Liberal and vocational education: the Gordian encounter
ISSN: 0040-0912
Article publication date: 31 August 2020
Issue publication date: 21 November 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how liberal higher education can strengthen vocational higher education.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses Shay's (2013) framework of curriculum differentiation to articulate how the strengths and shortcomings of liberal education differ from those of vocational education and to allow the differences highlighted to inform a resolution to each other's shortcomings.
Findings
There is nothing new in the findings that liberal education differs from vocational education and that both have shortcomings. What the paper presents is a viewpoint that the differences are not confirmation that these two approaches to education are in opposition but rather that they complement each other. The strength of one is the weakness of the other.
Originality/value
The perspective taken in this paper is developed using the language of semantic density (SD) and semantic gravity (SG). Using Shay's semantic field of recontextualized knowledge, this paper suggests that liberal and vocational education inhabit two sides of contexts and concepts continua. The paper further proposes that both are alike in a meaningful way because both have unsuccessfully managed the role of context in their curricula.
Keywords
Citation
Burns, C.J. and Natale, S.M. (2020), "Liberal and vocational education: the Gordian encounter", Education + Training, Vol. 62 No. 9, pp. 1087-1099. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-03-2020-0064
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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