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Whilst apprenticeships are generally supported by workplace trainers and by vocational teachers in schools or colleges, competency-based systems also allocate roles to third-party workplace assessors. Apprenticeship reforms in England, replacing qualification-based 'frameworks' with 'employer-led standards' have opened up possibilities for these assessors to carry out training duties, although these generally lack the qualifications and status of classroom-based teachers, having completed shorter courses in assessment and sometimes training practice. A qualitative study was carried out among practitioners who had begun to take on training responsibilities, exploring their emerging practices and identities. Participant responses varied in their apprehension of role change, partly because apprentices in more technical subjects would continue to study at colleges, whilst practice-based subjects would be entirely taught in the workplace. More generally, working within production constraints provided challenges implying not a minimal professional formation but a more direct engagement with the problems of educational practice within production environments.

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Knowledge of research methods is regarded as crucial for the UK economy and workforce. However, research methods teaching is viewed as a challenging area for lecturers and students. The pedagogy of research methods teaching within universities has been noted as underdeveloped, with undergraduate students regularly expressing negative dispositions to the subject. These are challenges documented in university-based higher education (HE), yet little is known of the practices and pedagogies of research methods teaching in the college-based HE setting, where the delivery of HE has grown in prominence in recent years. Because college-based HE is widely regarded as primarily vocational, incorporating research methods into curricula may be seen as an additional level of complexity for staff to negotiate. In this article, [the authors] report on the data collected within a study to examine research methods teaching in social science disciplines on HE programmes taught in college-based settings in England. Drawing on data obtained from college-based HE lecturers and students, [the authors] discuss features of research methods teaching and how these may be applied with a diverse student body, within vocationally focused institutions. Issues of institutional culture, resourcing and staff development are also considered as these are identified as integral to the successful embedding of research methods teaching.

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TVET educator roles and identities vary internationally, and are subject to repositioning, for example as the relative significance of institutions and the workplace change within national systems. In English apprenticeships, a key position has long been occupied by competence assessors, whose non-teaching role has related uneasily to those of professional educators. Following the introduction of new apprenticeship standards, former assessors are increasingly being allocated training responsibilities, raising issues about the expertise, identities and professional formation both of these emerging practitioners and of vocational educators in general. A qualitative study of assessors who have assumed greater training responsibilities examined these issues through individual and small-group interviews. Participant accounts of diverse and contested practices and environments suggested a need to conceptualise their roles in ways that draw upon but go beyond accounts of professionalism and occupational expertise developed at earlier stages. Drawing on Gramsci, the concept of the subaltern educator is put forward to characterise the complex position of these staff in the current climate of further education, the need for enhanced, rather than diminished, professional formation and wider possibilities for professional enhancement at a time of uncertainty for all vocational educators.

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Where young people's upper-secondary education spans work and institutional domains, questions arise about learning across both spheres and its guidance. Theoretical accounts of 'boundary crossing' have explored how vocational teachers can integrate learning across domains by drawing on extended concepts and theoretical knowledge to solve workplace problems; whilst empirical accounts have validated the role of vocational educators by describing the workplace and schools as equally valid, complementary spheres. Different understandings, described here as 'integrative', 'complementary' and 'implicit', appear to reflect different national patterns of vocational education.

The paper reports a qualitative study conducted around two case studies, located in Germany and England, of the way vocational teachers' understandings of facilitating learning across domains are constructed. Vocational teachers working in Germany's 'dual training' claimed to provide advanced knowledge that they compared to practical work skills, reflecting 'implicit' or 'complementary' approaches to learning across domains. Teachers in England, where workplace learning elements are more unevenly developed and lack institutional foundations, nevertheless described colleges and workplaces as distinctive, little-connected spheres. These differences suggest that teachers' approaches are less shaped by the potential or necessity for 'integrative' approaches than by the way different systems enable or constrain their conceptualisation of 'possible futures'.

