About the author: Zeng (1968-), female, associate researcher of Hunan Communications Vocational and Technical College, mainly engaged in higher education management and vocational and technical education research.
China Library Classification Number: G7 10 Document Identification Number: A Document Number:1001-7518 (2008) 05-0048-05.
As an education to cultivate skilled and practical talents, vocational education should "teach people to fish" or "teach people to fish"? The author thinks that both are very important, and a "grant' desire'" should be added. Vocational education should be three-pronged, teaching "fish" and "fishing" as well as "desire" and performing a trio well.
First, "giving fish" is the core requirement of vocational education.
"Give people fish", as its name implies, means giving fish to others. Vocational education is an education to cultivate skilled and practical talents for enterprises and society. The cultivation of skills is the fundamental difference between vocational education and general education. What kind of talents enterprises and institutions need, vocational education will train what kind of talents. What kind of skills are needed for students in vocational positions, and what kind of skills are cultivated in schools. Vocational education is different from general education because its important task is to cultivate students' skills. A school can't be regarded as a real vocational school if students don't master any skills after graduation, and there is no way to talk about vocational education without training skills. The essence of vocational education is employment-oriented, that is, to cultivate one or more skills that students need for employment, which is also called "fish" in this paper. Skills training is the core requirement of vocational education. "Giving' Fish'" is employment-oriented, and according to the requirements of the proposed employment position, it teaches students the skills they need to take up their posts.
(A) the importance of skills training
1. Strengthening skills training is the requirement of cultivating students' practical ability and improving students' employment rate. In recent years, due to fierce employment competition, the employment of college students has become a social concern. In 2006, a joint research group composed of the Central School Department of the Communist Youth League and Peking University Institute of Public Policy conducted a survey on the employment situation of more than 6,000 undergraduate graduates from nearly 100 universities across the country. "By the end of May, among the 2006 undergraduate graduates surveyed, 49.8 1% had signed a contract and were interested but didn't sign it, and 15.02% didn't want to find a job immediately. Faced with the severe employment situation, many college students have lowered their employment expectations very low, and even have "zero-wage" employment, but it is still difficult to get the favor of enterprises.
The low employment rate of college students has always been a common problem faced by students, schools and society. On the one hand, college students lament that "satisfactory jobs are hard to find", on the other hand, enterprises also lament that "satisfactory talents are hard to find". What kind of talents is it difficult for enterprises to find? It is a person who can do things, a person who can solve practical problems and a highly skilled person. In recent years, the employment situation of higher vocational graduates is better than that of ordinary college undergraduates, which also shows that students who have mastered higher vocational skills undoubtedly have higher employment rate. Skills training is the characteristic and advantage of vocational education. Vocational colleges should focus on training objectives, grasp the key point of skill training, pay close attention to the training of practical ability, and let students master excellent skills to better promote employment.
2. Strengthening skills training is the requirement to fill the gap of high-skilled talents in society. On June 365438+1October 3 1 day, 2006, Zhou Yuqing, vice-chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, said at the press conference of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions that what China enterprises lack most at present is not college students, but highly skilled talents. Chang Yimin, Minister of Economy and Technology of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, who attended the news conference that day, revealed that there are nearly 260 million urban workers in China, and skilled workers account for about one third of the total, and most of them are junior technicians, and the proportion of technicians and senior technicians is only 4%. The demand of enterprises for highly skilled talents is 14%, and the difference between supply and demand is 10 percentage point. Taking the transportation industry where the author works as an example, according to the Eleventh Five-Year Development Plan of Transportation Education and Training, during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period, the transportation industry urgently needs millions of transportation skilled personnel with practical skills, strong hands-on ability and dedication to their posts, and 70% of technicians and senior technicians in transportation enterprises only account for about 1% of the total number of skilled workers, which is far below the requirement of 5% put forward by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. There is a shortage of skilled talents in traffic engineering construction and maintenance, automobile operation and maintenance, ship driving and turbine management, engineering diving, engineering equipment maintenance and repair, modern logistics service and other professional fields. There is a serious shortage of highly skilled talents most needed by enterprises, which has become a bottleneck restricting economic development. The cultivation of high-skilled talents depends on vocational education, and strengthening skill cultivation is the primary task of vocational education.
