Despite the ongoing debate about how much academic versus vocational upper-secondary education is favorable for a country and large differences across countries of those two types of education exist, the interplay of vocational and academic education on upper-secondary level and its consequences for the entire education system remain…

This article shares our experience using a job-embedded active learning approach to support candidates' growth as systems-focused equity leaders in the University of Washington's Leadership for Learning program. We describe how socio-cultural learning theory helped us shift from field-based application projects to job-embedded learning. Our…

The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship between the pedagogical ethos of vocational in-company trainers as perceived by apprentices and the apprentices' identification with their vocation and their company from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. It is argued that the trainers' pedagogical ethos is a relational…

The aim of this paper is to ascertain the factors by which Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) affect the employability of graduates in Mumbai, India. The ITIs are major providers of VET in India. Presently, India is part of a skilling revolution with the goal of providing superior quality formal skill training to 400 million people by the year…

During the 25 years since Incorporation, when further education (FE) colleges were taken out of local government control, FE in England has been shaped by processes of marketisation to become a competitive national sector that has increasingly diverged from the more 'collaborative system logic' of the other three countries of the UK. However,…

Technological acceleration, increased global engagement, and national aspirations to restructure its economy and promote innovation have persuaded China to intensify an emphasis on skills acquisition through technical-vocational education and training (TVET). After a background of China's experience, this paper examines the case of Gansu, the…

This paper analyses the effect of a secondary job on the intention to quit an apprenticeship in Germany. For the empirical approach, the representative German, firm-level study 'BIBB Survey Vocational Training from the Trainees Point of View 2008' conducted by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) is used. In this…

This article analyzes the motives for firms providing apprenticeship training in Catalonia and the reasons why other firms do not provide such training. In light of the recent introduction of dual apprenticeships in the formal education system in Spain, a country with a traditionally school-based vocational education and training (VET) system,…

This article sheds light on an understudied aspect of the transition from school to work: the choice of a training company. It presents findings from qualitative interviews with 69 secondary school students and apprentices from the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg, focusing on their reasons to choose a training company in the dual system.…

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…

Humans are proposed to have evolved to learn through observation, imitation and practice or mimesis. In this article, the contribution of imitation, as an important but poorly understood aspect of mimetic learning, is advocated to create affordances for dyadic learning. However, learning through imitation is often perceived with negative…

Context: Due to limited geographical mobility, opportunities for adolescents interested in company-based training are primarily dependent on regional training offers. Competition for company-based training among adolescents varies regionally, and thus, the chance to obtain a training contract varies as well. In this article, we investigate the…

This study estimates the extent to which apprenticeship affects the academic trajectories of vocational high-school students. Previous research has shown that apprenticeship-based high schools (or dual vocational education) increase employment outcomes compared to school-based-only vocational education. Employing a propensity score matching…

This research explored how engineering apprentices at an Australian TAFE institution perceive their supported acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills. Using a mixed methods approach, 56 apprentices completed questionnaires with nine participating in subsequent interviews. The study identified apprentices' perceived ability levels in reading,…

This paper examines responses to the trend for increasing participation in tertiary education, linking developments in higher education with those in apprenticeship systems, in Australia and the United Kingdom. In both sectors, expansion proceeded for several decades, but was robustly criticised in both countries. The expansion of access to these…