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Whilst apprenticeships are generally supported by workplace trainers and by vocational teachers in schools or colleges, competency-based systems also allocate roles to third-party workplace assessors. Apprenticeship reforms in England, replacing qualification-based 'frameworks' with 'employer-led standards' have opened up possibilities for these assessors to carry out training duties, although these generally lack the qualifications and status of classroom-based teachers, having completed shorter courses in assessment and sometimes training practice. A qualitative study was carried out among practitioners who had begun to take on training responsibilities, exploring their emerging practices and identities. Participant responses varied in their apprehension of role change, partly because apprentices in more technical subjects would continue to study at colleges, whilst practice-based subjects would be entirely taught in the workplace. More generally, working within production constraints provided challenges implying not a minimal professional formation but a more direct engagement with the problems of educational practice within production environments.

Published abstract.

The volume from which this paper is taken is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 151.801. Show less

The paper addresses the impact of [Coronavirus Disease 2019] Covid-19 on vocational education and training [VET], seeking to discern the outline of possible directions for its future development within the debates about VET responses to the pandemic. The discussion is set in its socio-economic context, considering debates that engage with the social relations of care and neo-liberalism. The paper analyses discourses that have developed around VET across the world during the pandemic, illustrating both possible continuities and ruptures that may emerge in this field, as the health crisis becomes overshadowed in public policy by the prioritisation of economic recovery and social restoration. The paper concludes that, alongside the possibility of a narrowing of VET to its most prosaic aims and practices, the health crisis could also lead to a re-conceptualisation that develops its radical and emancipatory possibilities in both the global south and north.

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The Industry Placements Pilot Programme was introduced as part of government aims to reform and strengthen technical education in England. Industry placements will be an integral part of the new T Level programmes which will help learners taking classroom-based qualifications gain demonstrable technical and vocational expertise. Within the T Level programmes, placements will be of 45-60 working day duration and will offer a structured learning experience. The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned 21 providers to test a set of new placement design dimensions: The model - block release, day release, or a mixture of block and day release; The preparation of the learner - by pilot providers or a national level organisation; and The monitoring and management of placements - by providers or through national level brokerage and/or project management.

The aim of this research project was to provide independent external, process evaluation of the Industry Placements Pilot Programme. The aim of the evaluation was to: Assess the effectiveness of different placement and support models in different contexts; and Provide evidence on implementation highlighting lessons for full, national roll-out. The research was based on qualitative interviews with key stakeholders in the Pilot Programme. This included interviews across 3 waves with a range of staff in all 21 providers and staff at the national brokerage and support organisation. Employers and learners were also interviewed. In addition, management information was analysed and a survey of learners undertaken. Providers were also engaged in a series of webinars, online forums and learning events throughout all waves.

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Context: [Vocational education and training] VET is faced with profound challenges in the post-COVID [Coronavirus Disease 2019] era: fundamental questions about the purposes of VET, its limitations and its theoretical justification, have acquired renewed importance. Across national boundaries in Europe, the theorisation of VET has been approached differently. One of the oldest theoretical rationales for VET was developed over a century ago in Germany under the name of 'Berufsbildungstheorie'. The difference between this and other countries has been variously associated with different VET systems, academic traditions and relationships to broader socio-economic policies in each country, each with their own continuities and ruptures over time. In several European countries we can point to a shift from early philosophical writing about VET and education more generally to the use of techniques from the social sciences, and the profusion of post-foundational approaches has further undermined the claims of normative theory; yet, both in general education and increasingly in VET, an increased interest in the notion of 'Bildung' as a more humanistic approach to education than the narrow calculations of human capital theory is also evident.