(B) the guarantee of skills training
1. Build a high-level experimental training base to provide material guarantee for practical teaching. Skills are the result of repeated training. Both quantity and quality can guarantee the experimental training conditions necessary for teaching, which is the material basis of skill training. To run vocational education well, experimental training equipment and venues must meet certain requirements in quantity and quality. In terms of quantity, there must be enough sets, and dozens of students can't practice their skills in line on a machine tool. It is necessary to ensure that every student has enough practical experimental training equipment. In terms of quality, the configuration of experimental training equipment should reflect the latest technology as much as possible, update and eliminate backward equipment in time, supplement equipment that can represent the most advanced technology in the industry, increase simulation and simulation training conditions, and build training rooms and workshops with real working environment. We should not only build a high-level on-campus training base, but also build a high-level and stable off-campus training base in high-quality enterprises in the industry.
2. Build a high-level team of "double-qualified" and "double-qualified" teachers to improve the practical teaching ability of professional teachers. To cultivate students with excellent skills, teachers themselves must first have high practical operation ability. This requires vocational colleges to have a group of professional teachers who can "talk" when standing on the podium and "do" when leaving the podium. That is to say, professional teachers in vocational colleges should have strong theoretical knowledge on the one hand, and update and supplement relevant theoretical knowledge in time with the update and progress of modern technology, on the other hand, they should have strong practical operation ability, be independent in practical work and become experts in the industry. It is necessary not only to hire a group of technical backbones and skilled craftsmen who are proficient in enterprise industrial processes, but also to train a group of influential technical masters and craft masters in the industry and region. It is necessary to carry out various forms of professional teachers' practical skills training, unblock the channels for teachers to practice in enterprises regularly, improve teachers' practical ability and meet teaching needs.
3. Reform the mode of running a school, reform the curriculum system and teaching content, and strengthen practical teaching. Vocational education should be closely integrated with enterprises to reform the current mode of running schools behind closed doors. We should invite not only the engineers and technicians of the enterprise, but also the advanced technology and equipment of the enterprise. It is more important to go out, put students in enterprises and move classrooms to workshops. Because of various objective conditions, the number of people who can "please come in" is limited, and its effect is limited. Therefore, it is necessary to reform the school-running mode, implement the combination of work and study, so that students can have a long time rather than a symbolic fixed post and work in enterprises, and practice while learning in a real working environment, so that students can get more comprehensive, effective and sufficient exercise, and truly realize the seamless connection between teaching and enterprise requirements. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop a curriculum system that embodies the characteristics of work-study combination, and the teaching content should be fully close to production practice, and practice teaching should be strengthened. At present, some vocational schools have explored this aspect, but generally speaking, they are flexible and free in the arrangement of hours for students to practice in enterprises, the arrangement of courses and teaching contents that should be adjusted accordingly, and the connection between schools and enterprises in teaching, and have not formed a relatively stable school-running model that can fully reflect the characteristics of vocational education.
4. Carry out the "double certificate" system and put forward rigid requirements for students' skill level. In order to strengthen students' awareness of skills training, stimulate students' subjective desire to exercise skills and improve their subjective initiative, vocational colleges must reform the talent quality evaluation mechanism, implement the "double certificate" system and put forward rigid requirements for students' skill level. It should be stipulated that students must participate in the professional skill appraisal related to their major and obtain one or more professional skill appraisal certificates before graduation. The introduction of vocational skill appraisal can make students' skill level have an objective evaluation standard, which can effectively enhance their employment competitiveness.
Second, "teaching' fishing'" is the requirement of students' sustainable development.
It is the most basic content of vocational education to teach students the skills they need in their future careers. However, vocational education is not training, not simply teaching students skills, but includes many educational contents, and "teaching' fishing'" mentioned in this paper is one of the important contents.
"Fishing" in this paper refers to ability, and "teaching" fishing is to cultivate students' comprehensive ability. Vocational education should not only pay attention to the cultivation of skills, but also pay attention to the cultivation of students' abilities, requiring students to cultivate their own abilities as much as possible while learning professional knowledge, so as to meet the requirements of future careers and the needs of personal sustainable development.
(1) Paying attention to the cultivation of ability is the basis for promoting students' smooth employment.
Enterprises have many requirements for talents. Only skills can't be in an invincible position in the workplace, and employers are demanding higher and higher comprehensive quality and ability of graduates. CCTV and Zhaopin.com conducted a survey on 1 16 employers to find out what conditions employers value most about job seekers. The results show that in the resume reading stage, 58% of employers value social practice and internship, 44% value majors, and 28%, 22% and 13% value graduate schools respectively. In the interview process, the employer will pay attention to: practical ability 26%, professional knowledge 24%, verbal expression 22%, personality 16%, image temperament 12%. What abilities do entrepreneurs value more during the probation period? The survey results show that 5 1% pays attention to learning ability, 42% to teamwork ability, 36% to execution ability and 24% to innovation spirit. The demand of employers should be the direction that students strive to pursue in the stage of career preparation. Therefore, higher vocational colleges should attach importance to the cultivation of students' abilities in all aspects in order to promote social recognition and improve students' employability.
