Conference Agenda

The opening session will welcome all the participants to VETNET and ECER 2023 in Glasgow. The Opening Session of VETNET is planned to be on VET in Scotland, with keynote speakers from work-related associations and the world of work.

This session continues a long-standing tradition of inviting local people and organisations to present and speak on important VET issues.

You will get updated information shortly before the conference.

This is against the background of VETNET as a network of researchers interested in exploring different aspects of VET-related research and practice, including initial VET, continuing vocational education and training, school-based and workplace-based learning provisions. VETNET members are committed to stimulating and fostering VET and lifelong learning debates, aiming to consider fresh perspectives and critical discussion of emerging issues, thus contributing to multidisciplinary research and implications for policy and practice both in Europe and worldwide. This session will offer a valuable opportunity to connect with researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. As a research community, VETNET aims to sustain and develop active interaction and communication within the network’s research community, and beyond.

As education in general and VET systems in particular are influenced by and responsive to external drivers as well as policy or ideological considerations, assessment practices are also influenced by various factors and trends, such as social, demographic, economic, environmental, and technological trends and developments. Assessment is in particular influenced by changes related to educational principles and practices. Some factors that potentially shape the evolution of assessment in VET include, for example, the broadening of the skills and competence base of VET with a strengthened emphasis on general subjects and an increased focus on transversal skills and competences as well as changes in the organisation and delivery of VET (such as an increased focus on work-based learning). Also the growing emphasis on accountability can influence how assessment is organised and shaped. Additional contributing factors include the vast technological developments and digitalisation as well as the upskilling and reskilling needs of adults that are gradually driving authorities and providers to open up to new groups of learners.
Examining assessment approaches in VET in different countries and how they have developed over time can provide important insights into how learners’ competences and achievement of intended learning outcomes are determined, how evidence on an individual’s progress and achievement of learning goals is collected and judged and for what purposes the results are used.

The key research question underpinning this paper therefore is as follows: Which are the prevalent assessment forms applied in initial VET in Europe, how have these evolved during the past 25 years and what future trends can be identified?

This research applies an analytical framework that builds on Cedefop's (2020) ‘Three Perspectives Model for VET’, which comprises an epistemological and pedagogical perspective, an education system perspective and a socioeconomic perspective. This model includes diachronic (referring to changes over history within a country) and synchronic (comparisons between countries) analyses of VET systems and the development of corresponding patterns or profiles based on the interplay of characteristics.

While the original model includes assessment as one of the features of the epistemological and pedagogical perspective, a more detailed analysis of assessment approaches and their evolvement requires further differentiation of this dimension. This paper therefore ‘zooms in on assessment’ and identifies the following key areas to be explored for gaining insights into the changes in assessment: (a) main purposes and functions of assessment, (b) scope, focus and content of assessment, (c) reference points and criteria for assessments, (d) methods, tools and context of assessment and stakeholders involved, (e) alignment between intended learning outcomes, delivery of programmes and assessment criteria, (f) key technical characteristics ensuring quality of assessment.

One of the earliest practical attempts in Germany towards the recognition of informally acquired competences was a sector specific one in the metal and electrical industry of the German state Baden Württemberg. Although the relevance of the formal VET system in Germany has often been highlighted there is a remarkable number of employees who do not have a formal qualification and cannot prove their competences (in Baden-Württemberg 13.65 % of all employees in 2020).

It is a generally shared assumption that many competences - and especially work-relevant competences - are acquired through learning in the process of work (Boreham et al. 2002, Fischer et al. 2004). However, informally, non-formally and formally acquired competences are difficult to distinguish from each other. The same competence, e.g. mastery of a certain machine, may have been acquired informally (e.g. by "copying" from colleagues), non-formally (e.g. in a course) or formally (e.g. in initial vocational training). And competences are also acquired informally in formal settings, e.g. teamwork skills when learning in groups, or foreign language skills in specialised training. Formal/informal/non-formal learning are therefore – in contrast to many definitions (CEDEFOP 2009, OECD 2006, BMBF not discrete categories that can be completely separated from each other, but attributes that have been assigned to learning by the state and society (Colley et al. 2003). It follows from this: If one wants to record informally acquired competences, one cannot exclude anything from the spectrum of relevant competences from the outset.

The task of recording competences of employees in the metal and electrical industry was posed in several projects funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg and supported by the social partners. Against this background, an online tool was to be developed and then made available to any person interested in taking stock of their competences. Under such a premise, it quickly became apparent in an empirical study involving ten companies that employees in the metal and electrical industry have little use for the competence designations discussed in vocational education (Fischer et al. 2014) - at least as a means of self-assessment.

