Search Results for
"Vocational education"

The contemporary transformations occurring within the socio-cultural framework of society necessitate demands for an innovative paradigm in higher education, prompting the evolution of fundamentally novel techniques and pedagogical strategies. These methods should be focused on developing students’ personalities, stimulating their creative activity, developing the ability to navigate the information environment, and forming universal skills for setting and solving problems in their professional and personal lives. Additionally, innovative approaches to organizing an educational approach are required from the point of view of the transition to an economy with a low level of environmental burden, which is known as a green economy. The research aims to determine the peculiarities of implementing green education and designing individual work of bachelor students. The authors applied methodological principles rooted in the research conducted by Russian and international experts in the domains of economics and pedagogy, along with guidance from international ecological organizations. The research object is the theoretical foundations and educational and methodological techniques for the use and functioning of individual work in the conditions of training green personnel. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2025.

Skill is ubiquitous in the English Further education (FE) sector’s policy discourse and discursive practices, yet it is used in different ways to mean different things within the sector. Within the context of a deregulated FE Initial Teacher education (ITE) system, the discourse is underpinned by a set of standards and guidance expected of providers, many of whom are, or work alongside, a Higher education Institution (HEI). This research sought to determine the role that those working in this system have in recontextualising skills policy discourse. Building on interdisciplinary perspectives of skill and using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this research explored the skills discourse of 10 Teacher Educators (TEds) working within the English FE ITE sector. The discursive practices of TEds were found to be bound up with generic higher education notions of ‘graduate skills’ and ‘graduate employability’. This complements a narrow and weak discursive frame which underpins the ITE curriculum, linked to atomised standards, whereby generic teaching practices are centred to the exclusion of strongly classified theoretical and subject specialist knowledge, contributing to a narrower skills discourse and marginalisation of subject specialisms. This work has implications for policy makers and those involved in curriculum development in FE ITE. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This study addresses the problem of knowledge practices in Chinese vocational higher education institutions (HEIs) by using Bernstein's notion of a ‘pedagogic device’. China's distinctive context is characterised by a hybrid mix of discipline-based and competence-based curricula, providing a unique opportunity to explore the tensions inherent in a ‘relational’ approach. One specific concern is epistemic and social relations behind curriculum choices. A qualitative study of 29 experienced teachers revealed that government curriculum policies have led to the emergence of two types of vocationally oriented HEIs with differentiated knowledge foundations, of which teachers’ perceptions are influenced by the structure of occupational practice and the profiles of specific learners. The findings revealed that teaching through ‘powerful knowledge’ in vocational higher education goes beyond merely emphasising systematic knowledge. Instead, it necessitates acknowledging the role of power in defining what knowledge should/should not be taught and who is permitted access to it. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Rocky school‐to‐work transition processes, characterized by spells of unemployment and education–job mismatch, can have long‐lasting scarring effects on young people and often lead to a loss of income and occupational status. However, the mechanisms that either foster or prevent unemployment scarring are underinvestigated. Our article thus asks whether vocational education and training (VET) diploma holders’ unemployment duration and the probability of status loss at labour market re‐entry are affected by the interplay between occupation‐specific labour demand and young workers’ skill sets acquired in VET. Our theoretical approach combines job search, human capital, and signalling theory with arguments from structural segmentation approaches. Our analyses use complete national register data on VET diploma holders who became unemployed during their early careers. We combine national register data on unemployment spells with register data on education trajectories in Switzerland and occupation‐specific labour demand data. Results from event‐history analyses indicate that unemployment episodes are associated with lower employment chances and higher risk of status loss of VET diploma holders. These general patterns are attenuated by occupation‐specific labour demand and the skills taught in vocational training programmes. Re‐employment chances are higher and the risk of status loss lower when occupation‐specific labour demand is high and few of the accessible job opportunities offer lower status than the job before unemployment. Additionally, we find that workers who trained in occupations imparting large proportions of occupation‐specific skills have a higher re‐employment probability but also face a higher risk of status loss than those who trained in occupations imparting larger proportions of general skills. Our findings indicate a trade‐off between occupation‐specific skills and general skills. © 2025 by the author(s).

Spatial mobility is key to facilitating successful transitions into vocational education and training (VET), especially for youths from disadvantaged regions. In line with the agency‐structure framework, the decision to become mobile is conceptualized as an adaptive strategy that young people employ to achieve their goals when faced with persistent challenges or regional barriers. This study investigates how youths applying for VET adapt their willingness to be spatially mobile over time. It examines the influence of occupational status aspirations and the regional opportunity structure on this decision‐making process. Using data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), multilevel growth curve models are estimated to analyze adaptations in the mobility radius of VET applicants over up to three years (N = 1,017). To assess the regional opportunity structure, small‐scale administrative geospatial data on the availability of youths’ aspired occupations are used as an individualized indicator of regional mismatch. The results show that VET applicants’ willingness to be mobile increases over time. High‐status aspirations are consistently associated with a greater willingness to be mobile, largely independent of search duration or regional mismatch. Conversely, VET applicants with lower status aspirations exhibit notable adaptations, adjusting their mobility radius, particularly in response to increasing search duration or regional mismatch. These findings highlight the complex interplay between individual aspirations and the regional opportunity structure in shaping adaptations in the willingness to become mobile of unsuccessful VET applicants. © 2025 by the author(s), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).

This study explores how students with learning difficulties (LD) in Finnish vocational education and training (VET) perceive and experience feedback. While Finnish VET traditionally emphasizes inclusivity, recent policy developments after the 2018 reform have shifted the focus towards competency-based education, with less explicit emphasis on inclusion. This study examines how feedback practices affect students with LD in this evolving educational landscape. Using a qualitative approach, data were collected from 49 students across four VET institutions through focus group discussions and individual interviews. Content analysis identified three key themes: (i) the effectiveness of various feedback approaches, (ii) perceptions and emotional responses of students, and (iii) suggestions for improvement. The findings revealed that individual face-to-face feedback was the most effective and preferred method for providing students with personalized and action-able guidance. Peer feedback was valued in practical tasks for its immediacy, although it lacked the depth of teacher feedback. Although convenient, virtual feedback is often delayed and less interactive, reducing effectiveness. The study concludes that timely, specific, and personalized feedback is essential for supporting students with LD and recommends that VET educators prioritize one-on-one feedback and enhance the structure of virtual feedback. These findings contribute to understanding inclusive feedback practices and provide recommendations for improving feedback in VET settings. © 2022 Authors.

This study examines how learning experiences shape the development of students’ creative competencies through the dual mediating roles of academic engagement and motivational factors. Focusing on students from the Department of Art and Design at a vocational and technical college in China, the study adopts purposive sampling to gather 287 valid responses. A structured questionnaire was designed encompassing four latent constructs: instructional quality, participation, drive to learn, and creative capacity. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to evaluate the model and test mediation effects. Results reveal no significant direct influence of instructional experiences on students' creative outcomes. However, indirect effects were observed via full mediation by academic engagement and partial mediation by motivation. The model explains 56.8% of the variance in the outcome variable (R²= 0.568) and achieves a strong model fit (GoF = 0.657). These findings emphasize the interplay between instructional design and internal psychological mechanisms, offering insights for pedagogical strategies and theory-building in creative education domains. © 2025 by author(s).