Science journalists are mainly responsible for publicly communicating science, which, in turn, is a major indicator of the social development of democratic societies. The transmission of quality scientific information that is rigorously researched and understandable is therefore crucial, and demand for this kind of information from both…

Purpose: Using the example of an amalgamated secondary school qualification (International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme--IBCP), in which both vocational education and training (VET) and academic subjects are taught, the paper aims to discuss the use of skills and knowledge gained during the IBCP for post-secondary school activities.…

This article reports findings from a recent research project, commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which explored the current landscape of professional doctorate (PD) provision in English higher education institutions (HEIs) (Mellors-Bourne et al., 2016). Given the absence of a clear definition by the Quality…

A demand on national economies in the 1970s was that they should begin to increase their labour market flexibility, which came to mean transferring risks and insecurity onto workers. Education was one way to prepare future workers for this new situation. The present article examines this preparation of learning for precarity some 40 years on. It…

Data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 were used to examine the effect of academic and career or technical education course-taking in high school on deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) youth's postsecondary enrollment in 2-year, 4-year, and career or technical education institutions. We examined the proportion of academic and career or…

Austria, Germany and Switzerland are renowned for their extensive systems of collective vocational skill formation, which, however, have developed largely in separation from higher education. This divide has become increasingly contested as a result of a variety of socioeconomic factors that have led to an increasing demand for higher level…

Vocational education has a historical legacy of being low-status and aimed at producing skilled workers. Students with low marks in comprehensive school are still often guided to the vocational educational track. In this article we examine how mathematics teaching in a vocational educational context is framed (henceforth VET). Therefore, our aim…

Finland has been celebrated as a country where everyone has the possibility to educate themselves and to get ahead in life through education. However, social differences of educability continue to persist and social differences of employability are further construed in the neo-liberal market economy. In this article we will examine 2 adult…

In Sweden, history has recently become a compulsory subject in upper secondary vocational education and training (VET). The aim of this interview study with teachers was to problematize the transition between the ideals of history education in the curriculum and the everyday practices of history teaching. It investigated how the teachers assess…

In Italy, as in other European countries, students of foreign origin are over-represented in the vocational school tracks, with relevant consequences on their limited chances of attaining a university degree. While research has long underlined the weight that a family's social, cultural and economic capital has on a child's school performance,…

As a result of public discussions regarding Germany's standing on international rankings of student achievement, increased attention was focused on enhancing cognitive stimulation in preschools. There are some concerns that preschool curricula that focus more on cognitive stimulation rather than on socio-emotional skills might neglect the…

Contemporary changes in higher education in Sweden are characterised by two educational discourses: marketisation and academisation. Demands to meet market requirements, as well as to make education more scientific, have created tensions between and within institutional cultures. Using interviews with 16 heads of departments, the authors…

Across many countries, young people are differentiated into academic and vocational tracks, a pattern that is closely related to their social class background. The Irish secondary system has been largely undifferentiated, but the introduction of a pre-vocational programme, the Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA), has brought an element of tracking…

This paper provides a self-ethnographic investigation of a continuing education program in engineering in Central Finland. The program was initiated as a response to local economic structural change, in order to offer re-education possibilities for a higher educated workforce currently under unemployment threat. We encountered considerable…

Background: Green and Thorburn claim that examination physical education now holds a dominant place in both the UK's national discourse and in the lives and careers of many teachers. Despite the move towards the academicisation of physical education and the proliferation of accredited qualifications in a number of countries, both of which have…