Vocational education and training in Germany and Sweden: strategies of control and movements of resistance and opposition: report from a symposium

The Thematic Network on Teacher Education (TNTEE) is funded by the European Commission. Its main objective is to establish a flexible multilingual trans-national forum for the development of teacher education in Europe. The network is coordinated by the Board of Teacher Education and Research, Umea University, Sweden. The focus of this collection of papers from a TNTEE symposium is the vocational education and training systems of Germany and Sweden. The collection includes one paper on the Danish vocational education system. The papers are as follows: ‘Introduction: Germany and Sweden: two different systems of vocational education?’ by Lisbeth Lundahl and Theodor Sander which compares the processes of vocational education and training (VET) and the professional education of vocational teachers and trainers in Sweden and Germany, and highlights the role of the VET system in maintaining social control in the face of oppositional movements as a neglected area of research; ‘The emergence of new models of organisation of vocational education in Sweden’ by Anders Nilsson which presents and discusses new forms of organisation in vocational education for work in the manufacturing industry; ‘Still the stepchild of Swedish educational politics?: vocational education and training in Sweden in the 1990s’ by Lisbeth Lundahl which examines recent reforms and developments in Swedish upper secondary education, highlighting the technical vocational programs; ‘Selection principles in the recruitment for work on the shop floor’ by Sigurd Johansson which discusses issues related to the underlying principles influencing the recruitment of new members in groups working in the shop floor in the occupations of process operators and machine operators; ‘The Danish vocational educations and the interrelation of the school-based and the firm-based parts’ by Vibe Aarkrog which focuses on commercial education in an attempt to identify some of the difficulties in establishing an effective interrelation between school and company, and an optimal means for doing so; ‘The dual system: a static system?’ by Uwe Lauterbach in co-operation with Philipp Grollman, which analyses the ability of the German dual system of vocational education and training to adapt to changing educational needs in comparison with the university and college system; ‘On the ‘attractiveness’ of ‘in-company’ training in the dual system of vocational training in Germany’ by Eva Kuda which discusses the decline in both the number of in-company training places and the demand for vocational training among young people; ‘The crisis of the ‘dual system’ of vocational education in Germany (phases, sy[m]ptoms, reasons, reforms)’ by Meinhard Stach which explains the dual system and its development and outlines the reasons for the crisis currently evident in the system; ‘Young working people in Germany during the first half of the 20th century’ by Alfons Kenkmann which provides an historical view of the situation of young workers on the employment market of the 1930s and 1940s; ‘Youth opposition to vocational education in the Former GDR in the 1980s’ by Theodor Sander which examines the role of apprentices in the struggle against policies of the GDR [German Democratic Republic] leadership. Show less