Vocational education and training for development: A policy in need of a theory?

The current decade has seen a significant return of interest in vocational education and training (VET) amongst the international policy community. This rise in policy and programmatic interest in VET's role in development, however, stands in contrast to the state of the academic debate. Whilst there have continued to be both policy and academic developments in VET in OECD countries; in the South there has been a paucity of VET research and little in the way of theoretical exploration. Rather, the academic orthodoxy in the international education and development field is dismissive of VET's possible contribution. Given the return of the policy interest in VET for development, and the possibilities of a broader vision of education–development relations beyond 2015, when the MDGs end, it is time to revisit the role of VET in development from an explicitly theoretical stance. In this article, I argue that the current approach to VET is grounded in an outmoded model of development, whilst the academic critique of VET in developing countries is clearly long outdated. In contrast, I examine the implications for VET of recent trends in thinking about development through the exploration of three particular theoretical approaches: human rights, capabilities and integrated human development. I conclude by considering the purposes, natures and possibilities of VET as a means of human development.     

Not just skills: what a focus on knowledge means for vocational education

This contribution to the symposium on Michael Young’s article ‘Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge based approach’, supports his contention that curriculum theory has lost sight of its object—‘what is taught and learned in schools’, and argues that this has particularly deleterious consequences for vocational education and training (VET). VET is unproblematically positioned as applied, experiential and work-focused learning, and it is seen as a solution for those who are alienated from or unsuccessful in more traditional forms of academic education. This article argues that rather than being a mechanism for social inclusion, VET is instead a key way in which social inequality is mediated and reproduced because it excludes students from accessing the theoretical knowledge they need to participate in debates and controversies in society and in their occupational field of practice. It presents a social realist analysis to argue why VET students need access to theoretical knowledge, how a focus on experiential and applied learning constitutes a mechanism for social exclusion and what a ‘knowledge rich’ VET curriculum would look like.     

The vocational–academic divide in neoliberal upper secondary curricula: the Swedish case

A historical tension between a more general and a more specific focus in post-compulsory education is made visible in some educational systems by the division into more academic and more vocational programmes. Embedded in this tension are questions of social justice and the purposes of education. In addition, division into academic and vocational programmes has class dimensions since youth with working class backgrounds are often over-represented in vocational programmes. This study investigates how this tension is handled in the Swedish upper secondary curriculum, which reflects an international neoliberal policy trend in promoting competition, employability and employer influence over the curriculum. By analysing how the educational content of vocational educational and training (VET) programmes and higher educational preparatory (HEP) programmes is contextualised, we found that the two programme types were based on very different logics. In VET programmes, knowledge is strongly context-bound and often related to regulating behaviours. This contrasts sharply with the way knowledge is contextualised in HEP programmes in which less context-bound knowledge and skills such as using concepts, models and critical thinking are dominant. Students in VET programmes are trained to ‘do’ and to ‘adapt’, while the students in HEP programmes are trained to ‘think’ and to ‘imagine possibilities’. Thus, students from different social classes are prepared for very different roles in society.     

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.     

Student equity’s starring role in Australian higher education: not yet centre field

The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, repositioned in relation to other “fields of power”. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. The potential of a “joined-up” tertiary education system, of vocational education and training (VET) and universities, has the potential to further rework these relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student enrolments. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. “Catchment areas” and knowledge production have become global. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current stance on equity has been out-positioned, as much by a changing higher education field as by entrenched representations of social groups across regions, institutions, disciplines and degrees. In taking a new stance on equity, the paper is also concerned with the positioning in the field of a new national research centre with a focus on student equity in higher education. In particular, the paper asks what stance this new centre can take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale. And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity?     

