From Skill-Centrism to Skill as the Vehicle of the Way: A Phenomenological Reflection on and Reconstruction of Vocational Education Evaluation

Abstract

Following extensive efforts to dismantle the deeply entrenched paradigms of "score-centrism" and "qualification-centrism" within China's contemporary education evaluation reform, some vocational colleges have inadvertently veered toward an opposite, yet equally problematic, extreme: "skill-centrism." This emerging phenomenon refers to the reductive practice of treating single-skill proficiency as the sole and absolute evaluation criterion. Consequently, this narrow focus severely neglects crucial aspects of holistic student growth, particularly their professional ethics, critical judgment capacity, and potential for long-term sustainable development. Employing a rigorous educational phenomenological approach and utilizing a specialized auditing practice course as a primary case study, this research systematically delineates four typical lived experiences of students subjected to skill-centric evaluation frameworks. Through this qualitative analysis, the study reveals four profoundly obscured dimensions of educational meaning: the critical absence of ethical awareness, the systemic suppression of independent judgment, the fundamental rupture of sustainable career development, and the ultimate instrumentalization of the human person. To address these systemic deficiencies, this study proposes an innovative "Skill as the Vehicle of the Way" evaluation paradigm. This comprehensive framework comprises four interconnected pillars: Ethics as the Soul, Skill as the Foundation, Judgment as the Key, and Development as the End. By integrating these essential components, the proposed model offers a robust and highly potential pathway for facilitating the critical transition from merely "dismantling" outdated systems to actively "constructing" a more balanced, ethical, and sustainable future in vocational education evaluation reform.