The Copenhagen process: concepts, experiences and prospects

Citation

Grollmann, P. (2008), "The Copenhagen process: concepts, experiences and prospects", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 32 No. 2/3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeit.2008.00332baa.001

The Copenhagen process: concepts, experiences and prospects

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of European Industrial Training, Volume 32, Issue 2/3.

The Copenhagen process: concepts, experiences and prospects

On November 15, 2007 the European Council has adopted the European Qualifications Framework. This is an important step in the process that has started in 2002 when the European Vocational Education Policy was set in motion with the “Copenhagen Declaration” (European Commission, 2003). European VET policy has reached new dynamics and as compared too earlier VET policy phases there is a surprisingly high commitment through the member states and the different stakeholders.

Since 2002 an intensive discussion on the major instruments particularly EQF and ECVET took place, which has despite its adoption not been completed yet. The member states are now challenged in putting in National Qualification Frameworks, an imperative resulting from the adoption of the EQF. More or less all representatives of the Vocational Education Research have set this subject on their agenda in the meantime. Besides few exceptions the different positions vary among affirmative and descriptive orientation. Only the implementation process can now show about the real potentials and pitfalls when implementing this concept in different European VET contexts. This special issue of the Journal of European Industrial Training is a critical contribution to the debate about the tools adopted by the European Union. At the same time, it also documents constructive aspects of the discussion around the increasing Europeanisation of VET and lifelong learning based on empirical experiences in national and European research and development projects. The different contributions illustrate the different risks and challenges but also the chances and prospects of the new commitment to European VET policy that can be observed.

In this logic, the first volume of this double special issue provides a forum for conceptual and analytical contributions to the debate whereas the second volume directs its focus towards empirical experiences that have been gathered from projects within European VET co-operation.

Concepts in European VET and prospects for their development

The first volume starts out with a contribution by Felix Rauner. His paper a promotes two main messages: on the one hand criticism can be found as regards to the more technical aspects of the European Qualifications framework. On the other hand, and more importantly, the paper of Rauner addresses a fundamental issue: the stark contrast between the subsidiarity rule that is constitutional for European Co-operation in the field of VET and the increasingly expanding mandate of European policies in VET. The solution he derives is an “architecture” for European VET that workers’ and employees as well as business and industry can make use of in order to make the European labour market reality. At the same time he postulates a workers’ right to a solid vocational education in order to make them prepared for the European labour market. Whilst this contribution challenges the “external” validity of the EQF approach, the paper of Michaela Brockmann and colleagues argues that there is a need for a proper distinction between educational standards and learning outcomes. Hence, his criticism is rather looking at the internal consistency of the approach. Winch indicates the multiple problems that are associated with applying a learning outcomes approach to a qualification meta-framework such as the European Qualification Framework or the emerging national qualification frameworks. There are substantial differences between learning outcomes and standards with large educational and political implications that lead Winch to propose a fundamental revision of the current EQF.

Annie Bouder, in her analysis, gives empirical meaning to this critique through looking at the EQF from three different angles, the historical, an analytical and the French national one.

Bouder’s contribution is particularly concerned with how the EQF can realise its desired goal to contribute to promoting the knowledge society. The main conclusions are, that there is obviously a political will to question the role and the structure of qualifications in view of an economy and a society of knowledge and that research has much to contribute as regards to looking at the problem from the various possible angles. The need for further research is also affirmed by the contributions of Michael Young and Philipp Grollmann. Young’s analysis of existing qualification frameworks and their development in South Africa and New Zealand shows that Qualifications Frameworks are resisted partly from inertia and conservatism and partly because important educational purposes are being defended. Experiences suggest that hopes associated with such Frameworks are often unrealistic. The lessons from existing NQFs, so Young, suggest incrementalism, building blocks, supporting policies, consensus and staying as close as possible to practice are important.

For the European Union, Grollmann argues, some of the substantive research that is available on the subject of learning in work processes has not been taken sufficiently into account within the development of the EQF. At the same time he tracks how the concept of competence has been changed within the different proposals towards the EQF. In order to make European VET a direct contribution to the revised Lisbon agenda, a more concise shared vision with regard to the processes and structures and outcomes of vocational education might be needed, he concludes. Therefore, research and development activities in the European Union could be integrated towards an agenda that covers structures, conditions, processes and their effect on outcomes of learning for and in the world of work.

Concepts, experiences and further research needs

All the contributions in the first section are emphasising the important part that could be played by research in future VET policy in Europe. The second volume of this double special issue elaborates exactly on this topic, in showcasing research results that are immediately connected to European VET policy.

