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"Article"

This article presents the findings of a phenomenographic study of career practitioners’ conceptions of career management skills (CMS) at Finnish universities of applied sciences (UAS). The results demonstrate that CMS were conceived as (1) irrelevant, (2) secondary, (3) noteworthy, (4) significant and (5) indispensable. This aligns with previous evidence that conceptions of CMS differ in multiple ways and vary in emphasis. By exploring the logical relationship between qualitatively different conceptions, the study provides a framework for understanding CMS acquisition at UAS, and clarifies the objectives and developmental needs of career guidance in higher education settings. © The Author(s) 2025.

This article presents a theoretical approach to examining professional knowledge practices on online platforms, employing the concept of epistemic objects and their incompleteness, and analysing how objects are actively produced and negotiated through interactions among users and the platform. We illustrate this approach by conducting an interaction analysis of two threads from Stack Overflow, a prominent online platform where millions of software developers ask and answer programming-related questions. The findings demonstrate that the incompleteness of epistemic objects is central to understanding how professionals collectively engage with and produce knowledge online. They also highlight the role of specific technical features of platforms and the embeddedness of objects–and, thereby, the platforms themselves–in the broader professional domain. The article discusses the potential of the theoretical approach for investigating online platforms as sites for professional learning and calls for educational programs and platform designs that support professionals’ engagements with epistemic objects. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Individual entrepreneurial orientation (Ind.EO) provides a promising framework for scholars and practitioners to examine how individuals with entrepreneurial tendencies create new businesses or transform existing ones through modifications in business practices, whether individually, in teams, or in managerial positions. This paper aims to systematically review and synthesize the existing literature on Ind.EO, identify key research gaps, and outline potential directions for future studies. By analyzing 210 articles from top-tier journals (Q1 and Q2) in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, this review categorizes the research according to six domains: construct development, performance and outcomes, entrepreneurial process, institutional and social contexts, personal-level variables, and entrepreneurial education and learning. We contribute by identifying key research domains within the Ind.EO literature and offering a unique categorization. Additionally, we develop a research agenda that includes insights from our review, integration into a well-established framework, and validation of the proposed research questions through scholars’ feedback. © 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article explores the implementation and sustainability of innovative educational practices in a joint collaborative research project involving Estonia and Lithuania. Four interventions following the Educational Learning Lab approach were designed to counteract drop-out from vocational education and training for young people at risk of social exclusion. The study investigates the conditions for vocational teachers' knowledge appropriation leading to sustainable innovation in the empowerment of vulnerable students. Through applying the Knowledge Appropriation Model to the design of intervention cases, data collection and analyses, the article discusses how knowledge maturation, scaffolding, and appropriation practices emerged during the Educational Learning Labs. © © 2025 Väljataga, Ümarik, Loogma, Bentsalo, Daukilas, Kaminskiene, Vaitkute, Gedviliene and Tutlys.

In this article, we examine how students’ practice in the subject vocational specialisation is assessed, with a particular focus on the cooperation between teachers and supervisors. The subject was introduced in 2006 to give students in vocational programmes the opportunity for vocational specialisation already during the school-based part of their education, and to provide them with a good basis for choosing a trade for apprenticeship. Particularly in the second year of vocational education and training (VET), vocational specialisation is mainly carried out in working life, and the regulations state that assessment in the subject must be based on cooperation between teacher and supervisor in the company. The study was conducted in the sales and tourism field and is based on qualitative interviews with both vocational teachers and supervisors. Our analysis indicates that teachers’ presence at the workplace and supervisors’ assessment skills are of particular importance for the cooperation between schools and working life on the assessment of students’ practice. We conclude that there is potential to further develop cooperation between school and working life on assessment in vocational specialisation and discusses possible measures and suggestions for further research. ©2025 Ida Kristine Larsen & Evi Schmid.