The coherence of vocational education and training in Norway and Spain: national traditions and the reshaping of VET governance in hybrid VET systems

Coherence of national education and training systems is increasingly tabled in European policy debates. Leaning on literature about the emergence and consolidation of national education systems, this article explores the rationale for VET reforms in Norway and Spain by scrutinising attempts to strengthen the coherence of their VET systems. Coherence has been sought through the unification of different strands of vocational education; initial, continuing and active labour market policies (what we call ‘horizontal coherence’) and the mainstreaming of VET curricular elements; plus the systematisation of VET practices across educational levels (‘vertical coherence’). While both countries looked for coherence, their motivations, how they operationalised the term and the emphasis of their actions differed substantially. Spain has experienced a move from the three largely unrelated strands into a more unified system; Norway from a fragile VET system to the availability of more VET courses and apprenticeship arrangements at all educational levels.     

What works? Academic integrity and the research-policy relationship

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the intensifying pressures on critical research and academic integrity in a research policy context that has come to be increasingly dominated by an instrumentalist mind-set. Using sensitising resources drawn from Geoff Whitty’s critique of the ‘what works’ agenda, we reflect on the current conditions of academic labour and some of the key issues and dilemmas they pose for critical researchers in the sociology of education and beyond. In particular, we underline the trend for ‘what works’ agendas to become constitutive of academic identities and practices, including at micro-levels, such that the option of ‘standing outside’ them is shifting from being merely personally taxing to being institutionally disallowed. In addition to highlighting the dilemmas this creates for critical researchers and the threat this poses to expansive and democratic approaches to education, the paper emphasises the centrality of relationship-forming in understanding and underpinning academic integrity.     

The way collaboration benefits vocational students: a case study of a joint venture college in China

International collaborations in the vocational and training (VET) sector have grown significantly in the past three decades in China as well as in other parts of the world. Despite its growing prominence, it remains a largely under-researched field compared to the large volume of research on universities’ internationalization. In particular, it is unclear how internationalization practices improve vocational students’ academic and social competencies and readiness for employment. This case study was intended to fill this current gap in the literature by investigating a selected joint venture VET college in China. This study employed a wealth of data as evidence that international programmes could benefit vocational students in their English skills, professional knowledge, intercultural competence, and personal and career development. In additional to the opportunities created for vocational students, international programmes are expected to offer workplace experience and design a curriculum that suits students with different future plans. The findings of this study indicate that international collaborations in the VET sector have the potential not only to better prepare vocational students for life and employment, but also to address the challenges facing the VET system in developing economies.     

Is this what we want them to say? Examining the tensions in what U.S. preservice teachers say about risk and academic achievement

Questions abound in the U.S. based teacher education literature about the kind of knowledge teachers should possess about learning and academic achievement that will enable them to provide all students with an equitable, effective schooling experience. This article examines how a group of preservice teachers—enrolled in a teacher education program that challenges deficit thinking—understand and talk about academic achievement, paying particular attention to the extent to which the candidates account for academic achievement and recognize potential academic risk. Based on the paradoxical stability and tentativeness of teacher candidates' talk about risk, academic achievement and the deployment of the “at-risk” category, I suggest the need to illuminate the complex body of knowledge that informs teacher candidates' understanding, particularly the knowledge deployed in teacher education curriculum.     

Glimpsing the Future in the Past: VET in Europe

What do we expect from Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems? Is it different from 25 years ago? This article argues that the focus has increasingly been placed on strategies for lifelong and life-wide learning that seek to reinforce continuity among the subsystems of learning, but that VET systems are, nevertheless, still expected to address many and sometimes conflicting agendas, needs and priorities. The last 25 years or so have been critical for the development of VET in Europe. Making VET more attractive and increasing its parity of esteem in relation to general secondary education have been major, recurring themes in European countries, as part of, at least conceptually, more comprehensive approaches to lifelong and life-wide learning. From 1989 to 2003, the European Journal of Education (EJE) published a special issue on ‘Trends in Vocational Education and Training’ every two years and has continued to publish on VETrelated topics. This article revisits the major themes and challenges as they were observed and discussed by the authors who wrote in those special issues and in later articles. Many were directly involved in advisory positions to governments; held key decision-making responsibilities; undertook studies and consultancy and brought technical assistance across several countries. Their articles are moments of reflection nourished by experience on the ground. This article explores how the European Journal of Education has contributed to European reflection on VET systems, policies and preoccupations in recent decades – what can we learn that is useful for shaping and formulating our present ideas about new policy from our colleagues writing about the same or similar issues 20 years ago? A key theme concerns the role of the Europe Community (and subsequently EU) as a change agent supporting bottom-up exchange and top-down stimulus for reform through an increasing integration of education and training in the socio-economic strategy of the EU.     

