Stakeholders′ conceptions of connecting learning at different sites in two national VET systems

Learning through active participation and engagement in education and workplace settings is a prerequisite for effective professional competence development through Vocational Education and Training (VET). Equally important is that learning from multiple sites and sources needs to be purposefully connected and integrated to construct meaningful knowledge and understandings. The quality of connectivity and learning outcomes is influenced by conceptions of the different actors. The aim of the research reported in this article was to gain an understanding of key stakeholders’ (learners, teachers, trainers and managers/coordinators) conceptions of connections between school-based and work-based learnings which offer the main sources for developing vocational competence, and are the main sites for the enacted and engaged curriculum for VET. We identify and compare conceptions of vocational learning and teaching across education and workplace settings in Swiss and Australian VET actors. Differences and similarities are discussed and implications for VET research and development of teachers and trainers are outlined.     

德国职业教育中的师资类型与专业发展

德国职业教育享誉世界,这与高素质的师资队伍密切相关。为了全面地了解德国职业教育师资队伍建设,文章详细介绍了德国职业教育中的师资类型、工作任务、任职资格和专业发展情况,同时介绍了职业教育中的兼职教师情况。     

Making it real: The benefits of workplace learning in upper-secondary vocational education and training courses

In OECD countries, ‘real world’ upper-secondary vocational education and training (VET) programs are used to engage less academically oriented youth in learning, while helping to prepare them for post-school work and/or further education. In general terms, VET programs with high employer involvement, such as apprenticeship schemes, are considered to be superior to classroom-based VET programs that are typically found in many English-speaking countries. In this study, we examine outcomes from a potential ‘third way’: classroom-based VET with a short-term structured workplace learning component. Using propensity score matching and PISA data linked to information from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth, we find this model is associated with higher school completion rates and better employment transitions.     

以学习兴趣为导向,创建个性化高职英语教育

高职英语教育是国家高职教育的一个重要组成部分并具有重大研究意义。该文以高职学生学习英语的兴趣为导向,提出通过以校园阵地为依托,建立高职学生英语水平评估体系,完善英语教材制定和教学方法改革,积极开展高校团学工作并有效利用各种校内资源满足学生英语学习的个性化需求。该研究具有一定的理论意义和实用价值。     

Professional Development for Teachers Working with International Students

The commercialisation of education and the massive recruitment of international students across different vocational education and training (VET) systems including the US, UK, Canada and Australia have led to significant changes in the VET teaching and learning landscape. This situation compels the VET sector to design and develop new professional development programs to support the immediate and changing needs of teachers working with the diverse international student cohort. However, to date, teacher professional development in response to the growing population of international students has not been an explicit focus of empirical study and theoretical conceptualisation in VET research. This study responds to this paucity. It draws on a broader three-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council (2014–2017) that involves fieldwork, participation in and observation of staff professional development activities and interviews with 102 VET staff in Australia. It uses positioning theory as a conceptual framework to examine how VET teachers position themselves and their professional development needs in response to international students. The results call for a critical need to re-examine the focus of the current professional development programs offered for VET teachers. The current context requires teacher professional development in international VET to focus on developing teachers’ capabilities to re-examine their pedagogical beliefs and practices and to understand international students’ various needs and cultural backgrounds. The study also stresses the importance of ongoing professional learning to equip teachers with the skills and knowledge to appropriate their pedagogical practices in response to the critical need to prepare all students for the intercultural labour market and to use students’ diversity as a resource for teaching and learning.     