Online instructional videos have been presented as an efficient instructional method in workplace learning and vocational education and training (VET). Increasingly, public video-sharing sites like YouTube are used by firms, educators and learners to teach and learn about work practices, new work roles and skills. However, more knowledge is needed about what instructional videos exist and how they facilitate vocational learning. This article draws from online video research to explore vocational learning on YouTube for interactive service work. Focusing on connected service encounters in which transactions and customer service are intertwined through interaction with digital technologies, cashier work was used as the empirical case. With concepts from narrative and multimodal analysis, the theory of practice architectures was the framework for analysing 160 YouTube videos for cashier work. The article proposes a taxonomy of online instructional video types for VET and workplace learning comprising nine video types divided into two main categories: professional instructional videos and peer instructional videos (vlogs). It is found that transactions and customer service are instructed separately. Consequently, YouTube videos do not yet prepare learners for connected service encounters. Overall, the taxonomy can contribute to a more purposeful use of video in VET and workplace learning. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The higher participation of England’s ethnic minority students on vocational courses at the age of 16 initiates them onto the ‘lower tier’ pathway in tertiary education. Lower tier implies participating in certain vocational courses and entering lower status universities. Consequently, ethnic minority students in England have a weaker labour market position upon graduation. Using semi-structured interviews, this article explores the decision-making process of 12 British Pakistani students, as they are initiated on this lower tier pathway. The findings suggest that decision-making is a negotiation of student biography with ethnic capital and ‘racial warehousing’. This interplay funnels many ethnic minority students towards the lower tier pathway, where selecting certain vocational courses is deemed as the only pathway feasible for progression. This study sheds light on the need to promote alternative vocational pathways to England’s ethnic minority students. © 2023 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

There is considerable international interest in transitions from school to work. This article approaches the issue as part of the debate around ‘vocational maturity’ (Ausbildungsreife) in Germany and ‘employability’ in the United Kingdom. Vocational education and training systems in these two countries differ significantly, so the article takes a historical approach to analysing and comparing the discourse used, focusing primarily on which training policy actors make which arguments about Ausbildungsreife or employability under which social, economic and training conditions. Specifically, it uses trade union, employer association and government documents from the period 1977 to 2018, evaluating them using the heuristic tools of interpretative models to create an understanding of Ausbildungsreife and employability, phenomenological structure and narrative structure. The findings demonstrate differences over time in the way individual actors structure their arguments and major divergences between the discourse in the two countries. © 2023 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

This article examines how vocational school principals in Israel view their relationships with their students' parents. Interviews with 26 vocational school principals reveal three predominant themes: lamenting the parents' lack of involvement, describing the parents through the deficit discourse, and adopting a managerial strategy of operating a ‘school without parents.’ This approach to parents carries implications, such as implementing many improvisations in light of the lack of a recognized cultural script of a ‘school without parents’, making educational and therapeutic decisions in place of the parents, taking the role of surrogate parent, and preferring caring practices over the cultivation of the students' academic capital. The Discussion explores these findings through the concept of symbolic violence. Moreover, the Discussion examines the impacts of the principals' descriptions and the symbolic violence accompanying them on establishing and maintaining social inequality and educational stratification. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Germany’s VET system is highly gender-segregated and marked by high dropout rates. This article investigates the dropout behaviour of apprentices in gender-atypical training occupations. First, we investigate whether gender-atypical apprentices drop out at a higher rate than their majority peers. Second, we examine differences in the self-reported reasons for dropping out among gender-typical and gender-atypical apprentices. Results show that gender-atypical apprentices, and particularly males in female-dominated occupations, are more likely to prematurely leave their apprenticeship. The self-reported reasons for dropping out differed by gender minority status: female minorities were more likely to drop out due to a lack of social integration, while male minorities were more likely to drop out due to unfulfilled aspirations in comparison to the gender majority. These results show that gender-specific perceptions and experiences are related to the higher dropout rates of gender-atypical apprentices. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.