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.     

“教育现代化”的可能诠释:知识社会学路径的话语研究

"教育现代化"是当代中国教育研究的重要领域和学术产品,同时也是一个中国意义上的独特学术命题。在现有研究历史中,西方现代化理论和中国现代化研究都出现了一些试图从话语、意识角度对该领域进行分析的萌芽,还尚未有对中国教育现代化进行该种诠释的尝试。福柯意义上的话语研究以及卢克曼等人的知识社会学的融合,对中国教育现代化的诠释而言,是一种可能的路径。在此框架下,可以提出一个包括定位、立场、内容以及方法的可能的教育现代化诠释范式。     

Vocational education and training and the therapeutic turn

The concept of ‘therapeutic education’ is being increasingly used in contemporary education policy studies to identify learning initiatives which are dominated by objectives linked to personal and social skills, emotional intelligence and building self‐esteem. Contemporary educational goals connected with such strategies have been criticised for encouraging a ‘victim culture’ which marginalises learners and replaces the pursuit of knowledge and understanding with the development of personal values relevant to a life of social, cultural and economic risk and uncertainty. In relation to vocational education and training (VET) and post‐school policy trends in particular, Hayes has argued that preparation for work has abandoned vocational/occupational knowledge and skills in favour of providing learners with personal skills for emotional labour in low‐level service jobs. This paper interrogates such analyses and questions whether the therapeutic role of VET really is incompatible with the traditional objectives of developing knowledge, understanding and values in work environments. Links are made between new emphases on work‐based learning and the ‘caring’ conceptions of learning in post‐school education. It is concluded that—although therapy should not dominate VET—an attention to the important values dimension of learning in the field does involve a therapeutic dimension of some kind.     

Vocational Education and Training: Researching the Relationship between School and Work

Researchers and policy makers agree that the relation between school and work is an important characteristic of vocational education and training (VET) and needs attention. The relation itself poses several challenges for research to be successful and useful for policy makers. In this article, we outline these challenges and answer the following question: What needs to be considered when researching the relation between school and work? Our central claim is that research on the relation between school and work needs to (1) take into account contextual conditions of the VET system, including identifying the central actors and their responsibilities within a VET system, (2) take into account the characteristics of VET itself, (3) define the quality of the relation between school and work (depending on the context, characteristics of the VET system and VET itself), and (4) be consistent with respect to chosen research aims and paradigms. To illustrate how these aspects can be taken into account an example of empirical research conducted in the German dual apprenticeship system is described. The readers are provided with guidelines for researchers and policy makers to carry out high quality research on the relation between school and work in VET systems that enables policy makers to make use of the results to improve the relation between school and work in VET systems.     