终身教育理念背景下的澳大利亚职业与技术教育改革

20世纪澳大利亚职业与技术教育的改革深受终身学习与终身教育理念的影响,确立了特征鲜明的职业教育与培训的体制、机制以及教学培训的模式和评估标准。职业教育国家框架的建立明确了澳大利亚职业教育与培训与初等教育、中等教育以及高等教育的衔接关系。澳大利亚职业与技术教育的改革经验对我国发展职业教育、构筑终身教育体系具有重要的借鉴意义。     

Apprentice or Student? The Structures of Construction Industry Vocational Education and Training in Denmark and Sweden and their Possible Consequences for Safety Learning

There is a notable difference in occupational injury rates in the two Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Denmark, with the latter having a 40% higher rate of fatal occupational injuries in the construction industry. This study explored differences in the vocational education and training (VET) systems between Sweden and Denmark that may be important for students’ safety learning and practice during VET. In both countries, students participate in full-time education, and the curriculum includes school-based as well as company- based training. However, during company- based training Swedish students retain their student status, whereas Danish students are employed as apprentices. From a perspective of viewing safety as a social practice developed through interactions of different social and institutional bodies, the analysis points to this difference in employment status as important for their safety practices and also for the teachers’ position to influence safety learning and practices during company-based training. An analysis of interview and survey data focusing on how VET students enact safety ‘knowings’ across learning sites, suggest how different forms of connectivity models in VET promote various forms of safety learning among students.     

Aspects of Competence-Based Education as Footholds to Improve the Connectivity Between Learning in School and in the Workplace

Recent developments in competence-based education have motivated institutions of vocational education and training (VET) to improve the links or connectivity between learning in school and learning in the workplace, which has been a problem for decades. In previous research, a theoretical framework describing the underlying aspects of competence-based education was developed. In this study, three aspects of this framework were used to analyse connectivity between learning in school and learning in the workplace. These aspects were: i) authenticity, ii) selfresponsibility, and iii) the role of the teacher as expert and coach. Three stakeholder groups (i.e., students, teachers, and workplace training supervisors) involved in secondary VET programs in the field of life sciences in the Netherlands were questioned on these aspects. Based on their interviews, it is concluded that these aspects provide information about the process of connectivity. Because stakeholder groups hold different conceptions of workplace learning and often do not communicate adequately about mutual responsibilities, the implementation of these aspects of competence-based education has not significantly improved the connectivity situation. Nevertheless, these aspects of competence-based education can guide stakeholder groups in making clearer agreements about mutual responsibilities, which may improve connectivity in the future.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Every so often, it is important to stand back and look at the whole context of our field of research and practice. In this article, I do this by shedding light on the ways we view the term vocations and the consequences of those views for education and training in community colleges and adult and community education providers of all kinds. I ask the question: What is Vocational Education and Training (VET) for? I ask this particular question because I know the answers are contested, staking out claims for territory in research and practice. The answer to the question that this article explores is that vocational education and training ''serve industry.'' Using Australia as a specific example of such a Western country, the article argues that the entrenched meanings for VET as serving industry have disenfranchised a large proportion of the population - especially small business and the rural sector. The article is pointing out that the resulting version of VET is gendered, classed, and urban-specific. This structurally entrenched position is then contrasted with data reported from empirical studies currently examining (among other things) the nature of vocations and work at a community level and the manner in which they are created there. The article raises three important implications: the convergence of Adult and Community Education with VET, learning pathways, and the effects on small business.     

Unwelcome stranger to the system: vocational education in early twentieth-century China

Both in China and internationally, educators and policy makers claim that vocational education and training (VET) is essential for the sound economic development of a country and the physical and social well-being of its population. However, China looks back upon a century-long history of rejection when it comes to popularising VET, despite attempts, both in the present and in the past, to invest in its implementation. Much of the literature attributes this lack of success to the failed, or distorted, transfer of Western educational models or simply to policy drift.

The article approaches this history of rejection by tracing back the original Chinese encounters with Western-style vocational education. After an introductory discussion of different scholarly attempts at explaining failed transfers of VET, I look at how this transfer actually took place when VET was first introduced to China. Therefore, the focus will be on the first decades of the twentieth century and a group of Chinese actors who were pivotal in importing VET models from abroad and building up a nationwide vocational education programme (primarily members of the Chinese Association of Vocational Education). I will argue that vocational education, when introduced to China from abroad, was embedded in an existing framework of systematic and widely practised discrimination and segregation of the population. Therefore, it was less the Westernness of VET that made it undesirable to many Chinese, but its specific – and specifically Chinese – integration into existing practices of allocating cultural capital.     

