Fairman, Brian, and Voak, Adam (2023) Building a Culturally Relevant Workforce in Indonesia: Preventing Vocational Imperialism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

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Abstract

Whilst foreign models of vocational education and training (VET) interventions may still provide relevance to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), it is becoming increasingly important to enunciate to what extent these foreign models hold cultural applicability.

In the interests of securing more appropriate interventions, it is time to examine the current effectiveness of foreign development assistance from the perspective of aid recipients and their impact upon local capacity building. We acknowledge the socio-economic challenges in each context are subtly different, and a well-intentioned but miscued planned intervention may lead to unintended consequences, especially when external influence is used for external gain. We describe these types of interventions as vocational imperialism. It is therefore essential that selected development models are transparently applicable to individual country and regional circumstances, and that the cultural mores of each site of these interventions are respected and addressed.

A careful consideration of, and investigation into, education and training interventions such as methodologies applied in existing training approaches, recognition of stakeholder requirements, articulation of recipient expectations, design of training interventions, monitoring and evaluation frameworks used to measure success, the use of foreign ‘specialists’ (Bule in the Indonesian vernacular), and examining cross-cultural communication, would provide opportunities to improve existing practice. Any explicit improvements could have significant impacts on training interventions in terms of sustainable skills development in recipient countries, and for improved donor engagement.

The intention of examining current vocational training interventions is to more clearly inform practitioners of a range of meaningful approaches and policy directions for training program design, deployment and impact measurement. Encouraging recipient country ownership ensures ‘meaningful engagement’ and ‘shared ownership’. Fairman (2017) has designed and presented a ‘model of meaningful intervention practice’, intended to guide future practice, which includes suggestions and approaches to give voice to the recipients of international aid, whilst providing valuable insights for policy makers, administrators, and trainers in both donor and recipient countries.

Item ID:	84602
Item Type:	Book (Edited)
ISBN:	978-1-5275-0230-7
Copyright Information:	© 2023 by Brian Fairman, Adam Voak and contributors.
Date Deposited:	10 Feb 2025 02:20
Downloads:	Total: 1 Last 12 Months: 1
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