What people can give more information about are the tasks they perform or have performed and mastered in gainful employment. However, one encounters the fact that these tasks are described differently from person to person: What for one person means "maintaining machines and equipment" is for another "repair” and for a third "keeping the machines running". Therefore, task descriptions as a structure for classification and a framework for self-reflection must be presented in a generally understandable form so that people can express themselves in terms of "I can" or "I can't" and so that these statements can then be compared. This is done through so-called task inventories (Frieling et al. 2000), whereby work tasks in a professional field of activity are described and presented in a structured form. In the presentation it will be described how such task inventories were developed and transposed into an online tool, which is now freely available and translated into five languages. Advantages and disadvantages of using such a tool for the recognition of prior learning will be discussed in a final conclusion.

The renewal of the Norwegian curricula in 2020, named Knowledge Promotion 2020, aims to strengthen relevance in school subjects and with specific priorities and consequently “prepare the students for the future” (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). The Overall part of the curricula presents overarching aims related to student agency and highlights especially students` in-depth learning, critical thinking, and learning strategies, as a foundation for life-long learning (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). Similar skills, such as cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, critical and creative thinking, learning-to-learn and self-regulation, are presented in the OCED Learning Framework 2030 (2018) and the Conceptual Learning Framework (OECD, 2019), reflected in the Norwegian curricula. Reflection on learning, learn to formulate questions, seek answers, and express their understanding will lay ground for student agency and learning strategies (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). The overarching aims, values ​​and principles formulated in the Overall part of the curricula comprise primary school and upper secondary education, including vocational education and training (VET). VET in Norway is part of the formal upper secondary education system (age 16-19). In the main model, VET is organised as two years in school (including practice placement periods) and two years in apprenticeship, also denounced as the 2+2 model.

Along with the educational policies and aims for future education in many countries, inspired by OECD, there is an extensive body of research in self-regulation (SR) and learning strategies. Self-regulation, as a trait related to motivation and assessment for learning (Smith et al., 2016), is related to how the learner sets goals and learn to monitor, regulate, and control cognition, motivation, and behavior to reach their goals (Andrade, 2010; Smith et al., 2016). Zimmerman (2000) emphasise feedback from the self (self-assessment) and significant others as important for the development of SR skills, and an elaboration of the interplay and dialogue between self-regulation and feedback is also found in Hattie and Timperley’s` work (2007). In their feedback model, student’s agency and SR will be stimulated and supported by dialogues related to learning goals and specific and timely feedback during the learning process, including information about the next step. Feedback thus can be defined as information provided to the learner about performance and aiming to promote further learning (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Shute, 2008). Such feedback functions formative if the student can use the feedback (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Wiliam, 2011).

Formative feedback is included in the assessment regulations since 2006 and have been implemented at all levels in the school system. In the renewal of the curricula 2020, student agency in assessment is emphasized and related to self-regulation and learning strategies.

However, the concepts of SR and formative feedback are not to a substantial extent contextualized in VET (Panadero, 2017; Panadero et al., 2018). In the Norwegian VET, interpretation and implementation of the overarching aims in the curricula and assessment regulations in upper secondary school is often dominated by the traditions and methods in the general study subjects, including assessment practices (Sandal, 2021). The study this paper report from therefore was established, aiming to investigate how VET student develop of SR through formative assessment. Research question: How do VET students perceive and experience formative feedback as promoting self-regulation skills? An underlying premise for the study is formative feedback as an approach to and potential for stimulating SR skills.

Educating about democracy is a theme in the European and especially the Nordic educational system (Husfeldt & Nikolova, 2003; Hjort, 2013; Løvlie, 2015; Apple et al., 2022). This point implies thoughts of representative democracy at the organisational level and the didactical approach (Solhaug, 2008). Therefore, the idea of progressive pedagogy has impacted the discussions and development in the Danish educational system since the Second World War (Korsgaard, 2009; Freire, 2014). At the general upper education, the Danish gymnasium, democracy has a long history (Raae, 2009), while it is relatively new as a formal approach in the law for Danish VET. At VET, democracy has been mentioned since 2000, and the current law states that VET: ”contributes to developing the participants´ interest in and ability to participate in a democratic society actively” (Ministry of children and education, 2021). Research on democracy in Denmark often pays attention to how youth are socialised to participate in representative democracy, while other Nordic countries have a more developed tradition for research on democracy in the classroom. Some subjects, such as social science, teach about representative democracy (Christensen, 2015), while all subjects can develop students’ democratic experiences by participating in dialogues and decision-making in the classroom and, e.g. processes in group work (Børhaug, 2008; Emslie, 2009). The classroom diversity of subjects and the diversity of students - which is extensive in Danish VET - must be considered (Rönnlund et al., 2019; Nylund et al., 2020).

This paper aims to contribute to students’ experiences in democracy to encourage participation in society. Since Danish VETs offer more than 100 different courses, this paper focuses on social and health care. The research question is: how is the participants’ interest in and ability to participate in a democratic society understood and implemented in the VET colleges, workplaces and classrooms?