(2) Paying attention to the cultivation of ability is the requirement to ensure the rational flow of talents.
Vocational education "employment-oriented" and "employment-oriented" are not the same as "first employment-oriented". In the era of market economy, career change is very common. Both enterprises and individuals have the requirements of rational flow of talents, and there is a dynamic two-way choice problem. "Mobility" puts forward the ability requirement of "job-hopping" for "talents". The reason why talents can "flow" is that they can move from one professional position to another and quickly adapt to different professional roles, and also because they can quickly adapt to different professional positions and meet the professional requirements of enterprises. Whether you have a strong ability to transfer jobs is very important for an individual to get a second or third job smoothly, and it is also very important for the promotion of the position. Vocational education should not only pay attention to whether students can find jobs smoothly when they graduate, but also consider the career changes that students will face in their careers. Therefore, from the perspective of rational flow of talents, the cultivation of ability is also very important.
(C) focusing on the cultivation of ability is the requirement of students' lifelong education.
Contemporary educational theory holds that lifelong education is an educational concept, including all kinds of education received by a person at different stages of development from childhood to old age, which runs through his life. Vocational education should teach students to learn how to learn, how to do things, how to survive and how to master learning methods. Methodology ability and social ability are the basic survival ability of students in their future professional life, and also the basic development ability they should have in an open social life. Vocational schools should strengthen the cultivation of methodological ability and social ability to lay the foundation for students to realize lifelong learning.
It can be seen that vocational education is undoubtedly important to the cultivation of students' ability, and vocational education should attach importance to the cultivation of students' ability. However, many vocational schools have this understanding, all say so and want to do so. However, in practice, at present, in many vocational schools, even in many well-run schools with "booming supply and demand", due to various reasons, it has not been done or not done enough, and there is a widespread problem of attaching importance to skill training and neglecting ability training. The author believes that there are two very important reasons among these "various" reasons:
One of the reasons is to maximize the benefits. Vocational education is the education that is most closely related to the economy and society. The survival and development of vocational schools are closely related to whether enterprises recognize the talents they cultivate. When enterprises recognize the education of schools, students can easily find jobs, students can easily find jobs, and school enrollment will flourish; On the contrary, if the enterprise does not recognize the education of the school, the employment of students will become a problem and the development of the school will also become a problem. This is a realistic problem related to the survival and development of vocational schools. Therefore, vocational education must fully consider the requirements of enterprises for talent training.
For the sake of their own interests, enterprises should first emphasize the requirements that meet the needs of their own enterprises, rather than considering the development of students, so they will intentionally or unintentionally ignore the requirements of students' all-round development for education. When enterprises run schools jointly with vocational colleges and participate in the formulation of training objectives and teaching contents, they often only emphasize their own requirements for talents, and clearly put forward their own requirements for students' skills training, without seriously considering the long-term development of students and putting forward practical training programs.
Vocational schools are very aware of the requirements of students' survival and all-round development. However, in the case that the employment market is still a buyer's market, in order to pursue the high employment rate of students, in practice, when the long-term interests of students (acquiring more abilities for more and greater development in the future) conflict with the current interests (mastering the skills that meet the requirements of the current professional positions of enterprises to promote smooth employment), the school's overall educational responsibility (cultivating students' all-round development is an important aspect) and the school's current interests (successfully "selling" graduates). In other words, in vocational schools, students' employment is always in the first place. Although they know that some practices will destroy the integrity of education and are not conducive to the all-round development of students, schools will still make such choices.
From the perspective of students and parents, because of the shortage of jobs, when there is a contradiction between the current employment requirements and long-term development, in fact, students and parents often choose to protect their current interests, that is, how to promote smooth employment is their choice. Therefore, the author believes that one of the important reasons for attaching importance to skill training while relatively ignoring ability training is the consideration of maximizing the interests of enterprises, schools and students.
The second reason is that there are many problems in vocational education itself. If the first reason is caused by the "external" factors of the education system, then I think the second reason is due to the internal problems of the current vocational education.
At present, China's vocational education still has a strong color of general education, which is not completely in accordance with the requirements of social development and market. The school-running mode, specialty setting, curriculum system, teaching content, teaching methods and teaching staff can't meet the requirements of vocational education well, let alone reflect its characteristics. This not only affects students' skill training, but also affects students' ability training.
