Journal of Vocational Education and Training最新文献

{"title":"Paths in education: how students make qualification choices at Level 3 and what influences these choices","authors":"Zoe Lewis","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118957","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118957","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study explores how young people in England make choices about the qualifications they study at the age of 16, when they move to post-compulsory education, and the impact on further progression. Given the potential impact on students’ lives, it seems vital to understand how they make their choices, and whether the current decision-making process could be improved. There is increasing research into the provision of career guidance, on how students are making choices about higher education (Diamond et al., 2014). However, the majority of research into qualification choice has been about progression to Higher Education or choices made about GCSEs, leaving a gap in the literature relating to vocational education and training. It has been argued that some students are poorly prepared when it comes to choices about the qualifications after 16 (Leatherwood, 2015). This is still true for young people today. Using a mixed methods approach involving questionnaires (n = 50); 35 student interviews; 2 focus group discussions, and 4 staff interviews, the study found five main influences on choice. They included peer influence, career aspirations, parental or family influence, advice from careers officers and media influences. The role played by schools in shaping qualification choice is considerable: young people need both good impartial information as well as good advice and guidance in how to use this information. However, these structural factors can play a significant role in the choice of qualifications, to the point where it is effectively a ‘non-choice’.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"12 1","pages":"707 - 707"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82619079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Lisbon to Copenhagen, London, Helsinki and Edinburgh - a study of vocational education and training (VET) policy making in four European countries (Denmark, England, Finland and Scotland)","authors":"Jane Pither","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118946","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this study I explored the complex relationships developed during vocational education and training (VET) policy making by the European Union (EU), three member states (Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom) and a region, Scotland, between 2000 and 2019. Discourse and thematic analyses of EU and national VET policy documents were used to compare the distinctive nature of VET policy making in the four countries. Illustrative thematic case studies were then compared with selected policy change theories of convergence, Europeanisation, Europeification and policy drift. Using a critical realism framework to support analyses of different layers of discourse, it was found that there was no consistent understanding of the purpose of VET between the EU and its member states, or, indeed, within the nations of the UK. The purpose of VET policy was varyingly perceived as either social, economic, educational or political between 2000 and 2019. This led me to the conceptualisation of a VET policy making gyre, developed as an alternative to the policy making cycle. The gyre was found to represent more fully the ebb and flow of aspects of policy purposes and goals over time as well as the dynamics of structure and agent relationships in policy formulation.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"20 1","pages":"710 - 710"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82758262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Company-based trainers: attitudes and career-paths in French-speaking Switzerland","authors":"Roberta Besozzi","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118950","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118950","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Vocational training is the most popular form of post-compulsory education in Switzerland. Two-thirds of young people end up in vocational education after compulsory schooling, of whom around 80% go into the dual training system. This involves the weekly rotation between one or two days of school-based theoretical and practical instruction and three to four days of company-based practical training, under the guidance of on-the-job trainers. The role of these on-the-job trainers has not been extensively studied to date. This thesis aims to fill this research gap by highlighting the internal diversity of this group. To so do, the thesis adopts a qualitative and comprehensive approach, relying mainly on 80 semi-directive interviews carried out with on-the-job trainers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The analysis draws extensively on concepts and notions drawn from the sociology of work. With the help of a descriptive typology, four ideal-type profiles of on-the-job trainers could be identified: ‘entrepreneurs’, ‘artisans’, ‘converted’ and ‘resigned’. These ideal types reveal the diversity of on-the-job training practices, depending on the professional ethos of trainers and the concrete conditions under which they carry out their duties. Comparison of the four ideal types also sheds some light on the major challenges facing the Swiss on-the-job training system at present, namely the lack of time to train and the lack of recognition for on-the-job trainers. On the basis of these results, we make a series of recommendations for the various institutions involved in the Swiss dual training system.