Doctoral theses abstracts in vocational education

Abstract

A recent tradition of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training that brings great pleasure to the editorial team is the annual publication of a selection of abstracts from recent doctoral theses in vocational education. Nine abstracts from the theses of doctoral graduates during 2022-23 are published in this issue. Whilst last year’s selection was entirely European, it is striking that this year we have work from four continents represented, with no overlap of awarding institution from last year. As in previous years, these cover a wide range of VET topics. A number of the showcased theses look at questions of the formation of workers, both in the public and private sectors. William Boyes, from the University of Toronto, for instance, takes the case of the Ontario fire service to look at the challenges surrounding a move towards professionalisation in an increasingly pressurised public sector. By contrast, Warren Guest, from La Trobe University, looks at apprenticeship training in the Australian banking sector, with a particular focus on curriculum development and delivery. Tolika Sibiya, University of the Witwatersrand, also takes a private sector focus but one that is concerned with a powerful global value chain: the automotive sector. As Tolika notes, whilst skills policy and practice decisions are being made at a national level, they are actually a very minor part of a global chain of decisions about production, marketing, etc. Another Toronto graduate, Amelia Merrick turns our gaze towards the third sector and questions about the delivery of vocational learning in the context of increasing precarity, made more acute by the location of the study in deep rural Northern Canada. A further dimension of debates about the decency of the work for which VET is preparing its learners is provided by Ruby Brooks, from the University of Derby, who looks at the development of the English early years’ education workforce, an overwhelmingly female cohort. Across this set of studies, there is a range of theoretical approaches, including intersectional and Foucauldian approaches to feminism, historical institutionalism and the capabilities approach, the latter used in combination with critical realism, as in other recent work in JVET. Teacher preparation takes centrestage in Diane Swift’s study from Keele University into school-based initial teacher education in England. Although this approach was established in part to unsettle the knowledge approaches of universities, she notes that there is an emerging approach to professional knowledge within the subsector that is also at variance with the official view of the state. It is also the focus of Mary Overholt’s JOURNAL OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION & TRAINING 2023, VOL. 75, NO. 5, 1081–1082 https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2023.2250203