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This book addresses what is, perhaps, the single most important issue for vocational education; its relatively low standing in an era of high aspiration. The work explores the nature, extent and consequences for an educational sector that whilst having an increasingly important role in contemporary societies is seen to be of low standing across both countries with developed and developing economies. Some of the standing is associated with the occupation it serves and this is highlighted in an era of high aspiration by young people and their parents. The consequences are far-reaching. This includes how governments and community view and support vocational education, parents and familiars advise about participation in it and young people's decision-making associated with their post-school pathways.

More than describing this problem, the focus of this collection is how this issue can be redressed through the actions of supra-government agencies, governments, schools in tertiary education institutions, industry and professional bodies and employers. It sets out the quality and extent of societal sentiments in shaping how vocational education and the occupation it serves are projected, across countries, continents and cultures, and offers a range of perspectives and contributions from scholars on how this issue might be redressed. These contributions are drawn together and synthesised into sets of propositions, practices and approaches directed towards governments, schooling and tertiary education institutions, educators, researchers, industry and professional bodies and employers.

Edited excerpt from publisher's website.

The contents are as follows: Part one, 'The standing of vocational education: perennial issues, emerging concerns and ways forward', contains the following chapters: The standing of vocational education: a global concern with diverse meanings and implications / Barbara E. Stalder, Sarojni Choy, Anh Hai Le; Enhancing the standing and status of vocational education / Stephen Billett, Steven Hodge, Vibe Aarkrog. Part two, 'Issues, sources and consequences of the standing and status of vocational education', contains: Understanding the purpose and standing of technical and vocational education and training / Susan James Relly; Improving the standing of [vocational education and training] VET: perspectives from countries with developing economies / Stephen Billett, Anh Hai Le; The standing of dual apprenticeships in Germany: institutional stability and current challenges / Thomas Deissinger; Shaping young people's decision-making about post-school pathways: institutional and personal factors / Stephen Billett, Darryl Dymock, Steven Hodge, Sarojni Choy, Anh Hai Le.

Part three, 'Country studies of the standing of vocational education and the occupations it serves', contains the following chapters: Alternance training as a way to improve the attractivity of vocational education programmes in France / Laurent Veillard; Promoting the standing of VET in Finland: balancing the different aims of VET / Heta Rintala, Petri Nokelainen; Attractiveness of vocational education and training in India: perspectives of different actors with a special focus on employers / Matthias Pilz, Muthuveeran Ramasamy; The quality and status of school-based Norwegian VET / Hilde Hiim; Perspectives on informing post-school pathways: a Vietnamese case study / Anh Hai Le; Enhancing the standing of VET in Switzerland / Barbara E. Stalder, Fabienne Luthi; The significance of learning environment and decision-making for enrolment in and completion of VET: a Danish case / Vibe Aarkrog; Elevating the standing of vocational education and training in Romania / Maria-Carmen Pantea.

Part four, 'Enhancing the standing and status of vocational education: an Australian study', contains the following chapters: Investigating enhancing the standing of vocational education and the occupation it serves: purposes, processes and phases / Stephen Billett, Sarojni Choy, Steven Hodge, Anh Hai Le; Influences on post-school decision-making: perspectives of school students, parents, teachers (phase 1); Steven Hodge, Stephen Billett, Sarojni Choy; Surveys of students, parents and teachers (phase 2) / Sarojni Choy, Anh Hai Le, Steven Hodge, Stephen Billett; Informing and advising the zones of influence shaping young people's decision-making about post-school pathways (phase 3) / Stephen Billett, Darryl Dymock, Sarojni Choy, Steven Hodge, Anh Hai Le.

