Vocational Pedagogy

Vocational Pedagogy: How people learn in relation to what they do to make a living Learning may be formal and institutionalized as in “education,” or informal and only partially articulated-which anthropologists call processes of acculturation or habitus. While important to anthropology, this is also central to the life’s work of sociologist of education, Liv Mjelde. Together, Mjelde and Daly have worked, lectured, collected data and interacted with colleagues in Norway, Canada, Australia, Uganda, South Sudan, Argentina, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Britain, Switzerland and Italy. They have been active participants in the European VET (Vocational Education and Training) and Culture Network, which is coordinated by Anja Heikkinen, Tampere University, and active in the subsequent book series in this field, entitled “Studies in Vocational and Continuing Education” published by Peter Lang Press. Projects and Writings a) Daly was an active board member of the Gitksan-Wetsuwet’en Education Society, an intertribal organisation in British Columbia during the 1980s and early 1990s. This society promoted, raised funds for, and managed forms of local education that soiught to wed formal “scientific” education of the Canadian state with informal traditional knowledge of land, flora, fauna, rivers and seas and societal beliefs. The aim was to equip young First Nations people with both modern “knowhow” and their own local knowledge of the society and land around them. 2006 Book Review of Mario Blaser, Harvey A. Feit & Glenn McRae, eds. 2004. In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization. London & New York: Zed Books. Studies in Continuing Education, Sydney, Australia. 2005a Our Box Was Full: An Ethnography for the Delgamuukw Plaintiffs. Vancouver: UBC Press. 2005b Being and Becoming in a World that Won’t Stand Still: The Case of Metlakatla. Social Analysis 49(4): 21-44. 1999 Witsuwit’en and Gitxsan. In Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly (eds.) 9 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, pp. 71-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991 The Sound of One Hand Clapping: Narratives of Resistance in an Aboriginal Rights case. Paper presented at the Canadian Anthropological Society Annual Meetings, University of Western Ontario, May 9-12, 1991. 1989 Us and Them. Workshop presented to the board of the Legal Services Society of British Columbia, Hazelton, BC, October 13-14, 1990. 1988 Gitksan and Wetsuwet'en Economy and Society. Opinion Evidence for the Plaintiffs, in Delgamuukw et al. v. The Queen in the Right of the Province of British Columbia and the Attorney-General for Canada, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Case 0843, Smithers Registry. 691 pp. b) Activities related to on-the-job learning questions arising from personal practice and problems addressed by other colleagues, such as a doctoral thesis Daly reviewed on the subject of “silent knowledge as a major form of learning” and his experience working on a factory production line. 2009c Anthropological Opinion for the Plaintiffs in Federal Court T-353-85, Alfred Joseph et al. V. The Queen in the Digut of Canada. Use of pedagogical `community of practice´ models to analyze the social destruction of Hagwilget that follows the physical destruction of its fishway. 2009b Communicating the Nonverbal Knowledge of Working Life: Making Visible the Invisible. In Markus Weil, Leena Koski &Liv Mjelde, eds. Knowing Work. Bern: Peter Lang Press. 2006a (With Liv Mjelde). Changes and Contradictions in Vocational Education Training (VET): Reforms of the 1990s Reflected in Hairdressing and the Building Trades. In Anja Heikkinen, Rudolf Husemann & Maija Vaisla eds.Privatisation and Governance: New Challenges in Vocational Education. Berlin: Peter Lang Press. 2006b (Editor and Introduction, with Liv Mjelde) Working Knowledge in a Globalized World: From Work to Learning, From Learning to Work. Berne: Peter Lang Press. 2000 (with Liv Mjelde). Learning at the Point of Production: New Challenges in the Social Division of knowledge. In David Boud & Colin Symes, eds. Working Knowledge: Productive Learning at Work. Sydney: University of Technology of Sydney. Reprinted: 2002. Sosiologisk Årbok 2002 (1): 191-221. c) Teaching with Liv Mjelde in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ educational assistance programme, NOMA, in a joint venture between Norway, Uganda and Sudan, with a master programme in Vocational Pedagogy delivered by Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda. This NOMA project began in 2008 and continues to the end of 2013. In 2011 the first 15 Masters candidates from South Sudan and Uganda graduated in the February convocation at Kyambogo University. What follows are some of the teaching presentations made by Richard Daly to the first cohort. The majority of the learning was with local Ugandan mentors, group work and inter-student help and criticism of each other’s learning and projects. Data-gathering was begun from the first week of the course and concluded with the submission of their masters theses.