These internal and external troubles in vocational education have led to the neglect of ability training in vocational education at present, which will eventually affect the long-term development of vocational education. Therefore, the author believes that vocational education should pay attention to the problem of ability training while emphasizing the core position of skill training. Therefore, it is necessary to further deepen the internal reform of vocational education and find countermeasures to solve the problems.
Third, "giving' desire'" is the requirement to achieve life goals.
Literally, "desire" is hope and expectation, and it is a requirement to get something or achieve a certain purpose. Desire is an individual instinct. Various external stimuli can induce people's desires, and external stimuli can also strengthen people's desires. There are many kinds of desires, and the "desire" referred to in this article is actually a life goal and an ideal. The "desire to give" here means that vocational colleges stimulate students' "desire for life" through ideal education for students. The author believes that higher vocational colleges should not only cultivate students' correct ideal view, but more importantly, teach students to correctly design their own life goals, plan their future lives, especially their career, and guide students to struggle towards their ideal goals step by step under the guidance of correct planning. In other words, the focus of vocational education is life planning education, especially career planning education.
(A) to strengthen life planning education, to prepare for entering the society.
China should attach importance to ideal education. Many people know to set up lofty ideals from primary school or even at an early age. At present, the traditional life ideal education is too vague and lacks education at the operational level. As a matter of fact, many students regard being admitted to university as their ideal when they are in middle school. When they enter the university, they have the idea of "cross the bridge when the boat comes to it". They have no goal to strive for and no motivation to learn. Many students don't know enough about their majors after they go to college, and they don't know what they can do in the future and what industry they can engage in. Their understanding of the future career is limited to the name, the requirements of the career, and the significance of what they have learned in college to the future career. Universities have no specific goals, so it is difficult to adapt and find their own position after entering the society.
Japan's "World Weekly" once conducted a survey in Shanghai, and the results showed that 85% of unmarried people in Shanghai depended on their parents for part or all of their lives except students. These "little emperors" have a high degree, but they just don't want to work. Some of them quit their jobs easily in order to find better treatment, even if they finally find a job. Even in some poor families, parents living on pensions work as temporary workers to support their non-working sons. The weekly magazine called these young people "neets". The emergence of "NEET" is not entirely due to the difficulty of employment. "World Weekly" analyzed the results of this survey and pointed out the reasons, including two reasons: First, lack of psychological preparation, will not design a lifestyle that will enter the society. Second, the eyes are high and the hands are low, and high salaries are expected. Fundamentally speaking, the reason is that there is no correct ideal view and no clear life plan.
The connotation of life planning is very rich, covering academic, professional, emotional, family, economic and other aspects. In the stage of vocational education, the emphasis is on career planning. What is career planning? Career planning is to determine the goal of personal career through the analysis of subjective and objective factors that determine personal career, such as society, family and individuals, and to choose a career to achieve this goal, formulate corresponding work, education and training plans, and reasonably arrange the time, order and direction of each step. Life planning education can help students to position themselves correctly, make clear what kind of people they want to train, understand what they can do, what opportunities the society can provide me, solve problems such as what they choose to do and how to do it, and plan their career development plans reasonably.
Vocational education is a kind of employment-oriented education. For vocational education, because the orientation of talent training is to cultivate practical and skilled talents for production, management and service, the expected working conditions for graduates' employment will be relatively more difficult and the working pay may be relatively lower. Therefore, vocational colleges should incorporate career planning education into school education, strengthen life planning education for students, especially career planning education, and do a good job in psychology, ability and methods of entering the society after graduation.
(2) Carry out life planning education as soon as possible and run it through the whole process of vocational education. Life planning should be sooner rather than later. Abroad, many countries attach importance to and carry out the educational guidance of life planning. For example, the National Career Information Coordination Committee of the United States issued the National Career Development Guide of the United States, which holds that career guidance should start at the age of 6, and there should be different life plans in four different growth stages: primary school, junior high school, senior high school and adult. In China, there is no similar national programmatic document on career development guidance, and many schools have not realized the importance of career development planning to students' career. From primary school to middle school to university, it has not been included in the education agenda.
Career planning is an important part of life planning. In fact, students have basically chosen their career direction when they arrive at vocational colleges. It is actually too late to talk about career planning at this time. Many students who apply for vocational colleges actually don't know much about this major when choosing a major, and they are not very clear about the corresponding occupation and professional requirements of this major, and they are not very clear about whether they are suitable for this major and how to study to meet the needs of their future careers. Therefore, vocational colleges should carry out life planning, especially career planning education, for students from the beginning of their enrollment.