The Danish VETs are organised as a dual training system. This structure gives students the opportunities for experiences, enquires and reflections supporting the choice of new actions at school and work. Since school and the workplace do not always agree on solutions and discussions, the students experience the possibilities for learning through disagreement. This context creates opportunities that can be addressed in the classroom, e.g. in group work (Iversen, 2016; Collins et al., 2019).

Dewey inspires the theoretical approach in the paper. He stresses the importance of the interaction between school and the surrounding world. In his book Democracy and Education (2005) [1916], he writes that democracy is not only a way of ruling but a way of living. Understanding the effect on action contributes to reducing race and class division. However, for Dewey, education must educate human beings, not only citizens. He states that taking part in a profession creates the potential for the student to give societal benefit and achieves happiness. However, a school must not only educate the profession but also contribute to perspectives on history and how work is done. Education has to develop the students to find new perspectives on work and actions.

Dewey’s theory gives a framework for analysing organisational and didactical challenges in VET but the theory also suggest how democracy can be developed by reflection on action (Skov & Duch, 2023). Furthermore, the theory can initiate discussions about the current policy and debate of the role of VET. VET is often addressed in relation to low recruitment, high dropout rates and the lack of employees e.g. in the health care sector. However, VET also have a role in inclusion of diverse students to maintain and develop a democratic society.

Rosvall and Nylund (2022) summarise an apparent consensus among researchers that democracy learning might more easily be addressed in school settings than in workplaces, ‘since hierarchies that might be discussed or questioned are embedded in workplace settings. Thus, workplaces may be less safe spaces for learning democracy…’. Yet from a psychologistic perspective, Schnitzler (2017) showed that in German regulated company transmission in the dual system (DS), learners acquire political skills. This presentation follows Rosvall’s and Nylund’s reference to Basil Bernstein’s conceptual language to investigate the DS’s social-structural conditions that make the acquisition of political skills or learning for and through democratic participation possible.

Drawing on Bernstein’s (2000) notion of ‘pedagogic culture’, the presentation uses a theoretical framework developed by Hoadley and Galant (2017) (henceforth: H+G) to analyse the power (and control) relations within the DS with the company as primary transmission site. Hoadley and Galant explain that Bernstein conceived of pedagogic culture as a container. Besides two other dimensions, economy and bias, which are not considered here, the shape and stability of the container are relevant for what it contains, what is being transmitted. Stability, H+G point out, is about forms of control, which are analysable as Bernstein’s framing relations. Prior research (Höhns 2018, 2022) showed that in Germany’s DS, against expectations, learners (trainees/apprentices) can and do take control over the framing relations, including also the hierarchical relation to their trainers. These findings corroborate Schnitzler’s excavation of ‘political skills’: When learners choose whom to learn from and what to learn, they have to practise political skills, in order to do so in a contextually adequate way. Shape ‘refers to the social division of labour in the school (or other educational institution, such as the DS; addition GH), the academic identity of the institution and its learners, and the basis of authority’ (H+G, p. 1189). To explain the concept ‘division of labour’, H+G refer to Ingersoll (1995), who states that the division of labour is fundamentally about power and implies a hierarchical relationship. For the possibilities of democracy learning and the acquisition of political skills, the division of labour and the basis of authority of the transmitters in the company, the primary transmission site, are key. Therefore, this presentation approaches the question: How did DS graduates experience the shape of pedagogic culture in the DS, in particular the division of labour, and on what basis did they ascribe authority to their company trainers?

Current societal challenges such as the war in Europe, the pandemic and global warming highlight the importance of all students – regardless of age and choice of study – being prepared for their roles as democratic citizens by being given opportunities to develop their citizenship knowledge. In this context, critical literacy as a means to counteract fake news and conspiracy theories is an essential prerequisite for democracy (Barzilai & Chinn 2020; Osborne et al. 2022). In this newly started project, we focus on citizenship education for vocational education and training (VET) students in upper secondary education. In Sweden, VET students have been identified as less likely to participate in democratic processes in society. Our definition of citizenship education builds on Bernstein’s (2000, xx-xxi) Pedagogic rights, i.e., i) individual enhancement (confidence for critical understanding), ii) social inclusion, and iii) participation, which includes the ability to take part and act in democratic processes. The concept of ‘citizen’ is understood here as being situated and dependent on which other identities – such as gender and sexuality, age, social class and functional ability – are attributed to individuals and groups (see Yuval-Davis 2008). This is significant in the study, as the VET programmes to a large extent are gender-differentiated contexts. Arnot (2009) shows in her analyses of citizenship, education and gender how discourses about citizens often become gendered because different knowledge and abilities are associated with identities.

