Journal of Philosophy of Education

Contemporary work confronts researchers and educators with a range of challenges, including those posed by complex environments in which workers grapple with uncertainty in high-stakes situations. A different challenge lies in the assumptions brought to learning design and facilitation, assumptions …

This paper introduces this Special Issue celebrating the writing and professional work of Paul Hirst. The international range of contributors include scholars who knew him and his work in his heyday, as well as younger generations of philosophers of education. In this Introduction the editors, in co…

This introduction familiarises the readers of this Special Issue with some important information and arguments that set the life and work of Georg Kerschensteiner, Eduard Spranger and Aloys Fischer in context. In addition, it shows their relevance to current debates and policies in vocational educat…

Georg Kerschensteiner is often called the ‘father of the vocational school’ in Germany. Working in the context of the German Empire in the 19th century, his historical achievement was to design a concept of vocational education that dissolved the opposition between general education and vocational e…

This paper aims to reflect Fischer's ideas on vocational orientation and vocational choice as fundamental prerequisites for vocational education in the current German system of vocational guidance in general and vocational education schools. A special focus is placed on Fischer's view on the relevan…

A tension has been identified between the acquisition and participation metaphors for learning, and it is generally agreed that this tension has still not been adequately resolved. In this paper, we offer an alternative to the acquisition and participation metaphors for learning: the metaphor of mas…

The current crisis in British VET (Vocational Education and Training) is explained in terms of the decline of opportunities beyond preparation for university for young people after school. The continuing large numbers of 'NEETS' (those not in employment, education or training) is but one aspect of t…

The current emphasis that organisations are placing upon knowledge and the corresponding attention that workplace epistemological values are receiving within the educational community has resulted in an interesting convergence of discourses - school-based and work-based. Even as work-places are tend…

This paper1 notes the apparent ineffectiveness of the critical response to competence-based education and training (CBET) and suggests that this results from a failure to correctly isolate CBET's unique, identifying features. It is argued that the prevailing tendency to identify CBET with 'competenc…

Since the establishment of the National Council for Vocational Qualfications (NCVQ) in 1986, the influence of the competence‐based approach, which underpins National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), has spread beyond its original remit and now extends into schools and higher education. Competence s…