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"77 1","pages":"703 - 703"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74201328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who governs and why it matters. An analysis of race equality and diversity in the composition of further education college governing bodies across the UK","authors":"A. Bathmaker, J. Pennacchia","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2126878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2126878","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Concerns about racism and race equality have been widely reported in the first decades of the 21st century, following the Black Lives Matter protests and campaigns such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’. Yet ‘race’ remains largely absent from policy debate and research concerning further education colleges in the four countries of the UK, particularly in relationship to leadership and governance. The focus of this paper is on who governs and why it matters. Governors and trustees play an increasingly visible and significant role in public, private and charity sector organisations, but diversity on governing bodies of further education across the UK remains patchy and is seen as a major challenge. The paper reports on what is known about the composition of governing bodies and what this tells us about the involvement of governors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds at the present time, drawing on a three-year project which examined the processes and practices of governing in the four countries of the UK. The findings highlight the continuing absence of governors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds on college governing boards and suggest that normative, invisible assumptions of how governing gets done persist, with black and minority ethnic governors often little more than a token gesture of adding diversity to the faces on the board.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"44 1","pages":"24 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75847983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Youth transition, agricultural education and employment in Uganda: freeing individual agency","authors":"Robert Jjuuko","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118939","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The reality of the troubles young people encounter in navigating confining social and institutional settings to become productive workers and flourishing citizens in sub-Saharan African countries like Uganda continues to attract all sorts of theoretical and social policy assumptions. One such prominent assumption is the idea that increased young people’s participation in agricultural education and work has the potential to stem escalating youth unemployment. The related narrative that young people are less keen to plunge their learning and work life in agriculture owing to its low social status poses a huge education and labour policy dilemma across SSA and similar contexts. Amid this dilemma are narratives, which seem to underplay the influential social arrangements that structure the education–work trajectories of young people and the perceptions and practice of micro-social actors in the agriculture education and labour markets. Questionable narratives that often attempt to frame young people as authors of their own troubled work transitions abound sections of social policy and development discourse. Moreover, mainstream research and evaluative studies in Uganda and similar contexts do have a traditional focus on macro and meso structures with limited methodological interest into the voices and experiences of frontline social actors. Accordingly, this qualitative study is an in-depth examination of personal and contextual influences on young people’s agricultural education-employment transitions; and exploration of how to improve transition processes for optimising learning and labour market outcomes. The findings reveal unprecedented resilience and volitions of young people to advance their education–work trajectories despite the structural barriers. The study showed a reasonable degree of enthusiasm amongst some micro-social actors in supporting young people on their life transitions though often constrained by confining social and institutional arrangements. The study yielded robust evidence into the difficulties to cause AET system improvements for better student outcomes but also delivered incredible insights for making change possible. Freeing and nurturing the individual agency of Ugandan young people to choose and pursue agricultural education and work aspirations along the constricting pathways enacted as part of societal canalisation is among the core elements of this thesis. The agency freedom and professional autonomy of frontline social actors, especially agricultural educators to enable them to practise craftsmanship, democracy and associated transformative approaches for better preparation of young people to navigate their education and career trajectories is equally a core argument of this thesis.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"28 1","pages":"705 - 706"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73267717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Keep It Up Switzerland! Four Empirical Studies on Dual Vocational Education and Training","authors":"M. Oswald-Egg","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118326","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This thesis adds empirical evidence to the growing literature on dual VET using Switzerland as a case study. The first chapter examines lower-secondary education students’ occupational choices upon entering dual VET. I show that it is possible to provide those students with low-cost personalised information that expands the set of occupations they consider. The second chapter examines whether having done dual VET as a first career step is beneficial for higher education graduates entering the labour market. Our findings indicate that dual VET is beneficial right after graduation. The operating channels are human capital, screening and signalling. The third chapter examines how a reduction in firms’ hiring costs influences firms’ provision of apprenticeship positions. Our findings show that the impact is very small on the number of apprenticeship positions having no effect on the probability of providing apprenticeship positions. The fourth chapter examines whether young people in countries with VET pathways have a smoother transition onto the labour market. We find that mixed education systems that include both general education and VET are best. Depending on the circumstances, dual VET is preferable over school-based VET. Overall, the evidence in this thesis supports strengthening dual VET in a country’s education system.