Sammendrag
The implementation of the National Qualification Framework (NQF) has become the focus of attention of researchers and policymakers worldwide during the past decades. The possibility of creating both quality assurance and a transparent system capable of improving communication between stakeholders, while adapting workers for the knowledge society demands, lead international agencies to consistently recommend NQF to policymakers. Lately, researchers around the world had shown concern with the extent of NQF adequacy, especially when implemented in developing countries. This study brings into view the Brazilian Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) policy, to identify efforts towards an NQF implementation, characterize the NQF and identify intentions and tensions inbred in the implementation process. It also examines the experience of two S-System institutions to illuminate how being part of or apart from the NQF helps institutions to navigate through intentions and tensions identified in the NQF and to mediate them. This is a qualitative cross-sectional research, based on data collected through official documents and semi-structured interviews, and through the use of thematic coding and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study reveals an NQF in process of implementation in Brazil. It is characterized by a linked control with programmes separated in tracks or, in Brazilian policy lingo, “learning itinerary”, vertically divided in three levels and horizontally articulated in thirteen technological axes. The policy is driven by the intention of promoting lifelong learning and inbred by tensions related to the articulation between TVET and basic education and its effect in work mobility, stakeholders’ participation, professional profile orientation, and informal economy. In the institutional level, mediations to the tensions were made both through the development of tight descriptors and outcome standards, or through the adoption of strategies not prescribed by the Brazilian NQF. To establish patterns and casual connections among the collected data, the study of Allais (2013), Young (2013) and Tunk (2007) on NQF implementation were adopted as an analytical framework. This way, pattern, features, intentions, and tension observed in other developing countries, functioned as references for the Brazilian experience, which could then be set in context with the global debate on NQF. The analysis suggests that through the NQF, Brazil has advanced in TVET policy identity and organization, but some challenges remain.