VET Research and Measurement of Competencies by the BMBF

Transcription

1 Dr. Gudrun Steeger VET Research and Measurement of Competencies by the BMBF Agenda: 1. Information concerning the reform process in vocational education and training in Germany 2. Monitoring systems to support the reform process a) Report on Vocational Education and Training as a monitoring system b) Education Reporting 3. Measurement of competencies a. National Educational Panel Study b. VET-LSA initiative c. Plans for BMBF research initiative "Technology-oriented Assessment of Vocational Skills" d. Promoting scientific exchanges by funding scientific forums and workshops 4. Prospects Ladies and Gentlemen, Ad 1. Germany may be poor in resources as far as classical primary factors are concerned; what it does have in abundance, however, are core competences in the field of human capital. We need an efficient education and vocational training system in order to expand these capacities and make targeted use of them in a national and international context. Last year, the Federal Government embarked on this task and introduced its Qualification Initiative. This was the starting signal for a process of improvement across the entire vocational education and training system. The Education Summit of the Federal Chancellor and the Heads of Länder governments marked an important stage in this process and led to catalogue of measures to secure the next generation of skilled workers and improve the education system. These measures include the following:

2 - The Federal Government and Länder will work together to increase flexibility and compatibility in the education system; - The performance levels of adolescents, particularly adolescents from a migrant background, will be improved; - The transition from vocational education and training to higher education will be made easier; and - Part-time study courses and continuing education programmes will be developed for this purpose. European cooperation in vocational education and training is playing an increasingly important role in this context. It is our aim to establish a European Education Area and we are currently focusing our initiatives on: strengthening the European dimension, improving transparency, information and counselling, providing greater recognition for skills and qualifications, and improving quality assurance. The instruments that we are using for these purposes are the European Qualifications Framework together with the German Qualifications Framework, the ECVET and DECVET credit point systems, and the European Quality Framework. All of these instruments represent new ground for us in many respects. Providing support for these processes is an essential precondition for shaping an education system which is both fit for the future and in touch with reality. Measuring outcomes and output is therefore a necessary process for shaping a future-oriented education policy. The BMBF already has various monitoring systems at its disposal or in the process of being developed in order to determine the productivity of the vocational education and training system. 2) Monitoring systems to support the reform process a) Report on Vocational Education and Training as a monitoring system The oldest instrument for monitoring the vocational education and training system and market is the annual Report on Vocational Education and Training, whose legal basis was established as far back as

3 in It is the task of the BMBF to continuously monitor developments in the field of vocational education and training and to report to the Federal Government on 1 April every year. The Report on Vocational Education and Training is an excellent instrument for presenting developments in vocational training on a political as well as scientific level. It provides a platform for monitoring developments in education policy by supplying targeted statistical evaluations of the situation on the training and continuing education market, and documents activities on the political and scientific level. Over the last 32 years, the Report has established itself as a standard reference work for a specialist public with an interest in vocational education as well as for stakeholders in the vocational training system. It is also published in English and French. Starting in 2009, the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training is publishing the scientific part separately as a data report to accompany the Report on Vocational Education and Training. b) Education Reporting In complement to the specialized Report on Vocational Education and Training, the national "Education in Germany" report provides a comprehensive overview of all phases of education, ranging from early learning to continuing education. The report also indicates the transitions and interfaces between different fields of education. By compiling relevant empirical data from different sources, the report provides an indicator-based and thus updatable analysis of the entire education system. Compared with the Report on Vocational Education and Training, the "Education in Germany" report is a relatively new monitoring instrument, which is published every two years. The first national education report was commissioned by the Conference of Länder Ministers of Education (KMK) in association with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and was published in June The report is drafted by independent researchers. The KMK and BMBF have thereby established a form of reporting which also analyses problematic developments in the education system. For example, the 2008 report studied the so-called "transition system" from general education to vocational training. "Education in Germany" identifies opportunities for improvements in individual fields of education and pinpoints potential for development. But it also highlights cross-cutting challenges which can only be tackled successfully through cooperation between several fields of education and policy for example, cooperation in the areas of education, economic, labour market and family policy.

