Recontextualising Technical Vocational Education Training for Epistemic Justice in Decolonial Global South Spaces
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Vocational education pathways have had a narrowly instrumental and contested purpose of providing basic, practical, low-level skills for societies and economies over the centuries. Later, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) qualifications became part of differentiated and diversified education systems in both developed and developing economies, with the purpose of providing the skills required by industry, as well as serving as a tool to address equality and equity in societies. While its potential to widen educational access is acknowledged, the public good, social justice, and knowledge dimensions of this pathway have become overshadowed by technicist rationality and performativity goals aimed at supplying a workforce for the globalised neoliberal economy. This conceptual article employs productive capabilities, knowledge approach, and reflexivity lenses to examine how the curriculum and pedagogy of TVET can be reimagined to advance social and epistemic justice in decolonial Global South spaces and within the knowledge economy in a post-apartheid setting. The foci of the article are the context of vocational education, TVET in changing geopolitical spaces, market incursion in TVET, the social and epistemic justice of TVET, and the recontextualisation of the purpose of TVET in decolonial and knowledge economy settings. We argue for a reimagined purpose of TVET and its sites of delivery, the relationship between TVET and the labour market, the advancement of social and epistemic justice through TVET, and the design of curricula and pedagogy in decolonial and knowledge economy contexts.
Authors: Isaac Ntshoe, Rivalani Masonto
Institutions: Mangosuthu University of Technology, University of Zululand
Language: English
Topic: Education Systems and Policy
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $217
OpenAlex ID: W7220439606