Overall Rationale and Purpose
All nations are faced with the challenge of improving their human resources to respond to national development needs, global competition, and to rapidly changing worlds of work, technology and economy. The development of workers' competences at the level of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is a key issue for economic development which in turn is the major precondition for sustainable societal development.
The 1st UPI International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education and Training is intended to be the first of a series of TVET conferences that provide a platform for international knowledge exchange between TVET research, industry, TVET providers, TVET teacher education and politics mainly targeting South-East, South and East Asia on research findings, concepts, best practice and experiences in technical and vocational education and training.
This conference will specifically deal with concepts for competence development in TVET and their implementation as well as with evaluation and assessment of vocational competences, but there will also be room for the discussion of other current research and development approaches in TVET.
There are quite a number of reference points for implementing this conference series in Indonesia. The goal of the Government of the Republic of Indonesia that by the year 2025 roughly two thirds of senior secondary education shall be technical and vocational education implies the need for great efforts in the quality development of TVET. Big TVET development projects co-funded by international donors (e.g. by Australia, Germany, Japan) require the contribution and involvement of TVET research of international scope in order to make use of global knowledge and experiences, and of national scope in order to promote sustainable implementation and development. A third reference point is the foundation of a National TVET Research Institute at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia which as one of its goals has defined the cooperation with international and national experts and institutions in the field of TVET research.
