Competence-based education in china’s higher tvet: The case of shenzhen polytechnic

Abstract

Competence-based education (CBE) has been introduced into China, especially in the past two decades, as a very important education philosophy for constructing its TVET system. Based on the study of foreign research and practices while connecting them with the context in China, Chinese scholars shifted from reductionist competence concept to holist competence and then to integrated competence understanding for the CBE. From the perspective of the personality of the graduates, Chinese scholars prefer to cluster needed competence in higher TVET graduates into hard and soft ones. The hard one is for practical professional requirements, while the soft one is of generic competence which enables a graduate to be qualified as a citizen and flexible in personal and career development in life for a long time. Narrowly focused CBE is far from enough nowadays for preparing vocational talents for the future society. And this understanding matches with the realistic expectations of the industries for higher TVET graduates. In higher TVET sector, Shenzhen Polytechnic, a national exemplar higher TVET college in China, originates a ‘4 body and 4 field’ hypothesis for implementing ‘3 kinds of education’ to ensure integrated CBE in higher TVET institutions. Their hypothesis provides answers to what, how and where to offer higher TVET to their students. Yet, as a huge developing country, China still needs to learn more from the West and to make more efforts to improve integrated TVET with Chinese features to get to a more efficient and effective TVET system for its rapid overall development.