From Stakeholder Conviction to Expert-Validated Practice: Enablers, Strategic Consensus and Framework Design for Vocational Education in Adventist Secondary Schools in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Vocational education in faith-based secondary schools is marked by a paradox of conviction without sufficient institutional translation. Practical learning is affirmed by national curriculum reform, by labour-market realities, by student entrepreneurial aspiration, and by the Adventist philosophy of holistic education; yet its implementation is frequently weakened when supportive beliefs are not converted into school-level capacity, governance routines, protected time, teacher competence, certification pathways, and community-linked practice. A sequential mixed-methods inquiry was therefore conducted in Seventh-day Adventist secondary schools under the Zimbabwe East Union Conference in order to determine how stakeholder beliefs, institutional capacities, and contextual factors shape vocational education programmes, and to prioritise feasible, high-impact strategies through expert consensus. Qualitative interviews and focus group discussions were integrated with survey responses from students, teachers, and administrators, after which a four-round Delphi process involving vocational education, school leadership, policy, and Adventist education experts was undertaken. Four enabling conditions were identified: alignment between government curriculum reform and Adventist educational philosophy, the underutilised head-heart-hand logic of Adventist education, strong student motivation and entrepreneurial aspiration, and growing receptivity among industry and community actors. However, these enabling conditions were shown to be latent rather than self-activating. They required deliberate institutional mediation through leadership, teacher development, stakeholder re-narration, resource mobilisation, timetabling reform, partnership formation, certification, and monitoring. The Delphi process distilled twenty-two proposed strategies into eight validated framework components and achieved 91 percent final agreement. It is recommended that vocational education be implemented through a belief-capacity-consensus model in which philosophical legitimacy, stakeholder conviction, and contextual opportunity are translated into routinised school practice through the eight-component implementation framework. The article contributes a professionally validated model for moving faith-based schooling from rhetorical affirmation of practical education toward structured, equitable, and sustainable vocational embodiment.