4 All these monitoring systems aim to provide statistical data to demonstrate developments within education systems and to supply sufficient information for an evidence-based vocational education and training policy. Apart from the monitoring systems, we also need a reliable assessment of education output. We can only make our (vocational) education system fit for the future if we know just how efficient it actually is. We have launched various activities in recent years with this in mind. These measures include diverse initiatives in the field of skills assessment. 3) Measurement of competencies First of all I would like to mention the a) National Education Panel Study (NEPS for short) Large-scale international student assessment studies like TIMSS, PISA, and IGLU have delivered important findings on the cross-sectional distribution of competencies among students attending schools in the Federal Republic of Germany - both in comparison with other nations and as a function of social origins and further variables. As valuable as these cross-sectional studies are, they can only be viewed as isolated snapshots documenting a specific state at a fixed time point in the life course. To transform such snapshots into a moving picture, the NEPS is following up individuals over time so that it can reconstruct how competencies unfold over the life course, how competencies and decision-making processes relate to various critical transitions in education careers, along with how and to what extent they are influenced by the family of origin and the structure of teaching and learning processes in preschool, school, vocational training, higher education, and later (working) life. The National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) has been set up to find out more about the acquisition of education in Germany, to plot the consequences of education for individual biographies, and to describe central education processes across the entire lifespan. The guiding principle of the NEPS is to ask how competencies unfold over the life course, how they influence or do not influence educational careers at various critical transitions, and how and to what extent competencies are influenced in turn by learning opportunities not only those within the

5 family and the peer group but also those resulting from the way teaching and learning processes are shaped in kindergarten, school, higher education, vocational training, and adult education. Methodologically, the NEPS is based on a multicohort sequence design. Six starting cohorts will be recruited between 2009 and These will contain a total of more the 60,000 participants who will be surveyed over an extended period of time. Their competencies will also be assessed at set intervals. New starting cohorts will also be recruited and integrated into the study in later years in order to document and analyze historical changes in the way people pass through the various education-related transitions. The NEPS will not only deliver innovative impulses for basic research but also provide decisive information for policymakers. In particular, it will provide an important additional source of data for national education reporting, and it will strengthen the domains of education in the life course and lifelong learning along with our knowledge about developmental processes and trajectories. Further information can be found at Beside NEPS, which is only able to measure cross-occupational competencies, we are also interested in measuring domain specific competencies. For this purpose, we already ordered a feasibility study in The initiative for a Large Scale Assessment in VET ( VET-LSA for short) developed from this study. b) VET-LSA initiative The VET-LSA set out to gain an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of vocational training and to establish opportunities for the various countries to learn from one another. A VET-LSA focuses on measuring skills that are acquired in the course of initial vocational training. Furthermore, it also aims to determine the institutional and individual conditions for educational processes, as these too are of decisive importance for individual skills development. The findings of VET-LSA are intended to serve pragmatic political as well as scientific interests: 1. At the political level, they could be expected to produce a considerable amount of steering knowledge for shaping vocational training processes, particularly with regard to the following aspects:

6 - Findings on the relationship between individual/biographical characteristics and forms of training to acquire skills (How do individual and institutional framework conditions influence individual skills?). - The categorization of different vocational training qualifications in international classifications (ISCED; EQF) in order to improve recognition procedures and ensure the equality of certificates at European level. - Establishing more transparency in vocational education and training in Europe in order to be able to better substantiate the equality of vocational qualifications. - More detailed knowledge of the national links between the institutional regulations and skills outcomes of national vocational training processes in an international comparison, i.e. uncovering the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of training in the participating countries not in the sense of winners and losers like in the Skills Olympics, but as an opportunity for all the countries to learn from one another. 2. On the scientific level, the following results were expected: - The development of a reliable and valid procedure for an international comparative longitudinal study to measure the performance of vocational training organizations; - The emergence of sound knowledge about the links between skill levels, forms of training and context variables as well as different skills dimensions (skills relating to a single occupation and inter-occupational skills); - Findings on the links between vocational skills and outcomes on the labour market and in working life. In contrast to the OECD studies, here a total of eight European states discussed the joint initiation and funding of such a project. According to the latest information, the planned VET- LSA study cannot be realized in the proposed form at the present time due to limited public budgets resulting from the financial crisis. In Germany, the initiative has attracted considerable interest from specialists; and outcome-oriented skills assessment is now recognized as a central national topic and field for the future. There will be further international opportunities to cooperate with other states below the VET-LSA threshold in future. The BMBF is currently planning a new research initiative at working level with this in mind.

