Vocations

Chapter
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Abstract

This chapter discusses what comprises vocations – an obvious starting point given that they are the stated object of vocational education. In doing so, it proposes that vocations are personally founded and premised on individuals’ interests and needs that arise through their personal histories or ontogenies, albeit shaped and bounded by both societal and brute factors. However, the sources, form and standing of individuals’ vocations are shaped by social and institutional facts comprising the existence, standing, access to and boundaries around particular activities (e.g. occupations). As well, the brute facts of maturation (e.g. strength and reaction times) can shape and constrain the human capacities required to undertake those activities. However, ultimately vocations have personal meaning and purposes to which individuals have to assent. It is they that decide what constitutes their vocations. So, whilst what individuals are able to assent to are shaped by societal measures (e.g. opportunities to engage in particular work), vocations are products of individuals’ experiences and interests, that are, in some ways, person dependent. Thus, the genesis of vocations is found in individuals’ personal histories or ontogenies. It is through the negotiation between individuals’ interests, capacities and intentions and what the social and brute worlds afford them that comprise their ontogenies that are central to the enactment of vocations as occupations, their remaking and transformation. This chapter on vocations may be seen as a precursor to the following chapter on occupations, whose genesis and forms are located in culture and history. However, here the focus is on individuals’ vocations.

Keywords

Vocational Education Social World Institutional Fact Brute Fact Brute World 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Griffith University, School of Education and Professional StudiesGriffithAustralia

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