Approach: In this paper we therefore ask whether these approaches retain relevance for contemporary VET, addressing this through three related perspectives that build in various ways on these theoretical traditions. The first compares the development of 'Berufsbildungstheorie' by key architects of the German VET system to theorisation of VET in English-speaking countries, which has drawn on a wider range of social sciences, especially since the 1980s. This contrast is discussed here drawing on an extensive review of VET literature emanating from English-speaking countries. The significance and limitations of the 'Berufsbildungstheorie' tradition is illustrated further in the second of these three sections, when the German vocational transition system is analysed using social systems theory. Finally, neo-institutionalism is used to demonstrate the process by which countries aspire to imitate visibly successful models of VET despite cultural, institutional and theoretical differences that make the transfer of policies from one jurisdiction to another a highly problematic exercise.

Findings: These illustrative cases provide important insights into the continuing relevance of 'Berufsbildungstheorie' or any normative theory of VET. The theorisation of VET in the English-speaking countries has taken place through a critique based mainly on the social sciences, which has drawn attention to VET's positioning within the networks of neoliberal policy in these countries and its reproductive logic. The discussion of German VET as a transition system also illustrates the way that classic theories are perceived to have less explanatory value for contemporary systems. Finally, the paper on neo-institutionalism provides an explanation for aspirations to imitate the perceived successes of other jurisdictions in spite of the barriers to 'policy borrowing' across national contexts, suggesting once again that such approaches can have explanatory value in different contexts.

Conclusion: Each of these accounts illustrates in its own way how the social sciences have come to dominate the theorisation of VET, even in German-speaking countries. Yet the importance of constructing and connecting normative, pedagogical and critical dimensions of VET can hardly be disregarded in an age where international policymaking so often advances a unifying, purely economistic imperative. Therefore the future of both theory and practice of VET is likely to depend not only on 'rational' analysis of VET and its context but on the development of criteria that enable us to judge the value, human potential and social justice of our ideas and actions. Therefore, the analytical power of social science theories could be enriched by a normative dimension, possibly retrieved from 'Bildung' or 'Berufsbildung' concepts. However, as concepts that were developed in Europe, they need to be renewed and revised with attention to contemporary issues and understandings, for example with attention to ideas that draw on and recognise fully the experience and contribution of the global South.

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Recent policies for English technical and vocational education and training (TVET), centred on apprenticeship reforms [reports available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 122.1166 and TD/TNC 110.775] and the Sainsbury Review [report available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 125.184], have prioritised employer-led curricula and learning in employment settings. These policies are represented in policy discourse as radical changes that imitate successful European systems, raising new issues about the possibilities and limitations of policy learning and policy borrowing. Useful insights are offered by comparative political economy, which has located skill formation within networks of complementary institutions that shape economic life, rendering problematic the notion of change in a single dimension such as skills. Relatedly, historical institutionalism explains skill formation both as an enduring institution but also as the product of specific historical conflicts over workplace training.

Building on these theoretical conceptions, a series of qualitative case studies carried out at key points in the emergence of current skills policies is reviewed, which demonstrates how wider conflicts are reflected in a tension between selectivity and inclusion currently playing out in the implementation English skills policy. The findings indicate the possibility of further stratification in post-16 education, through the process that historical institutionalism describes as 'layering'. However, possibilities for a more coherent relationship between educational practice and the workplace may also be derived from this analysis.

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Whilst [vocational education and training] VET in German-speaking countries and its research base are well-known internationally, its theoretical foundations are not shared in countries where VET emerged later and has undergone more circuitous forms of theorisation. The significance of these different international understandings of the field is explored here through a comparative discussion of the theorisation of VET in English-speaking countries. A critical review of key contributions to this theorisation shows it to draw on a wide range of external disciplines, in a problematic relationship with both a contested liberal education tradition and with neoliberal policy; and within a fragmented field of knowledge production, where it competes with alternative claims to expertise that limit its contribution to the field of policy and practice. It is concluded that, whilst this problematising and problematic theorisation of VET in the Anglosphere has produced significant contributions, their effect on policy and practice has been delayed or distorted, and that significant investment in autonomous research capacity will be necessary for any meaningful renewal of VET.

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