Innovation, Research and Education: The Case of Vocational Education and Training

Tracey Burns, Francesc Pedró, Beñat Bilbao-Osorio, Katerina Ananiadou, Vanessa Shadoian

Most countries are currently facing difficult times and OECD member states are no exception. In the medium and long term, innovation will increasingly be a key not only to economic growth but also to social welfare and equity.

Work on innovation in education, including vocational education and training (VET), is therefore crucial. A recent OECD project by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) investigated this issue through 14 case studies in six OECD countries: Australia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Mexico and Switzerland¹.
The role of knowledge in systemic innovation, both within VET and in education in general, can be set within the context of the use of knowledge and research in educational policy (OECD/CERI, 2007). The increased interest in the role of knowledge in policy making has been prompted partly by an increasingly strong focus on educational outcomes, as measured by numbers of qualifications achieved or skills and competences acquired (e.g. in surveys such as PISA). It is also affected by issues related to educational expenditure, with education policy makers needing to provide evidence of effectiveness when requesting funding.
In the case of innovation in education, there is an even greater need for a convincing body of knowledge on which to make decisions about what works. Knowledge includes elements of the innovation process (piloting, monitoring, evaluation), which can be used as cost-effective mechanisms to guide product and process development. Effective feedback mechanisms are not optional for continuing innovative development and transferring innovation across systems. Unfortunately, in our case study work we saw that decisions to introduce changes in the VET system were not always based on solid empirical evidence. In addition, there was often little evaluation, resulting in difficulty in determining when a particular innovation could be said to be a success or a failure. Knowledge brokerage institutions supporting the diffusion of innovations were still scarce, and the knowledge-based linkages between stakeholders generally weak.
There is thus a need to improve the links between research and innovation in VET and education more generally. To facilitate this, governments, with the support of other stakeholders, will need to develop a systemic approach as a guiding principle for innovation-related policy. Such an approach includes at least five basic elements:

• an explicit policy to support research in light of national priorities, both at policy and practitioner levels;
• an evolving framework for sustaining both top-down and bottom-up innovations, including monitoring and evaluation mechanisms;
• a unified knowledge base which includes research evidence and knowledge emerging from assessment of innovations;
• regular efforts to synthesise and disseminate new knowledge on effective policies and practices, so as to challenge the status quo of the system and set new horizons; and
• capacity building (structural, personal) to enable all the elements above.

As the case of VET demonstrates, for those interested in innovation in education – whether from a practitioner’s, researcher’s or policy-maker’s perspective – the systemic approach to innovation is useful to help make timely, evidence-based decisions about the long-term development of their sector.

Tracey Burns, Francesc Pedró, Beñat Bilbao-Osorio, Katerina Ananiadou, Vanessa Shadoian work at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, OECD Paris
www.oecd.org