This document discusses strategies for improving vocational education in Uganda. It argues that vocational education should go beyond technical skills training to develop students holistically. It proposes using a hybrid pedagogical approach that combines Afrocentric teaching methods like storytelling with apprenticeships and hands-on learning. It also calls for moving away from an authoritarian classroom model to a more flexible, discovery-based approach. The goal is to prepare students not just for jobs but also to be active, engaged citizens who can help shape their communities and country.

1. Justine Nabaggala
University of Alberta
Department of Secondary Education

2.  Meaning of life: it’s a body of knowledge that
experiences growth and change. So is vocational
education and training.
 We live it and its through simple and complex
experiences that our identities and ways of
knowing are framed.

3.  Pedagogical landscapes include Family,
communities and formal learning institutionalized
structures.
◦ Body of knowledge could be obtained through an
amalgamation of Afrocentric and Modern pedagogies
(notion of pedagogical hybridity).
 Afrocentric pedagogies (Metaphors, contextualized hands-on
instruction, story telling, poems, songs, proverbs)
 Modern pedagogies (Concept of learning-by-doing through
Apprenticeship, workshop, project based and workplace modes of
learning)

4.  What intellectual and moral authority do vocational
educators have to re-imagine Uganda through a
VET lens when neo-liberalistic systems continue to
control the world
 What strategies could be initiated in vocational
education and training that go beyond capitalistic
interests?

5.  Recipients have and are still being prepared to
become theoretical and individualistic.
◦ Therefore human existence is being characterized by
technical rationalism and ego-oriented individualism
◦ The vocational education system echoes an authoritarian
pedagogy that is relating classroom and exam-based
knowledge as an economic resource more than a potential
resource for developing a holistic individual.
◦ Professional consciousness that currently exists among the
academicians and beneficiaries I envisage is based more on
the capitalistic monetary rewards within this particular
education sector than value career system, community
sustainability and development.

6.  Flexible and engaging pedagogy (discovery pedagogy)
Vs Authoritarian pedagogy
◦ Developing a relationship between the knowledge, act of doing
and the individual perceptions of the pedagogical and
vocational practice.
 professional consciousness of vocational values.
◦ determines the extent to which ownership of one’s knowledge
is officially and formally recognized and made part of the
academic regulations and environment.
◦ The philosophy of teaching (personal vocational value
orientations for professionalism that uphold social and
economic recognition against the existing notion of intellectual
competence as well as capitalistic ideologies within general
education.

7.  Implement progressive learning from what is
familiar to more abstract and critically engaging
within learning contexts.
◦ Learning should go beyond classroom walls
◦ Beyond empty verbalism
◦ Examine cultures within space of interaction
◦ Initiate an open and inquisitive approach to teaching and
learning. (Let the syllabus not be the canon book for
knowledge acquisition). In this case let there be a shift from
reproduction consciousness to critical consciousness in
learning.

8.  Collaborative engagement at both national and
international levels acts as another platform for
vocational educators in Uganda to enhance on the
existing contextualized vocational models of
training.
o based on the prevailing economic and education structures
with pedagogical strategies co-opted from the various
contexts while putting into consideration their affordability,
applicability, accessibility and sustainability within the
vocational education sector towards capacity building.

9.  Recognition of moral values and the critical
consciousness that individuals hold should
determine the extent to which ownership of one’s
knowledge is officially and formally recognized and
made part of the academic regulations and
environment.
 Putting into consideration George Hegel’s
‘consciousness of freedom’ on achieving a balance
between freedom and social responsibility, by
practicing flexible pedagogies within vocational
education will allow learners to understand the
reality through various perspectives in order to
create meaning in life.

10. Thank you