Research On The Development Of Rural Youth’s Labor Competencies

Labor is the foundation of human created civilization,and labor competencies turn out to be the direct promoter of social and economic development.The free mobility of labor force shows the market demand in a highly developed society,but more importantly,it highlights the liberation of labor force itself in modern society.Only in a social formation with complete liberation of the labor force can the essence in human’s labor be foregrounded.No matter in agricultural society,industrial society or information society,labor competences(competency)have undergone constant evolution,pushing forward the advancement and progress of social production and life.In the information society,the ever-increasing labor mobility,the constant updated labor standards,and the desire for comprehensive and diverse labor specifications promotes the continuous integration of education research and labor research.The abroad researches pay attention to the quality of labor force due to the fact that labor force is facing many modern problems such as limited knowledge reserve,weak vocational skills,declining social adaptability and psychological alienation in the process of globalization and modern social and economic development.Therefore,the organization for economic cooperation and development(OECD),the European Union(EU),the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC)and other international organizations,as well as the United States,the United Kingdom,Russia and other developed countries start from a number of survival skills of the labor force in the 21 st century,gradually putting forward the labor competencies.Throughout the evolution of human society formation,it has been an unchangeable reality that the strong labor mobility becomes the new trend in the background of economic globalization and information society.In the globalized society of the 21 st century,labor mobility has become a common comprehensive phenomenon in the labor market.The flow of people is everywhere,which is different from the past society.It is inevitable in everyone’s work and life.As the labor force moves in space,occupation and social class,its essence begins to emerge: in modern society people actively or passively drift in the flowing modernity,constantly seeking the existence of subjectivity.The mobility of modernity affects the mobility of human beings.Mobility has become or will become an invisible character of human beings in modern society and even in post-modern society.Labor force’s mobility is not only an economic or social phenomenon,but also an educational phenomenon.The mobility of labor force needs the support of mobile education.This paper tried to explore the ideal education via the diachronic and synchronic examinations of labor force in different regions,occupations and identities,so as to find out the real value and function of education.Settled in a field with strong mobility and fixed in specific time and space,this paper discussed such issues as the subject existence,social interaction,free development and happy life of rural youth,looking into their potential education value.Mobility itself is education,but rural education often fails to develop proper labor competencies for youth’s mobility.The mobility of rural youth itself embodies educational elements.The development of labor competencies play an important role in the education system.The normalization of mobility has formed the dynamic field of developing labor competencies.The demand for mobile education during the flow of rural youth has broadened the space-time border of education.when switched to the multi-sited education from the fixed sited education such as school education,family education and other normalized places in the fixed time and space,all the education phenomenon of rural youth in social mobility have fallen into the scope of our study.At present,the rural education still imparts outdated knowledge and skills in a traditional and fossilized fashion,which makes it impossible for young people to freely and autonomously acquire the needed labor competencies while moving around urban and rural areas.With the multi-dimensional dilemma of mobility and the internal learning desires,rural teenagers will have a strong desire for such labor competencies as professional competency,citizenship competency and information technology competency.In the era of mobility,to build an education system of developing rural youth’s labor competencies is not only the quest of education as a discipline with the natural mission of developing a human being in the field of labor competency,but also the realistic requirement for rural youth to successfully transform from learners into labor force and integrate into urban and modern society.In the introduction part,this paper justifies the problematization of rural youth labor competencies development.The information society provides opportunities for the development of labor competency,and the mobile field that crosses urban-rural areas has become the real space for the development of labor competencies of rural teenagers.living in such background,rural teenagers can’t help asking themselves about their individual dilemma,and hence it is necessary to examine the systematic function of rural education.After combing the related literature at home and abroad on the growth and development of rural youth,rural labor mobility,education and labor mobility,education and labor competencies,we found that the domestic attention to labor competencies is insufficient,and there are misunderstandings about the competencies itself.Therefore,this study starts from the original mission of education to explore the development of youth labor competencies in rural areas.The first chapter explores the basic concepts,historical development and disciplinary standpoint from an ontological perspective.Following such concepts as competency and