Where 'The TVET System' Meets the Performativity of Vocational Learning: Borderlands of Innovation and Future Directions

The purpose of the book as a whole is to examine ‘effective TVET learning’ as comprising two equally important dimensions: (a) learning as the acquisition of TVET knowledge, and (b) learning as the contextualized (socio-political and cultural) application of that knowledge. The particular focus of this chapter is on the underpinnings of effective TVET learning. What is it that makes up effective learning? How is it made up? We offer a slightly different take on these matters by illustrating the impacts of socio-political and cultural factors on both the acquisition and application of learning. By using the case of learning in Indonesian and Balinese vocational contexts, the chapter aims to highlight the ways in which socio-political and cultural influences permeate and interact with both systemic (formal) and informal vocational learning, problematizing the nature of ‘industries’ as we go. The idea of providing a point of comparison is to show how ‘learning’ is meaningful when understood in local and situated terms through the idea of ‘interactive trouble’ between ‘The TVET System’ being the policies and structures that take place from the top-down, and the local performativity of TVET learning that occurs from the bottom-up, sometimes called the grassroots. Interactivity occurs through social capital’s mechanisms of networks, and the associated all-pervasive socio-cultural identities which are paramount to the way these learning networks play out.