I recently completed my one-month assignment in Nepal as a Visiting Scholar at Kathmandu University (KU) under the Australian Volunteers program. A billboard at Tribhuvan International Airport welcomed me to the land of Mount Everest.

Unfortunately, I was too busy with my Visiting Scholar tasks to have time to slip away to climb the famous mountain or even do some trekking in the foothills. In any case, it was the climbing season and the queue of climbers waiting to tick off their bucket list was too long for me to hang around waiting my turn :).

As part of my assignment, I undertook a review of the Master of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (MTVET) program, at the request of Professor Mahesh Nath Parajuli and Dr Suresh Gautam, School of Education (KUSOE), and with the support of Dr Prakash Paudel.

I worked on that review in the weeks after my return to Australia, and am pleased to say that I’ve now submitted a report to KUSOE for their consideration. I appreciated the invitation to undertake this task and received excellent cooperation from KU staff and students alike.

Since I was based in Nepal for a relatively short time in April/May 2024, opportunities to gather data were limited. Nevertheless, with the assistance of KU staff I was able to organise focus groups with past and present MTVET students and interviews with KUSOE academic staff members. I also had informal chats with staff and students about their experience with the MTVET.

During my time in Nepal, I was also fortunate to be part of a MTVET staff/student conference in the regional city of Pokhara, and to join field visits organised by KUSOE, to be a guest lecturer in two online MTVET courses, and to visit several TVET organisations, including the Council of Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT), Pokhara Technical School, GATE Vocational Training, and Shankharapur Poytechnic Institute.

All of these interactions helped me develop some idea of the realities of learning and teaching in the MTVET program and of the broader context in which TVET operates in Nepal.

I’ll be continuing to work online with KUSOE as a ‘remote’ volunteer throughout 2024. It’s good to be able to bring to bear my long experience as a teacher, researcher and published author in adult and vocational education, including almost 20 years with the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Brisbane.

However, I’ll have to wait until the climbing season next year to see if the Mt Everest queue gets any shorter.

Until next time

Darryl Dymock