Teacher preparation for vocational education and training in Germany: a potential model for Canada?

Germany's vocational education and training (VET) and corresponding teacher-education programmes are known worldwide for their integrated framework. Government legislation unifies companies, unions and vocational schools, and specifies the education and training required for students as well as vocational teachers. Changing from the Diplom programme model to the Anglophone Bachelor and Masters degree model has raised concerns for VET teacher preparation. It is within this context that we explore Germany's VET teacher-education system and current academic debates. We further investigate challenges in the development of Canada's VET teacher-education programmes and suggest some policy borrowing from the German model.     

Managing spaces: (re)working relations of strategy and spatiality in vocational education and training

The adoption of a more ‘open’ national training market in vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has led to considerable changes in VET organizations and considerable challenges for VET managers. Recent research has established the critical role that ‘strategy’ plays in leading and managing these organizations and the significance of strategic management as a field of managerial practice within VET. In this article, I further examine the role of strategy in the management of VET organizations by giving attention to issues of space and spatiality. Deploying concepts from actor-network theory and drawing on case data collected from VET organizations, I address strategy as a spatializing project. The argument is made that strategy is an accomplishment of a network of relations rather than an individual manager or an individual organization and can take radically different forms (‘Big S’ strategy; ‘small s’ strategy) and produce radically different effects (economic, educational). More specifically, spatial relations play a constitutive role in strategy formation in VET. Relations of spatiality and strategy are created and sustained together, and where this complex relationship is understood space can serve as a ground for critique. The paper promotes a theoretical and empirical imperative to look keenly to the spaces filled by frontline managers. Essentially interrogatory, these spaces open up the possibility of the negotiation of managerial and organizational identities across differences of strategic management and operational management and, more broadly, of enterprise and education.     

An education policy paradigm that fails upper secondary school pupils

In this article, we illustrate the creation of the education policy paradigm that constitutes the framework of vocational education and training (VET) programmes, and analyse local school representatives’ perception of VET in upper secondary schools in Sweden. The education policy paradigm, established through three periods of reform during the twentieth century, undervalues VET as being less worthy than general/academic education. This paradigm generates the rhetoric used by interviewed school representatives that encourages school pupils to choose the ‘right’ (academic) programmes in order to foster a specific citizenship competence, even if this competence is not fully compatible with labour market demands. Young people who cannot, or will not, attain the ‘right’ education, and thus the advocated citizenship competence, lose out in a school system where general/academic education and higher education preparatory programmes are consistently prioritised over VET. An educational system that advocates discrimination and suspicion of VET limits career options and restricts entry into the labour market, as well as risk stigmatising pupils undertaking VET; this paradigm is neither justified nor democratic.     

Learning Documentations in VET Systems: An Analysis of Current Swiss Practices

Swiss vocational education and training (VET) is defined as a dual-track system where apprentices weekly alternate between vocational school and a (real) workplace. At the workplace, they have to keep a learning documentation throughout their training, in which they are expected to regularly document their professional development. The actual use of this documentation remains limited, however, and its potential for learning is clearly underexploited. The study presented in this paper sheds light on the current practices and issues related to the use of such a learning documentation in the Swiss VET system. Semi-structured interviews (N?=?29) were conducted with representatives of all the main actors of the Swiss VET system for various professional domains (Industrial & Handicraft, Commerce, and Health & Social Care). The study shows that although they all tend to see the potential of the learning documentation, the different actors of VET do not share a same conception of the aims and functions, both within and across professions. Based on their answers, possible improvements for this tool are discussed, and suggestions are made to enhance its use as a boundary object throughout the training.     