英国院校研究发展与演变的逻辑:从“平等”到“质量”

与美国相比,院校研究在英国的发展是迟缓的。从历史渊源来看,英国早期的"院校研究"活动包括"校史研究"和"政府报告"。但其"真正意义上"的院校研究起源于英国政府决定推行高等教育大众化的政策过程(1963—1987)。在此期间,院校研究主要是促进"教育平等"的政策研究和大学内部教学法改进研究。20世纪80年代后期,英国政府与大学之间的关系发生了重大变化,"质量评估运动"和"问责"促成了院校研究在英国高校内部地位的确立。院校研究的旨趣也从关注"平等"转向"质量"。院校研究在英国发展的历程和经验,对于其他欧洲国家甚至对中国院校研究的推进,都具有启发和借鉴意义。     

国际高等教育研究代表人物和学术团体思想的可视化探析——基于《Higher Education》等8种SSCI期刊作者共被引的分析

运用文献信息可视化软件CiteSpace绘制《Higher Education》等8种SSCI高等教育学期刊2000-2011年刊载文献的作者共被引网络图谱,探测国际高等教育研究的代表性人物及其学术思想,梳理国际高等教育研究的主流学术团体及其学术观点。其中,伦斯登(Ramsden P)、克拉克(Clark B)、比格斯(Biggs J)、巴内特(Barnett R)、比彻(Becher T)、丁托(Tinto V)、艾斯丁(AstinA)、布拉克斯顿(Braxton J)等成为国际高等教育研究作者共被引网络中的代表人物。组织变革与学术重建,正式学习,学生辍学,质量评估和全球化,远程教育与在线学习,情境学习和教学研究等问题是这些代表人物的主流研究方向。国际高等教育研究代表人物的学术思想和观点对我国高等教育领域研究具有重要的借鉴意义。     

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.     

Literacy's verb: Exploring what literacy is and what literacy does

This article considers contemporary policy claims about “what literacy is” and “what literacy does.” First, the article reviews in-depth the ways in which development discourses define literacy, and the claims made in development discourses about the “consequences” of literacy for economic and political development. I then draw on 24 months of ethnographic research in Brazil with 41 highly impoverished literacy students from four literacy programs in two cities in order to demonstrate that there is no predictable “impact” of literacy on development. Instead, I show that the opportunities afforded by literacy depend greatly on the types of literacy and the types of literacy programs made available to students, as well as students’ cultural understandings of literacy and the social, political, and economic contexts within which they attempt to assert new literacy practices. The article concludes that we should not consider literacy as an actor with some “impact”; instead, we should examine how people use literacy in ways that are conditioned by social and cultural forces.     

Young people,education and hope: bringing VET in from the margins

Vocational Education and Training (VET) plays an important role in the reshaping of upper secondary school curriculum. Retention to the end of secondary education in Australia went from 35% in 1980 to 72% in 2000. This increase caused major problems for the senior school curriculum which historically prepared students for university entrance but now has to serve multiple purposes. While the purposes of VET suit different groups, our interest is those students alienated from, reluctant to complete, or attempting re-entry into senior secondary education. Our objective is to understand policy reforms in this area, in order to assist stopping the spiral of disadvantage in which these young people are caught. We shall argue that VET has the potential to re-engage young people with education. With the labour market becoming more knowledge-based, such re-engagement becomes increasingly important. We ask to what extent is the post-compulsory curriculum serving student and family ambitions for employment in a way that is equitable and inclusive?     

In-service and prospective teachers’ conceptions of creativity

Teachers play a crucial role in the development of primary school students’ creative potential in either a positive or a negative way. This paper aims to draw attention to in-service and prospective teachers’ conceptions of creativity and answer three main research questions: “What are the teachers’ conceptions and implicit theories of creativity in general?”, “What are the teachers’ conceptions and implicit theories of creativity in the context of primary education?”, and “How well-trained and equipped do teachers feel to play their key role in the development of students’ creative potential?” A self-report questionnaire was used as an instrument to gather qualitative and quantitative data from 132 Greek in-service and prospective teachers. According to the selected quantitative data we present in this study, the majority of the participants reported that the facilitation of students’ creativity is included in the teachers’ role, but they (teachers themselves) do not feel well-trained and confident enough to realise this particular expectation. The authors conclude that further research is needed in order to: (i) reveal more on teachers’ conceptions on creativity and (ii) understand and classify teachers’ particular needs to facilitate the creative potential of primary school students.