quality,ability,skills,labor transfer and labor mobility,rural youth,labor competencies and education,this paper hereby constructed the concept system of the research.This paper explores the characteristics of labor competencies in agricultural society,industrial society and information society and the related role of education played in the development of labor competencies.The establishment of the discipline standpoint of labor competencies development is the demand of education as a discipline and the call of reality.Therefore,we should take root in the practicalism of competencies development,stick to the humanism of the subject in competencies development,and uphold the sociality of mobile field.The second chapter constructs the theoretical framework of rural youth labor competencies development from the premise,hypothesis,the basis of argument,the basic context and the connoted value.Labor is the foundation for the rural youth to be a wholesome human being.The development of labor competencies is the key tobe “a capable human being” of the rural youth,and the youth period is the key period of the development of labor competencies.This paper takes Marx’s labor value theory,labor reproduction theory,capital transformation theory,social mobility theory and Sen’s capability theory as the theoretical basis to analyze the development of rural youth labor competencies.The development of rural youth labor competencies must be placed and examined in specific time and space background,mobile field and modernization pursuit,highlighting the values of rural youth subjective existence,social interaction,free development and happy life.The third chapter analyzes the internal mechanism of rural youth labor competencies development.The rural teenager is an integrated and complete human being who demonstrates “multi-facet” character in urban-rural mobility.Only in this context of mobility can we realize the all-round value of competencies development.By tracing the past and reviewing the present,we separated and distinguished five dimensions of needed labor competencies of rural youth in the process of migration:professional competency,citizenship competency,cross-culture competency,information technology competency and psychological competency.They are not isolated,but interact with each other,featuring educability,contextuality,practicality,embodiedness and generativeness.Multidimensional labor competencies are affected by many factors such as economic factors,social factors,cultural factors,information technology factors and family factors in the mobile field.In addition,it is necessary to construct the corresponding educational situations to ensure the realization of the development of labor competencies from the perspective of educational development,educational objectives,educational system activities,educational system and self-education mode.The fourth chapter takes the youth in the western rural areas in China as research object in fieldwork,so as to handle the practical problem in the current competencies development of the youth labor.Based on the basic analytical framework of “why to develop-who to develop-what content for development-where to develop-how to develop”,we conducted the fieldwork from the following five aspects: “development purpose-development object-development dimension-development space-development mode ”,it is found that there are five conflicting practical problems:instrumentality and humanity,passivity and agency,diversity and polarity,closeness and compatibility,static and dynamic.There are many dilemmas for rural teenagers,such as“ entering the market prematurely ”,low-end utilitarian occupation,individual limitation,relational constraints,workplace subculture,weighing knowledge over competency,social structure fossilization,simplified training mode,shortage of motivation for lifelong learning,etc.,which show that rural youth labor force can not well integrate themselves into the modern urban-rural mobile field,and can not freely choose their own occupation,let alone take into account the individual progress and the pursuit for a free and happy life.The fifth chapter discusses the action strategy of rural youth labor force competencies development.First of all,it clarifies the basic elements of labor competencies development: rural youth,mobility,labor competencies,education and rural areas,as well as the value orientations of development are survival care,quality of life and life consciousness.The individual development of rural youth should be explored from the following aspects: the cognitive mode of competencies,choice behavior,generation motivation,learning mode and subject autonomy.We should examine the basic function of rural education,optimize the system of labor competencies development,introduce multi education agents,reshape the time and space situation of labor competencies in the era of mobility,improve the reproduction function of labor competencies development,update the labor competencies development system in the information epoch,and carry out systematic reform in education,so as to finally develop the multi-dimensional labor competencies of rural youth in the mobile field.The conclusion raises a philosophical question on the development of rural youth labor competencies.Taking freedom and happiness as the future guidance for the development of rural youth labor competencies,we hope to educate the rural youth to obtain the agency to achieve self-determination and freedom in the mobile reality,so as to create a possible life of freedom and happiness.Education should be a solid foundation for caring the free and happy development of rural youth in the mobile field,and at the same time,it should also reflect on the time and space limitations of the function of education itself.Facing the uncertainty of mobility and competencies,we expect to endow education with the imagination of constructing competencies education theory in the mobile era.