Investigating Effective CET Provisions to Promote Employability: Method and Procedures

This chapter describes and justifies the method and procedures used for investigating what constitutes effective continuing education and training (CET) provisions in Singapore. These were used to develop a comprehensive case study of current practices of CET and how they might be enhanced. With one of the highest aging populations globally and its primary assets lying in its human resources, Singapore presents a case that is pertinent not only to its own context but also imparts valuable lessons that may be applicable to other regions. Certainly, Singapore’s key national economic policy emphasises the importance of its working-age adults’ engagement in CET to sustain their employability and across lengthening working lives, and in ways that contribute to their workplaces’ continuity and development. Together, these personal and enterprise imperatives play a crucial role in achieving governmental objectives of bolstering a strong economic foundation and maintaining the capacity to deliver the necessary goods and services for the nation state, a scenario likely mirrored elsewhere. Moreover, other concerns are now being echoed about importance of CET as nation states seek to become more self-sufficient and self-reliant in an era of geopolitical challenges. Consequently, it is increasingly important for nation states to understand what constitutes effective CET provisions and how they might be designed and enacted to achieve these outcomes. Yet, that effectiveness is premised on more than achieving the goals of educational institutions or governmental edicts. Central to the efficacy of CET is its ability to attract participation by, engagement in and achievement of outcomes for working-age adults, and the enterprises in which they are employed. Therefore, instead of viewing CET solely through the lens of individual employability, it is crucial to recognize its role in sustaining enterprise viability and contributing to the fulfillment of social and economic goals within nation-states. It follows then that to investigate how these processes and outcomes might be understood, this chapter sets out the context, framing, procedures, and broad outcomes of a three-phase research project of CET undertaken in Singapore. In essence, the investigation sought to identify what constitutes effective CET provisions for working age adults. The practical inquiry was enacted through interviews with CET graduates and their employers in Phase 1, followed by a survey in Phase 2 administered to Singaporean working age adults in a range of employment and industry sectors to validate and advance the interview findings. In Phase 3, the consolidated findings from the first two phases were presented to CET educators and administrators who engaged in co-construction of the implications and generation of guidelines for curriculum and pedagogic practices. It is these procedures that are described and elaborated here to inform and justify the approach adopted in this case study, but also to inform how these approaches might be adopted elsewhere.