Between technological imperative and material culture: The chaîne opératoire of VET policy in England

VET policies that assign increasing importance to workplace learning, including as a route into higher education, emphasise technological advances, such as international discourses referencing a fourth industrial revolution (4IR). Such approaches have become increasingly central to UK social and economic policies over the last 12 years, centred on the reform of apprenticeships and ‘technical education’ in England. Yet these policies have also appealed to a discourse of ‘craft’ to validate vocational routes, recalling the earlier status of skilled work during the handicraft period. These apparently incongruous references to moral and material dimensions of skilled work, largely neglected by technological policy discourses, call our attention to cultural and societal contexts of these policies. This paper explores these contexts drawing on methods used to construct material cultures from the chaîne opératoire of historical artefacts. This chaîne leads us back to a dualisation of labour markets and social policies that is increasingly reshaping VET across developed countries.