Advancing CET Provisions: Perspectives of Educators and Practitioners

An effective continuing education and training (CET) system needs to extend beyond what can be provided through a range of CET institutions, but be supported by workplaces, government agencies and the community. For instance, the role of families and workplaces are ones that are less understood and central to engagement in and quality of experiences comprising CET provisions. Also, workplaces stand as being accessible and grounded circumstances in which the further development of work and skills can progress through everyday work activities. In this way, although centred on provisions offered through CET institutions, what emerges is an enhanced system that supports the provision of CET which extends far beyond what those institutions planned for, enact, and manage. However, it is these institutions, through their existing provisions and prospects for change, that much of this systematic provision of CET will need to be enacted. Drawing on data from the third and final phase of a research project about CET provisions in Singapore, this chapter reports and discusses feedback from CET educators and practitioners, identifying ways of enacting the kinds of changes being advanced by informants in the first two phases (i.e., CET graduates and employers). This phase allowed these practitioners to contribute their perspectives and understandings in response to these findings and to communicate what needs to occur for the translation of these findings into practice. This chapter concludes by providing a set of understandings and procedures that might be adopted to realize effective CET provisions.