This book addresses a critically important question regarding human capital learning in our present neo-liberal schooling context: How can contemporary career education programs be integrated into public school curricula without impacting negatively on the liberal learning, intellectual autonomy, and democratic citizenship of students? Using Aristotelian and Deweyan approaches to career education, this new work argues for a new approach to vocational education that is both liberal and democratic in nature.
A collection of the theories, practices, and policies of vocational education and training written by international experts The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training offers an in-depth guide to the theories, practices, and policies of vocational education and training (VET). With contributions from a panel of leading international scholars, the Handbook contains 27 authoritative essays from a wide range of disciplines. The contributors present an integrated analysis of the complex and dynamic field of VET. Drawing on the most recent research, thinking, and practice in the field, the book explores the key debates about the role of VET in the education and training systems of various nations. The Handbook reveals how expertise is developed in an age of considerable transformation in work processes, work organization, and occupational identities. The authors also examine many of the challenges of vocational education and training such as the impact of digital technologies on employment, the demand for (re)training in the context of extended working lives, the emergence of learning regions and skill ecosystems, and the professional development of vocational teachers and trainers. This important text: Offers an original view of VET’s role in both the initial and continuing development of expertise Examines the theories and concepts that underpin international perspectives and explores the differences about the purposes of VET Presents various models of learning used in VET, including apprenticeship, and their relationship with general education Explores how VET is shaped in different ways by the political economy of different countries Reviews how developments in digital technologies are changing VET practice Discusses the challenges for universities offering higher vocational education programs Draws on both recent research as well as historical accounts Written for students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of educational studies, human resource development, social policy, political economy, labor market economics, industrial relations, sociology, The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training offers an international perspective on the topic of VET.
Published in 1999. Lifelong learning is the slogan with which the Labour Government has chosen to publicise and popularise its values and policies for post-16 education and training under the new administration. Dr. Hyland’s book subjects New Labour policy - particularly developments surrounding the University for Industry and the New Deal - to searching scrutiny and offers a number of recommendations designed to upgrade vocational education and training (VET). If we are to create a high status and high quality VET system comparable to those of our European competitors we will need, Dr. Hyland argues, to move towards a unified curriculum in the post-school sector bringing with it the abolition of the present three-track model of NVQs, GNVQs and GCSEs/A Levels. More significantly it is argued that all vocational learning - both work-based and college-based - needs to be underpinned by a common core of knowledge and understanding and crucially, be located within a values framework which gives due attention to social justice and community interests rather than simplistic and utilitarian economistic objectives and employability skills. Moreover, the aesthetic and moral dimensions of vocational studies are not optional extras but areas of vocational learning experience which are essential and foundational if vocational education and training is to be enhanced in order to satisfy current lifelong learning criteria. Dr. Hyland’s challenging account provides one of the first comprehensive philosophical and policy critiques of New Labour VET developments and will be of interest to those committed to high quality vocational studies on all sides of education and industry as well as to lecturers, tutors, trainers and students working in post-compulsory education and training.
Preparing learners for the labour market and shaping them as active democratic citizens by integrating the RFCDC into vocational education and training The Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) sets out 20 competences that learners need to develop to live and participate as active citizens in democratic societies. The competences are organised into values, attitudes, skills and knowledge and critical understanding. Vocational education and training (VET) is crucial to the economic development and growth of modern nations because it develops the skilled workforce that is needed to maintain the efficiency and competitiveness of public and private enterprises. However, VET is not exclusively about preparing learners for the labour market. At an education level, VET also prepares learners for life to act as democratic citizens. This publication explores how the RFCDC can be used in VET and offers suggestions for implementing the RFCDC in an integrated approach.
This book examines contemporary changes in labor market institutions in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, focusing on developments in three arenas - industrial relations, vocational education and training, and labor market policy. While confirming a broad, shared liberalizing trend, it finds that there are in fact distinct varieties of liberalization associated with very different distributive outcomes. Most scholarship equates liberal capitalism with inequality and coordinated capitalism with higher levels of social solidarity. However, this study explains why the institutions of coordinated capitalism and egalitarian capitalism coincided and complemented one another in the "Golden Era" of postwar development in the 1950s and 1960s, and why they no longer do so. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study reveals that the successful defense of the institutions traditionally associated with coordinated capitalism has often been a recipe for increased inequality due to declining coverage and dualization. Conversely, it argues that some forms of labor market liberalization are perfectly compatible with continued high levels of social solidarity and indeed may be necessary to sustain it.
