future worker's skill development and occupational future. Indeed, vocational curriculum is considered effective if it is responsive to local and national occupational needs, dynamic as fields and technologies change, driven by occupational and demographic data, focused on concrete outcomes, oriented to the future, and responsive to assessment. Whether oriented to the adolescent or adult learner, whether in vocational or secondary schools, these goals, as well as federal funding, shape the content and delivery of curriculum.

History

The roots of contemporary vocational curriculum stretch back thousands of years. Through modeling, direct instruction, and imitation, youth in diverse cultures have learned from their elders to gather food, build shelter, and create goods. In Egypt, students worked as apprentices with skilled scribes as early as 2000 BCE. Elsewhere, artisans taught such specialized skills as stone masonry. During medieval times, “journeymen” who owned tools traveled to perform various jobs, formed guilds to share secrets of their craft, and controlled how many workers could join their ranks. During the American colonial period, apprenticeships became a common form of work education governed by the legal system. Artisans provided long-term guidance to those learning a skill or a trade. This educational relationship required years of servitude from apprentices, including poor and orphaned youth, who were often exploited for their cheap labor.

Significant changes in the U.S. economy and the structure of work in the late 19th century stimulated lasting changes in the relationship of schooling to work that continue to shape curriculum today. Large factories concentrated in urban areas replaced small businesses and family farms as the primary instruments of economic production. As workers' jobs were deskilled into repetitive assembly line tasks, managers began supervising the labor of workers and artisans who had previously worked independently. Apprenticeship seemed an increasingly irrelevant model to prepare workers for the new industrial system. Reformers and business leaders grappling with the sheer need for workers advocated new educational strategies. During the 20th century, educators developed supplementary manual training courses and programs, sought funding for vocational education, integrated vocational courses and tracks in schools, and created a system of career and technical programs that today serve millions of students nationwide.

Key Components

Because vocational curriculum is oriented to preparing people to perform successfully in the workforce, the learning activities and experiences that constitute curriculum focus on both process and product: educational processes that occur during schooling and the cumulative results of those processes once schooling is complete. In workforce education, students do not learn math simply for the sake of math. Content should have direct relevance to the responsibilities and standards expected in the completer's given work role. Curriculum might include work ethics, work habits, safety, applied academics, and legal issues. Curricular strategies also produce other valuable but more elusive outcomes such as the value of hard work, an appreciation for collaboration, a sense of satisfaction, and feelings of pride and respect for the profession for which students are being trained.

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