As upper secondary vocational education is organized very differently in different national contexts (Kap 2015) also within Europe and the Nordic countries (Jørgensen et al. 2018) it is difficult to make international comparisons of vocational students’ citizenship education. Generally, VET students devote only a small proportion to citizenship education (Nylund et al. 2017). VET programmes include compulsory short courses in History, Social studies, Religion and Science studies and citizenship formation is a clearly stated motive behind the inclusion of these four subjects in the VET curriculum (Ledman 2014). We refer to these subjects as citizenship oriented. Studies have shown that VET programmes are often characterised by socialisation into workplace and industry cultures, and that knowledge content is contextualised in accordance with prevailing conditions, rather than being aimed at promoting critical thinking and questions about how things could be different (Nylund et al. 2020; Rönnlund et al. 2019). Research on vocational students' citizenship formation has been done in vocational subject-teaching contexts (Rosvall et al. 2020) and in the citizenship-oriented subjects separately (e.g., Ledman 2015, Nordby 2019, Kittelmann Flensner 2015; Sigauke, 2013). However, there is a lack of knowledge about the conditions these four subjects together create for vocational students' citizenship formation and how the students themselves perceive the development of their citizen identities.

The aim is to shed light on the vocational students' citizenship formation process during their three-year education, in relation to the content made available to them through the citizenship-oriented subjects. i) How do the students perceive the content and teaching approaches of the citizenship-oriented subjects and how do these subjects promote critical thinking and social inclusion, and prepare them to act as citizens? ii) What opportunities for citizenship formation - in the form of pedagogical rights and social positions - do teachers of History, Science Studies, Social Studies and Religion create for vocational students in their teaching? iii) What overall conclusions can be drawn about the vocational students' citizenship formation process with regard to a) differences between the various VET programmes, and b) about how citizen identities are formed in relation to social positions (gender, class, ethnicity) and professional identities?

Apprentices, as working and learning actors, are an integral part, or rather the main protagonists, of the Swiss dual VET system (Wettstein 1987, p. 8; see also Freidorfer 2020). Despite their important key role, relatively little is known about them and apprentices have only been marginally addressed as a research object in historical VET research (see: Berner 2019, Bonoli 2017 or Wettstein 2020). In this respect, they represent a "neglected category" (Berner 2019, p. 311).

This drove me to learn more about apprentices and the development of their social representation as part of my already completed doctoral dissertation.

How were apprentices in the cantons of German-speaking Switzerland thematized and perceived by the public? How were they judged by people involved in vocational education and what publicly or socially constructed external representations of apprentices can be derived from this?

The concern of the paper is to identify and analyze constant or changing accumulations or bundles of opinions (continuities and change) of propositional events (discourses) and to derive from them single, different apprenticeship images that constitute the core of the present paper. The focus is on the years from 1950 to 1970, the most important years for the development of Swiss vocational education and training (e.g. first revision of the Vocational Training Act, expansion of education, strong promotion of young people and rapid economic development) (Becker & Zangger 2013; Gonon & Freidorfer 2022; Rieger 2001).

By means of historical discourse analysis, about 600 articles in the opinion and daily press as well as in the trade and trade union press in which apprentices were the subject of discussion were analyzed, as well as complementary apprenticeship studies and advice literature on apprentices.

On the one hand, different theoretical concepts of the public sphere serve as a theoretical background. These include the deliberative public sphere (Habermas 1990, 1992), ideas about the media public sphere (Strohmeier 2004), since this article focuses on the print medium newspaper, as well as ideas about the public sphere in vocational training (Sloane 2016), which are only available in marginal numbers. It should also be emphasized that vocational education does not seem to have its own theory of the public sphere. Broken down to the present paper, this means that the public sphere emerges through the communication, the need to communicate, of those persons who participate in VET-related or apprenticeship-related questions, debates, or in a "public" discourse of VET and, more concretely, about apprentices. In addition to the various theories of the public sphere, the historical discourse analysis not only serves as an analytical tool, but also as a theoretical foundation. The focus is on the primary concern of being able to understand history. The following questions seem to be guiding - How can we know something? How do we succeed in gaining certainty about our own reality and in putting our own reality to the test?

The aim of this paper is to describe the central findings of the research project and to show to what extent the transformation of the apprentice from a conformist apprentice to a protesting apprentice, who stands in the light of publicity and is no longer perceived only as working, but above all as learning, could take place. Finally, I argue that in the digital age of the 21st century, an autonomous apprentice image will become increasingly important.

This is a question that seems to be of utmost relevance not only for Switzerland but for all vocational education systems in Europe and beyond. Who are the apprentices? How do we perceive them? And where are they currently heading?

The present study focuses on second language users in the language learning environment of an English-medium content and language integrated learning (CLIL) workshop at an auto mechanics class in a Swedish upper secondary school. Data are drawn from video-ethnographic work during two years in a Vehicle engineering program taught in and through a foreign language; English.