Based on the developmental work and the experiences with the recycling sector, Blings and Spöttl describe how the whole European VET policies could be turned into a bottom-up process that builds on sound methodologies of analysing work processes and the participative engagement of national and practice level actors and stakeholders.

The following article by Markowitsch, Luomi-Messerer, Becker and Spöttl describes how the still scant knowledge about processes of developing vocational expertise can be brought together with the aim of establishing a European Credit Transfer System for Vocational Education. The contribution draws from a project that carried out extensive work process analysis in the metal engineering sector.

The results presented by Rainer Bremer are based on a project that has been carried out in the European Aeronautics sector. A comparison is drawn between competence development in four different VET systems in France, Germany, Spain, and the UK. This serves as a finding for the evaluation of the EQF and the effects it could have on the sector of the European aircraft industry. In the three hypotheses Bremer is putting forward (convergence of skill requirements, divergence of the national VET systems and structural reference between requirements and the development of competence) he illustrates the complex relationship between individual competence development and the context of work organisation and training and challenges the linear logic of the EQF.

Whilst the first three empirical contributions in this volume are extremely relevant to the instruments of the Copenhagen process and the connected instruments EQF and ECVET, the contribution of Uwe Lauterbach turns the readers’ attention towards another significant European educational policy process, i.e. the process “Education 2010”. Education 2010 takes up the notion of the open method of co-ordination that has been developed in European employment policy (Leney, 2004). The idea in using this model for education is that a number of core indicators, “benchmarks”, can be used for the goal setting of educational systems without intervening into national policy contexts. In this regard the quality of an education system or a comparative international assessment refers more and more to quantitative parameters, i.e. “educational indicators”. Lauterbach’s contribution introduces the concept of educational indicators and discusses the question “what can educational indicators achieve?” He concludes that the use of indicators needs to be complemented by the use of qualitative information in order to provide meaningful and valid accounts of how educational systems are developing. Finally, this sets the context for the embedding the results and methodologies of the former articles into an appropriate context.

The last contribution in the second part of the special issue falls out of the categories mentioned above. It constitutes an input into the discussion on the EQF developed by a group of researchers from ITB. The fundamental difference to the EQF in its existing form is that it acknowledges the world of vocational education integrating work experience in its own right. This is based on the plausible assumption that the learning that takes place in settings of practice leads to fundamentally different results than learning that happens in more “instructionist” settings. This challenges the principle that can be found in the EQF that learning in different contexts could lead to the same learning outcomes and that those learning outcomes are just a function of individualised learning trajectories and processes.

Risks and prospects of the Copenhagen process

All the articles in this double special issue pinpoint the potential risks associated with the instruments of the Copenhagen process and gather conceptual remarks on the possible re-orientation of the process in the future. It seems to be of particular importance to highlight that in different European Vocational Education Traditions empirical experiences with the tools recommended by the EQF and ECVET are available. In the debate they have been barely taken into account so far. Apart from few exceptions (e.g. Drexel, 2005) risks and prospects as well as the appliance of the proposed tools have not been kept in perspective so far. The low consideration of results of genuine European Vocational Education Research appears to be another gap in the context of the EQF and the consultation phase. In various programmes of VET research and development a number of projects were carried out and findings were acquired in recent years. The Copenhagen-Process provides a new orientation in European cooperation in VET and gives an opportunity to adjust programmes and projects targeted as well as to sharpen the profile of the activities (Heß and Tutschner, 2003). The further developments should emerge through a dialogue between research, practice and policy on tasks of VET in Europe. We hope that we can make a contribution to this dialogue by providing a directly relevant composition of findings and insights into this topic. Eventually, based on such work, alternatives can be discussed and evaluated with a look at the general aims and goals of the European Union, such as incorporated within the Lisbon Strategy, and a VET policy that is acknowledging the specific characteristics of learning for and in work processes.

For us that includes the adherence to the principle of occupations as formal principle for content and forms of Vocational Education as well as for the corporatist definition of VET development (see the contribution of ITB-Working Group). We also consider this double special issue as a contribution to the further development of a deliberative (Habermas, 1992) European Vocational Education Policy, where arguments and interests can be exchanged and revealed in a rational manner and contribute to the public and political process of formation of opinions and decisions.

Corresponding author

Philipp Grollmann can be contacted at: grollmann@uni_bremen.de

Philipp Grollmann, Georg SpöttlGuest Editors