Which difficulties and resources do vocational teachers perceive? An exploratory study setting the stage for investigating teachers’ resilience in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

Based on an ecological view of teacher resilience, the paper investigates perceived difficulties and resources among vocational education and training (VET) teachers as a first step for investigating teachers’ resilience. Given the substantial shortage of theoretical and empirical studies on this population, more research on resilience among VET teachers is necessary and relevant. In this exploratory qualitative study, interviews with VET teachers in Switzerland (n = 37) sought to identify the specific challenges faced by teachers, the resources to be addressed. As well as confirming the different critical challenges and protective factors emerging from the literature review, the results identify difficulties and resources specific to VET teachers in Switzerland. In terms of critical challenges at a macro-contextual level, teachers’ low social recognition is emphasised. Moreover, exposure to curricular reforms generates stress and pressure related to the required standardisation of content and subject changes. At a micro-system level, we detected teachers’ frustration in relation to students’ low vocational motivation and maturity and specific emerging instructional challenges in vocational subject teaching. In terms of resources, teachers perceived the possibility of diversifying their professional role by alternating school and extracurricular activities as a supportive factor. The results provide a basis for more extensive quantitative study investigating relationship among adversities and resources and resilient strategies.     

Assessment of learning outcomes in Finnish vocational education and training

This article provides an outline and critical review of assessment, an evaluation of learning outcomes, in vocational education and training (VET) in Finland. Assessment of VET is formative, development-orientated and criteria-based. There are no national tests and information from vocational skills demonstrations is used instead. Assessment targets are individual and communal learning focusing on processes instead of reports. Interactive, multifaceted assessments and qualitative methods promote learning and are based on trust – not control. The developmental assessment of learning outcomes started as an experiment in 2002 and as a permanent system in 2007. The whole process has been included and still includes also many challenges of methods, which this article tries to open.     

Organisational transition challenges in the Finnish vocational education – perspective of distributed pedagogical leadership

The article examines organisational challenges in the Finnish vocational education and training (VET) to support students’ lifelong learning pathways. Investigation of organizational challenges is done through the students’ transitions either within one school level or from one school level to another or to working life. For supporting the students’ learning pathways, it is argued here that specific attention has to be paid to collaborative practices of the personnel in order to guarantee the transitional fluency. This kind of collaboration is here called distributed pedagogical leadership. For examining the shared practices in the frame of distributed pedagogical leadership, the article introduces both quantitative results from a national survey and a Finnish VET case school and qualitative results from this particular school as several interviews of the leadership team and the teachers.     

The recruitment of VET teachers and the failure of policy in England’s further education sector

England’s further education (FE) sector has been characterised by instability and policy churn for at least three decades during which time reform of vocational education and training (VET) has been piled on top of reform, with few resulting in lasting change. In the context of another ambitious new reform of VET in England, this article reports on a study that examined the chronic difficulties in recruiting teachers of vocational science, engineering and technology (SET) to FE colleges. We argue that these difficulties in recruiting SET teachers reveal persistent weaknesses in policy planning for the English VET sector and help to explain the serial failure of VET policy in England.     

How Competency‐based Training has Changed the Role of Teachers in the Vocational Education and Training Sector in Australia

Most formal vocational education and training (VET) in Australia is now competency‐based. When competency‐based training (CBT) first became government VET policy in the early 1990s, there was heated and acrimonious debate about its desirability. During the last few years, debate about CBT has all but disappeared, and VET teachers and trainers have been struggling with the implementation of CBT with, often, little support, and certainly with little interest from the VET research community. A research project examined, in late 1996, the effects of CBT on teaching and learning. A number of creative responses to CBT were discovered, with a major effect of the change to CBT appearing to be an impetus for teachers to re‐examine what they do with their students. Despite changes in teaching methods, CBT nevertheless allows teachers to exercise their skills, although the skills needed are in some respects different from pre‐CBT teaching. This paper reports on the project findings, and looks at the changes in teachers’ activities and roles using definitions of teaching propounded by Fenstermacher, and Miller and Sellar.