A landscape view of emerging sustainability responses within VET

Abstract

With evidence of global climate change and ongoing ecological degradation, there is an urgent need to give more attention to sustainability within VET to ensure that VET does not remain complicit in reproducing the unjust and unsustainable trajectories of current economic and development pathways. At present, the VET literature does not adequately address these issues, hence the need for this special issue. In response, this paper offers a meta-reflective 'landscape view' of the sustainability within the VET 'field of knowledge' as it is emerging. Here, we use landscape review as a multi-dimensional, 'outside-in' view that provides a basis for understanding the broad context and helps to inform actionable next steps. This analysis we believe helps to highlight the key emerging priorities as well as what paths VET is taking on the journey to sustainability. The analysis shows that while some progress has been made in policy and practice related to the 'greening' of VET, much of the current response within VET to the environmental challenge reflects a minimalist reformist approach, characterised by 'bolt-ons' to existing institutional structures and curricula whilst leaving the fundamental beliefs in productivism, industrialisation and growth in place. Yet, as argued by researchers working on green economy, these beliefs are often complicit in cocreation of the environmental crisis.