Lesley Powell – författare

This edited volume explores how youth and informal sector workers in the Global South are pioneering learning and livelihoods that exist at the intersections of, and beyond, the boundaries of the state, market, and other formal institutions.

Underpinned by research undertaken in the Global South, this book discusses how we might better theorise, conceptualise, and critique what skills and vocational education and training mean for young people with diverse livelihoods - people who rely substantially on the informal and social economy. Rather than envisioning education and skills as oriented towards profit-making or increased productivity, chapters offer fresh perspectives that move beyond the dominant neoliberal and human capital orthodoxies. This book features chapters that are global in approach, uses case studies from contexts as diverse as India, South Africa, West Africa, and Colombia, and focuses on how education can be used to empower people, strengthen livelihoods, and expand human agency, skills, personal growth, and the capability for voice.

Issuing a clarion call, it appeals for recognition of the ways in which learning, working, and living take place in the informal sector in the Global South, arguing that this matters for the vast majority of the world’s population. This book will be of relevance to scholars, academics, and postgraduate students in vocational education and training, skills development, the informal sector, international and comparative education, international development, and adult education.

This edited volume explores how youth and informal sector workers in the Global South are pioneering learning and livelihoods that exist at the intersections of, and beyond, the boundaries of the state, market, and other formal institutions.

Underpinned by research undertaken in the Global South, this book discusses how we might better theorise, conceptualise, and critique what skills and vocational education and training mean for young people with diverse livelihoods - people who rely substantially on the informal and social economy. Rather than envisioning education and skills as oriented towards profit-making or increased productivity, chapters offer fresh perspectives that move beyond the dominant neoliberal and human capital orthodoxies. This book features chapters that are global in approach, uses case studies from contexts as diverse as India, South Africa, West Africa, and Colombia, and focuses on how education can be used to empower people, strengthen livelihoods, and expand human agency, skills, personal growth, and the capability for voice.

Issuing a clarion call, it appeals for recognition of the ways in which learning, working, and living take place in the informal sector in the Global South, arguing that this matters for the vast majority of the world’s population. This book will be of relevance to scholars, academics, and postgraduate students in vocational education and training, skills development, the informal sector, international and comparative education, international development, and adult education.

Focusing on reimagining the purpose of vocational education and training (VET) and grounded in the reality of a small cohort of young South Africans and an institution seeking to serve them, Skills for Human Development moves beyond the inadequacies of the dominant human capital orthodoxy to present a rich theoretical and practical alternative for VET. Offering a human development and capability approach, it brings social justice to the forefront of the discussion of VET’s purpose at the national, institutional and individual levels. In doing so, this book insists that VET should be about enlarging peoples’ opportunities to live a flourishing life, rather than simply being about narrow employability and productivity. It argues that human development approaches, while acknowledging the importance of work in its broadest sense, offer a better way of bringing together VET and development than the current human capital-inspired orthodoxy.

Offering a transformative vision for skills development, this book:

Taking a broad perspective, Skills for Human Development presents a comprehensive and unique framework which bridges theory, policy and practice to give VET institutions a new way of thinking about their practice, and VET policymakers a new way of engaging with global messages of sustainable human development. It is a vital resource for those working on the human development and skills approach in multiple disciplines and offers a grounding framework for international policymakers interested in this growing area.