Individual chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 148.657 to TD/TNC 148.674. Show less

This article proposes lifelong learning as a socio-personal process and a personal fact. As such, it is conceptually distinct from an educational provision, which constitutes one kind of institutional fact. In making this distinction, this article seeks to elaborate a major flaw in the precepts for conceptualisation and enactment of the report 'Learning through life', thereby proposing it as being ill-informed, partial, of limited use and dangerous as it could lead to the misrepresentation, marginalisation and undermining of a broadly premised provision of adult learning. The emphasis on educational provisions rather than individuals' learning and the diversity of settings in which individuals learn stand as major flaws that seemingly arise from the authors' perspectives and stakeholder interests. Largely neglected throughout is the scholarship on adult learning and development across individuals' life courses. Instead, miscellaneous and unhelpful sources inform the report. The overall recommendations reflect a view of human development that was abandoned decades ago as being unhelpful, and whose rejection is now more pertinent than ever. Moreover, it largely rehearses in educational discourse and unquestioningly the value of taught courses, ignoring the importance and ubiquity of learning experiences outside of courses. Across the report's discussion, and shaping its recommendations, lifelong learning is presented as an institutional rather than a personal process. It is erroneously claimed to be something that social institutions do rather than individuals. In doing so, a misinformed and inaccurate account of lifelong learning emerges and a narrow conception of how learning might best be promoted and supported is advanced. The great threat within this document is to promote a form of learning support that lends itself to regulation and control. The peril here is that other circumstances and settings in which learning occurs will be ignored or marginalised. In all, not only is this report an opportunity lost, but it also represents a significant threat to an important and viable field of human and societal development.

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Recent studies of learning through work have included how professional identities are formed through participation in work. However, we need a more elaborated understanding of how professional identities are negotiated at times of rapid change in working practices. This chapter examines the personal strategies that vocational teachers adopt, and the professional identity negotiations that occur, in response to requirements to change professional practices. [The authors] report on a study in which open-ended narrative interviews were conducted with sixteen Finnish vocational teachers. From the teachers' accounts, [the authors] identified distinct personal strategies that were adopted to engage with change. The strategies were labelled as follows: (i) professional development, (ii) passive accommodation, (iii) active participation, (iv) a balancing act, and (v) withdrawal. The strategies were aligned to the teachers' individual concerns, and were bound up with the personal resources available in negotiating with the changing character of the work. An account of these strategies offers a new way of understanding how identities are negotiated through an active, personally-shaped process. The study also illuminates how to promote individuals' management of the self and of learning at work.

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This book discusses how the Dutch vocational education system has undergone significant waves of reform driven by global imperatives, national concerns and governmental policy goals. Like elsewhere, the impetuses for these reforms are directed to generating a more industry-responsive, locally-accountable and competence-based vocational education system. Each wave of reforms, however, has had particular emphases, and was directed to achieve particular policy outcomes. Yet, they are more than mere versions of what had or is occurring elsewhere. They are shaped by specific national imperatives, sentiments and localised concerns. Consequently, whilst this book elaborates what constitutes the contemporary provision of vocational education in the Netherlands, it also addresses a broader concern of how vocational education systems become formed, manifested within nation states and then transformed through particular imperatives, institutional arrangement and localised factors.

Excerpt from publisher's website.

The contents are as follows: Part one, 'Introduction', contains the following chapter: Vocational education in the Netherlands / Elly de Bruijn, Stephen Billett, and Jeroen Onstenk (pages 3-36). Part two, 'Policies and organisations', contains: Vocational and professional education and lifelong learning / Jeroen Onstenk and Ruud Duvekot (pages 39-56); Transforming vocational education: encouraging innovation via public private partnerships / Marc van der Meer, Jan Peter van den Toren, and Tammy Lie (pages 57-82); Great expectations: VET's meaning for Dutch local industry / Anneke Westerhuis and Marc van der Meer (pages 83-102); Improvement of educational quality in VET: who is next? / Louise van de Venne, Marlies Honingh, and Marieke van Genugten (pages 103-118); Professional development of teachers in vocational education / Marcel van der Klink and Jan Streumer (pages 119-136).