7 c) Plans for a BMBF "Technology-oriented Assessment of Vocational Skills" research initiative The aim of this research programme is an outcome-oriented skills assessment which can be used to measure the productivity of the education system, the quality of individual training establishments and the learning outcome of individuals. In recent years, Germany has taken part in important international comparisons in the schools sector and has put the skills of school students to the test. Similar tests in the field of vocational education are still outstanding since it is difficult to develop suitable procedures for assessing our complex system of vocational education and training and no broad-based methods are available to which scientists can resort. In order to ensure an effective and efficient evaluation of performance in various fields of vocational training, we must improve the scientific bases to enable a reliable assessment of vocational training in a national as well as international comparison. The main aim is to develop and test technology-oriented skills assessment procedures in various vocational fields. In addition, other assessment procedures are to be tested as to their reliability in measuring vocational skills. The procedure is to be developed to include different fields of application. The national research priority will analyse the assessment procedure with regard to four fields of application: - Are the procedures suitable for examinations at the end of training and continuing training? - Can these procedures assess informal and non-formal skills in order to recognize these skills in the context of formal qualifications? - Can skills be assessed reliably so that they can be credited towards other educational pathways (for example, training and continuing training measures or higher education courses)? - In how far can the assessment of vocational skills help when checking the quality of incompany training or external training providers? The international funding priority will realize projects similar to those of the VET-LSA concept in order to establish a method to assess the efficiency of training courses in international comparison. The focus will be on assessing and comparing vocational skills in different countries as well as on using the results when considering the categorization of vocational qualifications in existing classification systems. The aim is to place national vocational training on an international and European footing and to qualify trainees to meet increasing international demands on the labour market. The international comparison of vocational skills is intended to

8 highlight national strengths and weaknesses and to thus contribute towards improving the national vocational training system. The results of the skills assessment would also enable an empirically valid classification based on international classification systems (such as EQR, ISCED). The challenges involved in developing methods in vocational training are considerable since the tasks are relatively complex. Basically, it is a question of the technical and functional development of tests, taking into account working and business processes in different occupational fields. Technology-based test procedures provide scope for authentic test surroundings, for example, by integrating multi-media test material such as film and video sequences or through interactive simulations. These have the advantage of being more valid and authentic with regard to the skills area under assessment than traditional test procedures. The aim is to develop and try out test items in various occupational fields. These fields can be defined by occupation-specific and cross-occupational skills. In addition, general skills should also be assessed as determinants. Even though the introduction of innovative skills assessment processes in vocational training has been quite successful (for example, the pre-tests within the framework of the preliminary work on VET-LSA), the accompanying specialist conferences and workshops show that there is still considerable need for research in this field. This brings me to the fourth aspect of our activities in this area. d) Promoting scientific exchanges through the funding of scientific forums and workshops In the context of an evidence-based and knowledge-intensive vocational training policy, it is always important to be familiar with findings from research and science and to draw the necessary consequences for education policy. Furthermore, when designing research initiatives it is essential to know what research is needed from both the scientific and the political point of view. Against this background, the BMBF has been encouraging scientific communication for many years now by providing funding for forums and workshops and by initiating feasibility studies to assess proposed research initiatives as to their functionality and practicability. In this context, the BMBF has increased the number of conferences and small pre-tests on questions of assessing vocational skills. The proposed research initiative will intensify this

9 dialogue still further and extend the role of research in shaping technology-based assessment procedures, in Germany as well as in interested European countries. 4) Prospects As we all know, education systems are not speedboats on the contrary. Course corrections take time. And a long time often elapses between realizing that something has to change in education structures and actually adopting concrete measures. This frequently involves a difficult counselling and decision-making process. Nevertheless, we are convinced that we can generate the necessary information in the future, both in the field of monitoring and in the area of skills assessment information which is necessary for shaping a modern, efficient vocational education and training system.