Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has been recognized as a powerful tool for national development as well as for decent jobs for individuals leading towards a quality life.  At the same time, the sector has been described as integral for the development of the workforce necessary for improving production and service sector in any country.  Realizing these potentials, countries around the world have been investing for the growth of the sector.  At the international level also efforts are being carried out for strengthening TVET.  

In countries like Nepal the TVET sector has not been able to thrive and make anticipated contribution.  Such dreams are still far away reality for many developing countries.  There might be several reasons for such low performance of the sector including low economic activity and thus lack of job, low quality of education particularly in the TVET sector, lack of leadership and management capability, and so on.  Hence, it has become essential that interventions be made in the sector so that it could contribute to national development process as expected.  One such area of intervention that has become very much necessary is to develop the human resource capacity of the sector focusing on educational as well as on socioeconomic aspects.  Post Graduate Diploma in Technical and Vocational Instruction (PGDE-TVI) in Kathmandu University, School of Education is an effort towards this direction.  

The rationale of this program is established with growing TVET interventions in Nepal and in many other countries.  Talking about Nepal, investment in the sector has increased substantially in recent years.  Recent government policies have highly emphasized the development of the sector and has been introducing several programs in the sector.  One such policy is TVET as one of the streams at secondary level.  Likewise, private sector investment in TVET has also been growing.  It is obvious that competent human resource is one of the key conditions for effective functioning of TVET in secondary education.  

Purpose

Staying within the broad goal of creating better and relevant education opportunity for better life quality, the program specifically aims to address human resource development needs of TVET in particular and national development in general.  Given this, the program specifically focuses on preparing TVET educators.  The program also is designed to attract young ones in TVET by providing them quality, responsive, and relevant education and by linking the sector with socioeconomic processes thereby providing promising career prospects nationally and internationally.  With emphasis on experiential and work-based learning, the program aims to enhance occupational instructional skills.  

Graduate Attributes

Graduates of PGDE-TI are expected to gain advanced knowledge in TVET academic discipline.  They will acquire the necessary knowledge, exposure, and skills to effectively plan, develop, check, and implement TVET pedagogy in their respective occupational sector.  Apart from content specific knowledge and skills, graduates are oriented towards culture of thinking, innovating, and acting upon that includes aspects like motivation, commitment, team work, networking, valuing others, creativity, empowering, etc.  Graduates are also well versed on crosscutting themes on TVET like gender, inclusion, labor relations, ICT, etc.  They are also expected to be critical, reflective, and ethical.  PGDE-TVI graduates develop following specific knowledge and skills, among others: 

• Be competent educators, innovators, mentor in TVET institutions/programs 

• Be competent to perform TVET activities such as designing instructional events, delivering theoretical and practical sessions, evaluation of students.

• Be conversant with different theories, concepts, and ideas that have been developed, and see TVET processes in terms of those theories and ideas 

• Be skillful to design, carry out, manage, and evaluate research on TVET

• Be expert to carry out mentoring and professional development 

• Be conversant on aspects like; resiliency, ethics and integrity, gender and social inclusion, and sustainability