Part three, 'Educational programmes: teaching and learning', contains the following chapters: A dialogue worth having: vocational competence, career identity and a learning environment for twenty-first century success at work / Frans Meijers, Reinekke Lengelle, Annemie Winters, and Marinka Kuijpers (page 139-155); The role and nature of knowledge in vocational programmes / Elly de Bruijn and Arthur Bakker (pages 157-174); Designing competence-based vocational curricula at the school-work boundary / Renate Wesselink and Ilya Zitter (pages 175-194); Pedagogic strategies for improving students' engagement and development / Truus Harms, Aimee Hoeve, and Peter den Boer (pages 195-218); Work-based learning (WBL) in Dutch vocational education: connecting learning places, learning content and learning processes / Jeroen Onstenk (pages 219-243); Assessment in Dutch vocational education: overview and tensions of the past 15 years / Liesbeth Baartman and Judith Gulikers (pages 245-266). Part five, 'End piece', contains: The Dutch vocational education system: institutional focus and transformations / Stephen Billett (pages 269-294). Show less

The origins of, changes to and transformations of national vocational education systems arise through country-specific combinations of social and economic imperatives and changes, and the Dutch vocational education system is no exception. Like others, its formation and initial form arose from industrialisation but shaped by a specific complex of factors that arose at that time. Over time, crises or perceptions of social and economic crises have led to requests for change from the State, and social partners; representing the interests of employers and employees, and also local and regional communities. These crises have been associated with responsiveness to changing industry need, concerns about the quality of student learning outcomes, and the extent and kind of governance arrangements being enacted in the management of vocational education institutions and programs at the local (i.e. regional) level. In elaborating the particular complex factors that shaped and continue to shape the Dutch vocational education system, this chapter draws on the contributions to this book and other sources, to illuminate and delineate these factors. It progresses these outcomes by initially offering a framing through which to understand the dynamics of vocational education systems and as a means of comparing across such systems. That framing comprises: (a) historical context-institutional arrangements; (b) social-political-geographical factors; (c) societal sentiment and (d) how these specifically shape the purposes and form of vocational education. Overall, it is held that the particular quality of engagement amongst central agencies (i.e. government, social partners, as well as organization of schools that operate on national level (MBO-council, HBO council) and the locale in which vocational education provisions are enacted have come to and will likely continue to shape the form and purposes of this vocational education system. So, whilst the particular complex of factors is nationally-specific, the negotiations here resonate across other nation states.

Published abstract. Show less

This book discusses how policies and practices supporting post-school transitions are formulated by and enacted in education systems and schools. It outlines how students, parents, and others in the community engage in these policies. It does this by drawing upon accounts from a range of countries with advanced industrial economies where the expectations for successful transitions are increasingly being aligned to individual, community, and national economic well-being. In countries such as Britain, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and the United States, social and economic changes are heightening the importance of young peoples’ transitions from secondary schooling to post-school life in contemporary times. Such transitions now involve negotiations of diverse and sometimes complex educational and work-related pathways.

Excerpt from publication.

The chapters are as follows: Part one, ‘School transitions: overview, policy orientations and theorisations’, contains: Experiences of school transitions: policies, practice and participants / Stephen Billett and Greer Johnson; Reconciling the system world with the life worlds of young adults: where next for youth transition policies? / Karen Evans; Bridging school and work: a person-in-context model for enabling resilience in at-risk youth / Christopher DeLuca, Nancy L. Hutchinson, Joan Versnel, Jennifer Dods, and Peter Chin; Part two, ‘Imperatives for and practices of transitions: international perspectives’, contains: The American shortcut to VET: global policy borrowing for the post-16 educational arena / Richard D. Lakes and Antje Barabasch; Access, coping and relevance of education in youth transitions: the German transition system between labour society and knowledge society / Andreas Walther; Making the transition to post-school life: the Canadian situation / Wolfgang Lehmann; School-to-work transitions in apprenticeship-based VET systems: the Swiss approach / Barbara E. Stalder; Governing schooling, people and practices: Australian policies on transitions / Sue Thomas and Stephen Hay; Part three, ‘Experiences of schooling: contemporary practices and experiences’, contains: Researching transition experiences in Australian senior schooling / Jill Ryan, Greer Johnson, and Stephen Billett; Excluded from the game: a case study of transitions for non-tertiary-bound students in a Queensland private school; Pathways and choice: transitions at Sunny Beach College / Sue Thomas and Jill Ryan; A critical focus on family-school-community partnerships: St Jude’s Secondary College transition program for ‘at-risk’ students / Greer Johnson and Stephen Billett; The impact of interrupted schooling: recent school leavers’ accounts of transitions / Esther Beltermann, Jill Ryan, and Stephen Billett; The translation of transitions policies into school enactment / Cheryl Sim, Stephen Hay, Greer Johnson, and Sue Thomas. Show less