The settings of Swedish schools of auto mechanics have recently been defined in various studies as a very rich soil for researchers to dig deeper into issues of language, learning and the productions of identities due to very rapid changes undergone by the program in the last decade (cf. Kontio, 2016; Nehls, 2003; Rosvall, 2011). Traditionally the students of auto mechanics in Sweden have leaned heavily on very normative masculine understandings of what learning in school in general is and specifically manifested in a disinterest in second language learning (Beach et. al., 1999).

The analyses here concern how and in what ways a certain second language lexical is transformed from teacher-impelled learnables, into the contextualization and visualization of the concept, and finally as actual professional practice, and how this can be seen to play an important role in building an English-speaking classroom community of becoming professionals of bilingual auto mechanics.

A linguistic ethnographic approach (Rampton, 2007) is taken in order to explore how teachers’ and students’ second language teaching and learning activities are organized. It is found that teachers introduce the lexical item first as a learnable, then how it can be used to engage in complex understanding, and finally how to implement the item in actual practice. It is here argued that engaging in these lexical learning trajectories should be seen as conditional for language learning and peer group participation at the English medium instruction Vehicle program.

The study also demonstrates that second language learning in vocational CLIL classrooms is orderly, it is related to the progression of learning trajectories, often made explicit by humorous interaction.

The abstract concerns a current research project about students’ creation and perception of meaningfulness in different learning environments in vocational education and training (VET). In a pilot study conducted in 2022-2023 we combined a literature review about meaningfulness in VET with a minor qualitative empirical study including focus group interviews with students in four VET programmes.

The results from the literature review shows that the concept of meaningful is frequently used in VET research. However, the concept is not defined and seems to be perceived as an automatic consequence of specific activities in VET. Thus, meaningfulness is related to training and learning in authentic environments (Nordby, Knain & Jónsdóttir, 2017; (Andersen, Benthien, Hersom, Hjermov & Pedersen, 2022). Authentic environments can be established through digital simulation (Brito, Almeida & Osório, 2021) e.g., in ‘third learning environments’ (author, 2022a) Meaningfulness is related to the students’ goal orientation (Author, 2022b; Hacıeminoğlu, 2021; Schmid, Jørstad & Nordlie, 2021). Meaningfulness has also been shown to be related to negotaing how to solve practical task (Asplund, Kilbrink & Asghari, 2021) and to teachers’ feedback on students’ work (Johannsson, Wärvik & Choy, 2019).

Inspired by Ausubel’s concept of ‘meaningful learning’ (Ausubel, 1968), Jonasson et al have found that meaningfulness is strengthened through students’ active reflection as part of the learning process (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). Howland, Jonassen, & Marra propose five dimensions of meaningful learning: the students should collaborate, be active, relate learning to the real world, relate previous learning to current learning, and formulate own learning goals (Howland, Jonassen, & Marra, 2012).

The empirical qualitative study of the pilot study showed that the students related meaningfulness to close interrelation between theory and practice, to social interactions with fellow students or with colleagues in the work-based training, and to committed teachers.

Based on the results from the pilot project, the main project (April 1-December 31, 2023) will focus on defining and operationalising meaningfulness and on studying meaningfulness in relation to authentic learning environments and situations of social interaction among students.

Third learning environments have become increasingly important due to lack of real apprenticeships, to a limited scope of tasks and consequently training opportunities in real workplaces, and to the expenses related to making mistakes in real apprentices. Assuming that a third learning environment combining simulating authentic tasks with reflection will enhance students’ opportunities for creating meaningfulness, the main project will mainly focus on third learning environments. Third learning environments can be situated in school workplace contexts, serving as a supplement to training in real workplaces.

The main project concerns the following research questions:

1. What does meaningfulness mean to VET students?
2. How do the students create meaningfulness in VET?
3. Concerning creation of meaning, how do third learning environments distinguish themselves from the learning environment in school-based respectively workplace-based part of VET?
4. How can meaningfulness be strengthened in third learning environments?

Numerous studies have underscored the complexity of the role of school principals (Hitt & Tucker, 2016). The school principal's function has been analyzed in the context of diverse organizational, educational, and cultural domains, and their impact on multiple variables concerning students, teachers, and school effectiveness has been explored (Nettles & Herrington, 2007). However, very few studies have examined the unique characteristics of vocational school management (Foley, 2011; Gessler & Ashmawy, 2016; Park, 2012). Even fewer studies have examined how vocational school principals view their role (see, for example, Foley, 2011).

This research lacuna should disturb us in light of the unique characteristics of vocational schools in different countries (Ozer & Perc, 2020). Vocational schools are viewed as an alternative for students with low academic abilities or “at-risk youth” (Down et al., 2019). It was also found that these schools primarily serve working-class students (Nylund et al., 2017), and they suffer from negative stigma and poor image (Vlaardingerbroek & Hachem El-Masri, 2008). In this context, this study examines three key questions: How do vocational school principals portray their role and work environment? How do vocational school principals portray the pedagogy of vocational education? Do these definitions and descriptions imply educational stratification and social inequality in vocational schools, and if so, how are they manifested?

