Author(s)

Yandan Huang ¹, Jianlan Deng ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Shenzhen Polytechnic University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518055, China

Corresponding Author

Yandan Huang

ABSTRACT

Vocational bachelor's education is charged with cultivating highly skilled personnel, yet under the dominant logic of instrumental rationality, skill learning is often reduced to technical training external to the student's life-world, leaving learners trapped in a state of "self-instrumentalization." This paper revisits the problem of skill learning in vocational bachelor's education at the ontological level, advancing four progressive lines of inquiry: what skill learning ought to be (the philosophical dimension); what ontological insights Chinese educational thought offers (the cultural dimension); what cognitive characteristics skill learning actually exhibits (the tacit-knowledge dimension); and what socio-historical roots underlie the alienation of skill learning (the Marxist dimension). Drawing on this framework, the study examines three forms of alienation in skill learning and their generative mechanisms, and proposes a four-level strategy of reconstruction oriented by the Chinese concept of xingfa (awakening-and-inspiration). The paper argues that skill learning should be the unity of craft acquisition and individual self-becoming: vocational bachelor's education must shift from "making instruments" to "cultivating persons," transcending the binary opposition between instrumental and value rationality, in order to cultivate highly skilled personnel who possess both refined craft and integrated personhood.

KEYWORDS

Vocational bachelor's education; Cultivation of highly skilled personnel; Skill learning; Ontology; Inspirational pedagogy (xingfa); Well-rounded human development

CITE THIS PAPER

Yandan Huang, Jianlan Deng. Craft as Self-Becoming: Toward an Ontological Turn in Vocational Higher Education. Advances in Vocational and Technical Education (2026). Vol. 8, No. 2, 18-29. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/avte.2026.080203.

REFERENCES

[1] Central Committee & State Council of China. (2025). Outline of the plan for building a leading country in education (2024–2035). Beijing: People's Publishing House. [In Chinese]
[2] Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. (2026). Opinions on deepening the reform of key elements of vocational education teaching (Document No. JZC [2026] 1). Beijing: Author. [In Chinese]
[3] Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. New York: Teachers College Press.
[4] Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The Macmillan Company.
[5] Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Herder and Herder. (Original work published 1968)
[6] Jaspers, K. (1977). What is education? A reader. Munich: R. Piper & Co.
[7] Ye, L. (2020). Life-practice educology: A contemporary Chinese theory of education. Leiden: Brill.
[8] Shi, Z. (2007). Philosophy of education. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press. [In Chinese]
[9] Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[10] Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1945)
[11] Marx, K. (1959). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 (M. Milligan, Trans.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. (Original work written 1844)
[12] Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2002). The Communist Manifesto (S. Moore, Trans., with an introduction by D. McLellan). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1848)
[13] Xu, G. (2015). Curriculum theory of vocational education (2nd ed.). Shanghai: East China Normal University Press. [In Chinese]
[14] Shi, W. (2025). Consolidating the meta-research foundation of the discipline of vocational and technical education. China Vocational and Technical Education, 2025(19), 1. [In Chinese]
[15] Jiang, D. (2014). Work-process systematization: A modern vocational education curriculum development with Chinese characteristics. Journal of Shunde Polytechnic, 12(3), 1–8. [In Chinese]
[16] Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.
[17] Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action, Vol. 1: Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press.

Sponsors, Associates, and Links

---

• Advances in Educational Technology and Psychology
  
  
• Curriculum and Teaching Methodology
  
  
• Transactions on Comparative Education
  
  
• Applied & Educational Psychology
  
  
• Adult and Higher Education