Craft Working and the “Hard Problem” of Vocational Education and Training

Abstract

Analogies are drawn between the “hard problem” of philosophy of mind consisting in the attempts to reconcile mental and physical phenomena and the similarly long-standing intractability of a core problem in vocational education and training (VET) concerning the vocational/academic divide and the inferior status of vocational studies in systems of education. Previous reconciliation strategies in relation to upgrading vocationalism have included recommendations for VET curriculum and assessment reform, changes in the nature and organisation of apprenticeships, new forms of partnerships between employers and trainers, and suggestions for alternative philosophical perspectives on the nature of work, training and education. Staying mainly within this latter philosophical domain, it is suggested here that recent works on conceptions of craft and craftworking—particularly the links between intellectual, ethical and manual activity—offer valuable insights, which can inform the perennial debate on these issues. Reflections on the central problems in consciousness studies may also help to illuminate the reimagining of the traditional dualisms of theory and practice, thinking and doing, the intellectual and the practical which are at the heart of the vocational/academic divide.