Challenges to Agency in Workplaces and Implications for VET: Mechatronics Artisans in the Automotive Sector in South Africa

Abstract

Vocational education and training (VET) is challenged to respond to a shifting work milieu, globally. In South Africa after apartheid, the current goal is to train more artisans to address growing inequality, high youth unemployment, critical shortages, and continued blockages to the production of quality intermediate-level skills, significant challenges within the national context. A particular concern is the need to train and retain more black and women artisans (Wildschut et al. 2015) to shift past patterns of discriminatory access and success. This makes recent critiques of a productivist approach to vocational education and training (VET) particularly significant in the South African context.