School principals and teachers are expected to continuously innovate their practices in changing school environments. These innovation processes can be shared more widely through collaboration between principals and teachers, i.e. "collaborative innovation." In order to gain more insight into how school principals enact their leadership…

The twenty-first century labour market requires employees that proactively shape innovations and solve complex problems. Professionals in the education sector are expected to perform innovative behaviour that not only entails the generation, but also the realization and sustainable implementation of new ideas. In a sample of 458 employees in Dutch…

When students have an unclear image of an occupation, it has negative effects on their career. To form a realistic picture of work, it is important that students have practical experiences and career-related guidance. A two-year project has yielded insight into collaboration between schools and work organisations. We present the results of a desk…

This technical report presents the results of a cross-case analysis of the eleven case studies conducted under the Higher Education for Smart Specialisation project during the period 2016-2020. The analysis identifies key themes and innovative practice examples from across case studies, developing a structured typology of innovative practices for…

In vocational education and training (VET) colleges worldwide, teacher teams work on innovations to improve their educational quality. To foster this process, teams benefit from team-oriented human resource management (HRM) aimed at stimulating teachers' team learning. This qualitative study explores in-depth how team leaders enact team-oriented…

To ensure that young people and adults acquire the skills they need to render them employable, vocational education and training systems around the world construct various forms of collaboration between the public and private sectors. Public-private partnerships that focus on skills development are one form of collaboration in the provision of…

In a large-scale top-down innovation operation in the Netherlands, workplace simulations have been implemented in vocational schools, where students are required to work independently and self-direct their learning. However, research has shown that the success of such large-scale top-down innovations depends on how well their execution in schools…

Innovation has become an increasingly important concept for Australian businesses in enabling them to continue to compete in an international market, but where does vocational education and training (VET) sit in this? To date, VET has been largely overlooked by the National Innovation and Science Agenda as a potential contributor in this field.…

In VET systems, connectivity with the world of work has been on the agenda for many years: for Western and Southern European countries, since the 1980s as a consequence of the 1973 oil crisis, and then for Central and Eastern European countries, since the early 1990s. In the last few decades, awareness has grown that European prosperity depended…

Changing employer demands, new technological and pedagogical insights are examples of developments which urge Vocational Education and Training (VET) institutes to continually renew and innovate their educational programmes. This, in turn, requires teachers to show innovative behaviour. Our study focuses on the effects of task interdependence on…

This contribution shows an example of how an assessment innovation can serve as a flywheel for changing teaching and learning. This article first explains the development of an authentic, competence-based performance assessment in pre-vocational secondary education (pre-VET). Using these assessments in "pre"-VET, that is preparatory to…

This article focuses on two examples of interactive research (IR) in vocational education and training. IR is a process which brings together practitioners and researchers with the aim to implement an innovation. This innovation in the first project meant to create a hybrid learning environment; in the second it supported introducing digital media…

This article focuses on two examples of interactive research (IR) in vocational education and training. IR is a process which brings together practitioners and researchers with the aim to implement an innovation. This innovation in the first project meant to create a hybrid learning environment; in the second it supported introducing digital media…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the feasibility of a conceptual model on relations between organisational innovation, knowledge productivity and social capital. It explores processes of knowledge productivity for sustainable innovation and associated HRD implications in knowledge intensive organisations, taking the perspective that…

This article describes a study on teachers' perceptions of the coaching role in innovative secondary vocational education (SVE) in the Netherlands. Data from 109 teachers were collected by means of an online questionnaire, asking for their associations with the coaching role, goals concerning the coaching role, and typical coaching activities.…