In Romania, vocational education and training (VET) is provided at upper secondary and post-secondary levels. The first two years of upper secondary education are compulsory for all learners. Enrolment in upper secondary education and training, including VET (grade 9), requires grades from national exams in mathematics and the Romanian language, a…

Purpose: This paper aims to address the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 4 "quality education" through the adoption of heutagogic ideas in improving work-based learning for individuals. Design/methodology/approach: This paper locates a discussion of heutagogy within the wider context of vocational and higher education, as…

To curtail difficulties in higher education relating to students' learning with few or no real-life examples, poor acquisition of practical skills, a lack of confidence concerning their prospective career, and a fear of unemployment, it is imperative to engage students in real-life work environments before graduation. Drawing on the integration of…

Purpose: This article investigates female vocational students' strategies for becoming part of a workplace community, what these strategies are and how they are tied to the formation of vocational identities within male-dominated industrial work. Of particular interest is how female students enrolled on Swedish upper secondary industrial…

In vocational education, students learn in different school-based and workplace-based learning environments and engage with different types of knowledge in these environments. Students are expected to integrate these experiences and make meaning of them in relation to their own professional knowledge base. This study focuses both on…

Context: After the Eurozone crisis unfolded a decade ago, comparative political economy has investigated reforms of public administration, labour market, welfare state and economic policy particularly in Southern European nations which were hit hardest by the crisis. However, analyses of skill formation reform, particularly vocational education…

Context: An enhanced role for work-based learning is advocated increasingly widely across industrialised countries and by international Vocational Education and Training (VET) policies. However, this is framed differently in each country by long-term policy orientations that reflect VET's relationship with wider economic and social formations.…

The volume comprises a variety of research approaches that seek to explore and understand employees' learning and development through and for work. Working life reveals challenges through technological, economic and societal development that can only rudimentarily be addressed by formal education and training. Workplace learning becomes more and…

This article addresses the question of whether the concept of competence-based vocational education and training (VET) is transferable from one cultural context to another. Drawing on theoretical concepts of comparative education and sociological neo-institutionalism, the competence-based VET is defined as a new paradigm and situated within its…

Context: This research was conducted in the context of Finnish vocational education and training (VET) teacher training. The teacher training was work-based, meaning that each teacher trainee was already working as an unqualified VET teacher. Workplaces were comprehensively utilised as the learning environment, with teacher training support also…

Finnish vocational education and training is competence-based and learner-oriented. A personal competence development plan is drawn up for each learner. It charts and recognises the skills previously acquired by the learner and outlines any further competences the learner needs and how they can be acquired in different learning environments.…

Over the year, Advance CTE and the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) tracked state activity, cataloged final state policy actions and categorized trends based on the policy areas of focus and today, published State Policies Impacting CTE: 2022 Year in Review. This year's report provides an analysis that spans 37 states who…

The demand for relevant skills for the labor market constitutes one of the fundamental challenges facing the post-school system in South Africa. The South African government has therefore proposed a policy on professional development teacher education programs for Technical and Vocational Education and Training and the South African Department of…

Vocational education aims at preparing students for their future as professionals; thus, students are often required to undergo a form of on-the-job learning. Assessment of professional performance during on-the-job learning is not based on single observations, but on prolonged participation at the workplace culminating in judgement by a workplace…

"Career Pathways: From School to Retirement" brings together leading workforce researchers and practitioners to provide new perspectives on school-to-work and workplace career pathways. This groundbreaking book explains the transformations that have taken place in the workplace over the past several decades and how those transformations…