Vocational School Management

Several studies have argued the critical role of the school's socio-cultural context in influencing the school principal's leadership style (Belchetz & Leithwood, 2007; Hallinger & Bryant, 2013). They noted that effective school leadership could be perceived differently in diverse cultures (Tan, 2018). Bennett and colleagues (2003) asserted, for example, that the effectiveness of a distributed leadership style is subject to the school culture: In one school, it will promote trust and partnership, whereas, in another, it may provoke opposition and mistrust.

The assertion that school leadership is context-dependent is the basis for the present investigation. Boateng (2012) argued that management in vocational education institutions differs from management in general education and should be addressed accordingly. Boateng (2012) asserted that vocational education provides students with practical knowledge, and society counts on these schools to prevent unemployment. Therefore, vocational school principals face multiple governmental demands and expectations on the one hand and labor market demands on the other.

Other studies have highlighted the singularity and importance of the vocational school principal because this educational stream is continually subject to changes and effects of the labor market and economy. Thus, the effective management style for this educational stream should be adaptive and responsive and create an educational environment that can adjust to government changes and reforms. It should also provide graduates capable of responding to the same changing job market (Wonacott, 1998).

However, only few studies have directly addressed the unique aspects of management and educational leadership in vocational schools. Several studies have examined how vocational school principals cope with policy reforms or demands to produce change and academic innovation. Foley (2011), for example, investigated how neoliberal reform has affected Australian principals' vocational identity and found them to have multiple identities that they constantly "juggle" when required to implement change in the field.

Notably, however, the research literature barely addresses the question of whether vocational school principals are characterized by a unique leadership style or by management considerations common to all school principals. A comparative study (de Jong et al., 2020) conducted in the Netherlands revealed that vocational school principals were inclined toward a leadership style that the authors termed Thire (theirs). These vocational school principals functioned more as facilitators than primary school principals or academic high schools.

The learning environment at vocational colleges influences the students' learning, their well-being and drop-out rates. Consequently, the learning environment is an important factor in the learning process. In a project about learning environment at vocational colleges, we analysed factors in the learning environment that have an impact on students’ wellbeing and completion of VET. Based on a review of international research on these factors, an empirical study was conducted about the factors, their interrelation, and the development of a positive and learning environment.

The factors concern the vocational part of the learning environment as well as the social learning environment. In the current leaning situations as well as in the literature referred, these factors interact. However, we have categorized the different studies in accordance with the main emphasis in the particular projects. In this project, we have not included conditions related to the physical side of the learning environment.

The world is facing an unprecedented change due to technological innovation, the globalization of products and trade, and demographic shifts that are significantly impacting the way of working and the characteristics required to work productively (International Labour Organization [ILO] 2019). In the face of such challenges, individuals need to develop additional, soft or transferable skills that can be applied to working regardless of the specific function occupied. In particular, the competences that refer to the emotional aspect of the individuals, namely emotional competences, may be particularly helpful in times of challenges and high uncertainty.

Emotional competences or skills may encompass several characteristics. Across the different theoretical frameworks, a primary role may be attributed to the following competences: emotional self-awareness or the ability to understand one’s own emotional reactions and their effects on thinking and behavior. Self-management (or self-control), which ensures better capacity to cope with uncertainty and the pressure of everyday life. Empathy and social awareness, which impact interpersonal relationships by creating more profound connections with others and an improved reciprocal understanding (Petrovici & Dobrescu, 2014). These competences have proved to be critical factors accounting for, among others, better social adjustment and higher employability (Nelis et al., 2011).

The development of emotional competences is particularly important for a population that faces frequent emotional ups and downs: that of adolescents. In particular, VET students and apprentices are experiencing a sensitive period of their life: the transition from adolescence to adulthood is condensed compared to other adolescents because they are required to become independent (financially and psychologically) earlier than students who pursue tertiary education (Masdonati et al. 2007). Hence, they are exposed to intense emotional reactions, such as those related to the fear of social exclusion, and to social environments (including peer pressure and job context) that may be perceived as stressful.

Emotional competences may foster resilience through the facilitation of stress regulation (Davis, 2018), by supporting better self-management and more effective interpersonal relationships. The benefits of interventions on emotional competences for students are numerous: better conflict management and emotion management, which may reduce youth violence and bullying (Brown et al., 2011) reduced dropout rate and stronger support in becoming more effective students, also from the point of view of social adaptation (Nathanson et al., 2016).