This chapter introduces the Dutch vocational education system and aims to foster an understanding of how it currently works. It describes and discusses the features of this system and the foundational issues that underlie it. Patterns of participation show the crucial position of vocational education in the overall education system in the Netherlands. It provides opportunities for supporting promising educational careers and positive positions in the labour market. The system design is to be without 'dead ends': everybody is supposed to leave the system with a fitting qualification. However, this design has proven to be less promising in its realization. Early tracking foreshadows pathways and makes some careers, if not dead ends, difficult, elevating the risk of dropping out. Five fundamental issues are highlighted when discussing the current Dutch vocational education system in practice in this chapter. Firstly, within a public frame, vocational education is a product of cooperation amongst various stakeholders. The specifics of the private-public frame are helpful for understanding the processes by which Dutch vocational education is uniquely shaped, and lead to its specific kinds of programmes and cooperation between schools and enterprises. The freedom of education concept comprises a second issue. Thirdly, tensions between accessibility and allocation to labour market and, fourthly, between educating for the short term and the longer term future are common to most vocational education systems, albeit manifested differently because of the national peculiarities. Fifthly, the current expectation for the Dutch public provision of vocational education contributing to lifelong learning of workers is a challenge for the future and, already, testing its capacity as a system to support this goal.

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The provision of workplace support is central to how and what is and can be learnt at work. Hence, the distribution of those experiences is an important factor in the quality of workplace learning experiences. The study reported and discussed here aims to identify differences in levels of support and opportunities for applying knowledge in workplaces among factors of age-, gender-, and occupation-related cohorts of employees across a range of levels of employment. A convenience sample of 459 employees from different occupations, companies and workplaces participated in this cross-sectional exploratory study. Comparisons between categories of age and occupation are based on the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test and comparisons regarding gender are performed with the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test. The results propose that for this sample neither age nor gender, but level of employment is the crucial factor. Put simply, the evidence suggests that those in better jobs, regardless of age or gender, receive more support for workplace learning.

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Vocational learning comprises more than factual knowledge and procedures; the development of a vocational identity is a key aspect and outcome of vocational education provisions and assumed to play an integral role in how students learn and perform. Despite the salience of vocational identity however, the processes that contribute to its formation are far from fully understood. It is unclear whether and which elements of vocational education and training provision shape this process and if and to what degree forms of identity really support the actual vocational performance of a vocational learner.

This study seeks to provide deeper understanding of the circumstances that enable different forms of identity to develop and how they direct learning and workplace effort. Using structural equation modeling with data from 504 vocational learners and correlation analysis with data from 187 industrial apprentices, this article proposes a model to account for key influences and the impacts of vocational identity formation for the commercial sector. The results indicate that vocational identity mediates and is closely aligned to the development of vocational engagement and competence. A free career choice and the provision of maximal functional integration into operating processes at the workplace are key factors underlying identity formation.

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Non-traditional students entering higher education (HE) via university-based foundation courses often encounter significant personal risk upon their return to study, and this can be exacerbated by a lack of understanding of the academic demands of HE at the point of entry. As part of a wider qualitative, grounded theory study of the effect of diversity on the student experience on a university-based foundation course, which identified themes related to social interaction theory - competition, camaraderie and self-preservation - this research paper considers the theme of self-preservation and discusses Beck's 'individualisation' theory and the different 'risks' evident among foundation course students upon their return to study. The risks highlighted in the narratives related to poverty of time, changing identity and relationships and failure. The effect that these risks had on the learning experience is then considered.

University-based foundation courses provide a successful route of entry for a diverse group of students returning to education, yet these courses are currently at risk due to the changing climate of HE. Based upon the findings in this study, recommendations are suggested to help encourage student interaction, reduce student fear of failure and increase their confidence, in order to assist non-traditional students with their transition to university-based foundation courses and their successful progression to degree course programs.

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