From freshman year, life planning education can help students clear their minds, let students who have no clear goals in the future correctly understand and evaluate themselves, find out their areas of interest, make clear their life goals, adjust or clarify their career direction as soon as possible, and let students realize that learning at this stage is of great significance to their future life and work, thus effectively stimulating their professional interests and learning initiative and consciousness, and improving learning efficiency.
Life planning education should run through the whole process of vocational education. Life planning cannot be completed at one time, but a step-by-step process, which needs constant revision and adjustment. Students' life planning education is not a few classes. Even if the method of teaching students to learn life planning is completed, it should run through the whole process of school education. We should always remind and urge students to make unremitting efforts according to their planned life goals and consciously put them into action. We should guide them to form a habit, constantly revise and adjust their life goals according to the changes in different stages in their future study and work, and make persistent efforts under the guidance of correct planning to get closer to their life goals step by step.
(3) Combine life planning education with quality education and students' all-round development.
Quality is the innate physiological and psychological characteristics of individuals, and it is the basic quality obtained through environment and education. Life planning has two meanings, one is to urge students to fully develop their innate genetic quality, and the other is to urge students to get comprehensive and personalized development through acquired efforts. Life planning is an all-round planning. When carrying out life planning education in vocational colleges, we should not only emphasize career planning, but also emphasize the practical level of knowledge related to students' careers and employment. More importantly, we should guide students to pay attention to the value level of knowledge and guide them to distinguish good from evil. Not only let them know their personal interests and abilities, know "what I want to do", but also form a sound judgment and value orientation, form a correct world outlook and values, and know "can you do it?" It is also necessary to cultivate students' sound personality, noble sentiments and healthy interests, improve their quality in an all-round way, and make them become people with ideals, beliefs, sustainable development and active participation in social reform.
Students in higher vocational colleges are in the most dramatic period of psychological changes. Their attitude towards life, emotional mode, thinking mode and values have been initially formed but not yet finalized. At the same time, we have to face a series of problems, such as studying, making friends, falling in love and choosing a job, with many psychological contradictions. In addition, some students do not want to attend vocational schools, but they have a helpless choice, feel confused about the future, and are prone to negative emotions such as loss, confusion, anxiety and impatience, and will not handle interpersonal relationships well. Through life planning education, they can be promoted to form a correct world outlook and values, gradually establish stable self-awareness and work values, consciously cultivate adaptability, learn interpersonal communication, properly handle interpersonal relationships, overcome psychological weaknesses, make full use of learning opportunities at school, and develop themselves in an all-round way.
(D) Life planning education in vocational education focuses on vocational planning education and should be combined with employment education.
Career planning is an important part of life planning, especially in the stage of employment-oriented vocational education, it is of special significance to carry out career planning education. The author believes that at this stage, the focus of life planning should be on future career planning, and for higher vocational students, career planning should be finally implemented in job hunting and job selection. Therefore, higher vocational colleges should focus on strengthening the education of students' career planning, and combine the education of career planning with the education of job hunting and job selection.
It is necessary to organize students to carry out social surveys and various social activities, so that they can understand the current social situation and employment situation, so as to understand the gap between their expectations and social reality; Organize students to go deep into modern enterprises, understand the requirements of enterprises for talents, and understand all kinds of new equipment and technologies of enterprises, so as to understand the gap between their own strength and enterprise requirements, and the gap between self-cognition and social evaluation. Combining career planning with employment education can make students have a sense of urgency to survive and apply for a job, make a practical study plan, actively seek opportunities for exercise and study, and accumulate for achieving lofty goals.
It is necessary to guide students to rationally grasp and handle the relationship between their own life design and current employment, and combine personal interests, social needs and family needs to rationally and scientifically position their lives and make correct employment choices. There is a distance between ideal and reality. Students who plan their careers carefully can handle the contradiction between ideal and reality, update their employment concepts, adjust their employment expectations, participate in employment selection and employment competition with the mentality and orientation of ordinary workers, and create conditions close to their goals with an enterprising attitude. In a difficult environment, they are optimistic, open-minded, tenacious and down-to-earth to take every step.
In the final analysis, the purpose of vocational education is to cultivate people. Only by comprehensively educating students from three aspects: skill training, ability training and ideal education can vocational schools cultivate skilled and practical talents to meet the requirements of social and economic development and realize the ultimate goal of vocational education.