Emotional competences may also benefit another important actor in VET: professional schools’ teachers. The school environment is known to involve several stressors--such as classroom management, pressure from parents, responsibility for students’ learning—which account for high levels of burnout in this profession (Kinman et al., 2011). Several studies show that teachers’ well-being, resilience to stress, and effectiveness in class can be improved by training on emotional competences (e.g., Vignjević Korotaj & Mrnjaus, 2021).

In sum, interventions on emotional competences seem particularly suitable for supporting the development of key actors in VET, namely, students and teachers. While interventions and scientific contributions on emotional competences are flourishing in the educational contest, we observe few programs in Europe and a dearth of scientific contributions regarding emotional interventions in vocational education and training (VET).

With this contribution we aim to provide the state of the art on existing scientific publications about emotional training interventions in VET and a summary of existing programs at the European level. Ultimately our goal is to open a discussion around how emotional training may be regarded as a compelling domain of research for VET scholars and practitioners.

The ICT sector has been growing over the last decade and, since then, was resilient to crises (OECD, 2017), even during the Covid-19 pandemic (Bayer, Pauly und Wohlrabe, 2022). Due to digitalisation, almost all areas face a growing demand of ICT professionals, leading to a shortage of around 1.3 million, predicted until 2030 (World Economic Forum, 2020). This affects increasingly important areas of work, from software production and services (OECD 2017, p. 115) to encryption and cyber security (World Economic Forum 2020, p. 27). Companies are expected to adapt to new technologies and "re-structure their workforce” accordingly (ibid.). In summary, the so-called digital transformation not only affects core IT professions, but close to every industry.

Thus, meeting the demand becomes an overarching societal question. Given that "gender equality is essential for ensuring that men and women can contribute fully for the betterment of societies and economies at large" (OECD 2018, p. 5) there is still have a long way to go, considering that "men are four times more likely than women to be ICT specialists" (OECD 2018, p. 5). According to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), numbers of female ICT specialists in Europe are on the rise- from 17% in 2017 to 19.1% in 2020. With an improvement of 2.4% (from 16.6% to 19%) Germany shows a higher increase in the proportion of female ICT specialists, but overall remains below the European average.

The gap between male and female ICT professionals is significant all over Europe. Taking the capacity shortage of the sector into account it is obvious, that digitally skilled women are not only important for a sustainable society, but also for a thriving economy. The OECD (2018) states that digital technologies could be applied to raise awareness on "gender discrimination, […] dispel stereotypes […, or] to reinforce women’s curricula and participation in the labour market and develop women’s skills and abilities" (OECD 2018, p. 116). Referring to approaches of the social construction of gender, Kelly and Donnelly (2019) state that male dominancy in the ICT industry leads to a male cultural and systemic hegemony and a narrative which causes favourable and less favourable biases and outcomes (Kelly & Donnelly, 2019). These biases and outcomes influence the "nature of work and individuals’ experiences and behaviours" (ibid.).

The project "Women in IT" (F.IT) aims to create a supporting network to attract more women to the ICT sector at the local level of Bremen and Bremerhaven. The project is funded by the Senator for Economics, Labour and Europe (SWAE) with funds from the state and the European Social Fund Plus. Overall, the project aims to develop and provide supporting structures and the development of a gender-adequate education approach in order to reach women as potential employees in IT.

The focus of the current research lies on the companies' side of the problem. Women need to be addressed and recruited actively in order to (even) consider working in IT in the first place. Companies need to rethink existing job descriptions and identify room for e.g. career changers. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the effects the digital transformation has on work. The research questions of this contribution are as follows: What requirements do small, medium and large IT-companies describe for the target group of women without academic degree to enter and stay in the IT sector? What necessities for adjustments towards a gender-appropriate design of work processes do the companies identify and what solutions do they consider?

It is undisputed that education achieves superficially positive results (cf. Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2018, 191). For the field of literacy and basic education, an international research review shows that basic education measures have an impact both in terms of literacy gains and so-called Wider Benefits (such as health and well-being) (cf. Aschemann 2015). However, international comparative studies such as PISA (OECD 2022) and PIAAC (Rammstedt 2013) also show that educational measures fall short of expectations and that the effects are less positive than expected (cf. Wolf/Jenkins 2014). Specifically, for Germany, the LEO study shows that 6.2 million German-speaking adults have low literacy skills (Grotlüschen et al. 2019). In addition, an enormous shortage of skilled workers is lamented across Europe. The concept of work-oriented basic education, in which low-literate individuals are integrated into the labor market and participate in further education and training at the same time, therefore appears promising.

Linked to this is the possibility of motivating employees to learn through the perspectives thus revealed, qualifying them in line with the requirements of the labor market and thus contributing to the long-term integration of skilled workers. The added value of work-oriented basic education can therefore be seen systematically at the individual and institutional levels in particular:

At the individual level, the added value can be expected in the form of competence acquisition or growth, for example in terms of increased literacy. It has also been clearly demonstrated in a longitudinal study that low-literacy individuals benefit in the context of work-oriented basic education, particularly with regard to their social and self-competence; however, the positive effect is strongly dependent on the extent to which these competencies can actually be applied in the workplace (cf. Klinkhammer/Schemmann 2019, 61). There are also both lower risks of occupational and social exclusion and higher earned incomes (cf. Rammstedt 2013, 158; Hartley/Horne 2006).