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"7 1","pages":"709 - 709"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74760445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Doctoral theses abstracts in vocational education","authors":"J. Hordern","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2145678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2145678","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"19 1","pages":"701 - 702"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77981973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aspirations, austerity and agency: adult women learners in the English FE sector and the capacity to aspire in an austerity context","authors":"Rebecca Suart","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118953","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Policy changes and austerity funding cuts have led to a sharp decline in adult women learners’ participation in the English FE sector. This thesis aimed to understand why, in this harsh climate, women return to FE and what they gain from doing so. Located within an intersectional feminist inquiry, the in-depth narrative interviews with 21 women learners on a range of VET programmes, provides a rich understanding of their aspirations and how these are shaped by their biographies. Data Analysis draws on concepts such as Appadurai’s ‘capacity to aspire’ (2004) and Ray’s ‘aspirations window’ (2006), alongside feminist economic theories on the gendered constraints on choice and agency to illustrate the complex and dynamic nature of women learners’ aspirations. This thesis makes three key contributions, firstly, it offers a contemporary perspective on women learners’ experiences in the FE sector. Secondly, the feminist economics lens brings into sharp relief how in the context of austerity, instrumental policy goals fail to take account of the complex intersectional disadvantages that women learners face in their everyday lives, and how they navigate the responsibilities of care and work so that they can pursue their own interests. Finally, it offers crucial insights into the complex and dynamic nature of educational aspirations.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"21 1","pages":"712 - 712"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83895649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Essays on the complementarities between workers’ education, firms’ organization, and digitalization","authors":"F. Pusterla","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118311","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The aim of this dissertation is to assess the role of vocational and professional education and training (VPET) in determining firm productivity and employment growth compared to other input factors. To do this, this thesis investigates the complementarities between VPET and other production factors, especially digitalisation in the form of information and communication technologies (ICT). The results suggest that at firm level workers with an upper-secondary VET education are complementary to workers with a tertiary academic education, while workers with no post-compulsory education are complementary to workers with a tertiary professional education. The results further suggest that skilled workers benefit more than other workers do from the introduction of firms’ organisational practices. With regard to new technologies, this thesis shows that the use information technologies is particularly beneficial for workers with a tertiary vocational education, while communication technologies are especially complementary to workers with a tertiary academic education. Finally, analyses at labour market level suggest that ICT had an upskilling effect over the Switzerland, meaning that ICT decreases the demand for low-skilled workers, while it increases the demand for high-skilled workers, especially workers with a tertiary vocational education. The findings contained in this thesis enable evidence-based recommendations for policymakers, professional associations, and firms.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"1 1","pages":"711 - 711"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75655041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What will T levels change? The portrayal of technical and vocational education in England: tensions in policy, and a conundrum for lecturers","authors":"Louise Misselke","doi":"10.1080/13636820.2022.2118948","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2118948","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT United Kingdom (UK) government reform for technical and vocational education (TVET) is underway. A goal of which is to address a perceived status issue. Literature identifies an interpretation which perceives TVET as less challenging or for the less academically able. This thesis used practitioner-based enquiry to explore lecturer perceptions, contextualised by UK government’s TVET documentation analysis of the last 35 years. The research uncovered tensions in policy as a result of significant policy churn in TVET and presented a conundrum for those lecturers interviewed in terms of their professional identity and relationship with local employers. Constant policy change has bought issues of performativity and managerialism into the sector as it deals with the twists and turns of government. Causing lecturers interviewed to feel disconnection from their profession of origin resulting in a pervading sense of devaluing the vocational aspects of their sense of self. Together with the increased pressure to develop generic teaching skills, rather than specialist vocational pedagogy, it is argued, will only perpetuate the portrayal of TVET as lower status. The findings were bought together to argue that the constant policy churn has resulted in a lack of trust and legitimacy for TVET, offering one possible explanation for the portrayal and the status issue that new T-level qualifications are designed to address.","PeriodicalId":46718,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Education and Training","volume":"20 1","pages":"708 - 708"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85798651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}