"The blue-collar commission": A history of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), 1994-2010

• Main Author: Medrano, Althea Mikaela A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Technical education > Philippines; Vocational education; Non-formal education; Other History; Vocational Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdb_history/16; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=etdb_history
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study traces the historical development of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), a government institution that serves as the main authority for guiding the state of technical-vocational education and skills development in the Philippines. It provides an overview on the history of vocational education and in the formation of TESDA, and focuses on the influence of external and internal factors to TESDA and its programs, projects and activities, and also mentions the contributions of TESDA to the Philippine education sector. The study begins in 1994 with the passage of the TESDA Law and the creation of the institution, and it ends in 2010 after the commemoration of TESDA’s fifteenth year anniversary. This study uses the New Institutionalism framework by James March and Johan Olsen that explains the extent of how certain external and internal factors have altered the formulation of the programs, projects, and activities of TESDA. This framework also highlights the fact that, in order to thrive, TESDA should establish its legitimacy by making its purpose clear, and by contributing to the institutional field that it belongs to. Given that, the implementation of certain laws and projects of TESDA that require coordination between them, DepEd, and CHED are also mentioned. As such, in this study, how TESDA has grown and transformed over the years could be seen. Keywords: (1) TESDA, (2) Vocational Education, (3) Technical and Vocational Education and Training, (4) Non-formal Education, (5) Middle-level Manpower