This publication was prepared as part of the Cedefop project The shift to learning outcomes: rhetoric or reality. The purpose of this research is to analyse the conceptual, structural and political factors influencing the transformation of intended learning outcomes into achieved learning outcomes. It is considered as a first step in a long-term…

Political reforms of the 1990s ushered in sweeping socio-economic changes in the Nordic countries, including radical changes in their vocational education and training systems. However, the reforms led to a school-based vocational education and training system with a strong orientation towards higher education in Sweden, and a hybrid system with a…

This article reports on a pilot project exploring the viability of a teaching-through-playing approach in chamber music instruction in higher music education. Literature suggests that teaching traditions such as the one-to-one setting need renewal, and socio-cultural theories of learning propose that collaboration and participation are a way…

This study aimed to discern sociocultural processes through which students learn in field excursions. To achieve this aim, short-term ethnographic techniques were employed to examine how undergraduate students work and enact knowledge (or knowing) during a specific field excursion in biology. The students participated in a working practice that…

Vocational education and training (VET) is a major policy topic for countries all over the world, who are eager to learn from the best examples where participation in VET is high and youth unemployment is low. Policymakers want to know how strong VET systems manage challenges like rapid technological change, matching labor market demand for…

High school vocational education has a controversial history in the United States, largely due to a perceived tradeoff between teaching readily deployable occupational skills versus shunting mostly disadvantaged students away from the educational and career flexibility afforded by general academic courses. We study the effects of a nationwide high…

Research on peer learning in higher education indicates that learning from and together with peers can benefit students in a number of ways. Within higher music education in Western, classical music, however, the master-apprentice tradition with its dominant one-to-one mode of tuition focuses predominantly on knowledge transmission from teacher to…

The combination of work and study has been hailed as crucial to ensure that youth develop the skills required on the labour market so that transitions from school to work are shorter and smoother. This paper fills an important gap in availability of internationally-comparable data. Using the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), it draws a…

Comparative studies of vocational education and training systems rarely conduct systematic comparisons of the content of educational programmes, partly because of methodological difficulties. Yet, comparing the organisation of curricula can increase our understanding of how programme design reflects orientation towards various life chances in…

Understanding today's Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems requires a comprehension of the rise and development, i.e. of the foundations of topical VET. This book provides a comparative view of its development in Europe. The contributions of renowned authors give insight into conceptual questions, cases, and challenges in this field.

This article focuses on supervising professors' and master's degree students' understanding and experiences of supervision practices in a Norwegian university, with focus on differences in text cultures and text norms between and within three academic disciplines. The interview study shows that each discipline is a heterogeneous discourse…