At the institutional level, the added value arises in terms of employer image, working climate, and employee recruitment and retention (cf. Rendant 2016, 90). Low literacy can also lead to poor work performance or additional costs. In conclusion, AoG can help to qualify people for the labor market and reduce the risk of errors in the work context (cf. Ehmig/Heymann/Seelmann 2015). Furthermore, at the macroeconomic level, international competitiveness increases and transfer payments for those in need of assistance are reduced (cf. Rendant 2016).

However, social investments and interventions such as work-oriented basic education face the challenge that their effects are manifold and cannot be measured directly in terms of economic added value. Thus, the available studies provide only very limited information on the concrete monetary added value achieved by work-oriented basic education.

Within the framework of the BMBF-funded Alpha-Invest project, we are therefore linking up with existing findings and investigating what the monetary added value of work-oriented basic education is. Therefore, the focus of this paper is on the company perspective.

The central question for the project is: What monetary added value results from investments in service measures of work-oriented basic education from the perspective of companies?

One challenge is that work-oriented basic education measures cannot be implemented in a standardized way: due to a variety of internal learning cultures and organizational resources on the one hand and very heterogeneous competence levels of the employees on the other hand, work-oriented basic education offers have to be tailored directly to the companies. Therefore, when analyzing the added value of work-oriented basic education, it is of great relevance to choose a research framework that allows for a systematic approach and at the same time is open to the diversity of companies and work-oriented basic education.

A large part of vocational education and training (VET) concerns socialising the students into the occupation and for them to become part of the vocational culture (Colley et al. 2003). Within the hospitality industry, the interaction with the guest is central. Consequently, in the two Swedish upper secondary school vocational programmes that train for the hospitality industry, the Hotel and Tourism Programme and the Restaurant and Food Programme, a significant part of the training concerns interaction with guests. However, some important issues relating to interaction are insufficiently covered. In many hotel and restaurant workplaces, the employees perceive sexual harassment by guests as part of the job and vocational culture (Bråten 2019; Svensson 2020; Zampoukos et al. 2020). Despite this, the educational programmes do not always cover the issue (Hedlin & Klope 2022).

The fact that the issue of sexual harassment by guests is not always dealt with, or is dealt with inadequately, means that the students neither learn to deal with nor understand sexual harassment. This, in turn, may mean that the students use their “common sense” and often repeated discourses to understand, for example, how it can happen that a guest subjects a student or employee to sexual harassment.

The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge about how VET students training for occupations in the hospitality industry, talk about why some guests subjects staff to sexual harassment and how we can understand these explanations from a discourse theoretical perspective.

Discourse analysis is both a theory and a method. It is useful for studying how explanations can be linked to notions that are more comprehensive. A definition of discourse is that it is a specific way of understanding and talking about the world, a way that is based on certain premises and, thus, has certain consequences. (Bakhtin 1999; Laclau & Mouffe 2001). Jørgensen and Phillips (2000) define discourse as a socially constructed system of meanings that could have been different. The way we see the world is always clearly dependent on the time and culture we live in. We need some order to be able to orientate ourselves, but at the same time, the social could have been constructed differently. The premise that things could have been constructed in other ways, however, does not mean that the social can be shaped in any way in a given situation, since there is great inertia in the social construction.

In Laclau and Mouffe's (2001) discourse theory, the constitutive dimension of language is central. They start from the post-structuralist assumption that language is characterised by a fundamental instability, which means that concepts and discourses cannot be fixed once and for all. Although there is a physical and highly tangible reality, the question of how we should understand it is a matter of social constructions. Laclau and Mouffe talk about discursive battles where different ways of describing reality or explaining an event are opposed to each other. Thus, the discourses are to be understood as competing ways of describing reality. The discourses that gain ground are in opposition to other discourses, which constitute reality in other ways, and which threaten to undermine the established discourses. Certain discourses can be relatively stable at certain historical times. There are matters that are not questioned, but it is always temporary. Even if a particular discourse can gain a hegemonic position and be considered self-evident in a certain society at a certain time, it will be challenged by other discourses sooner or later (Laclau & Mouffe 2001).

Cognitively-activating tasks, which learners deal with independently during work phases, are indicators of high teaching quality (Klieme, 2019). So far, it is unclear whether cognitively activating tasks are used in vocational education and training of nursing (Wesselborg, Weyland & Kleinknecht, 2019). However, high-quality teaching can prepare students for the increasingly complex supply needs and new tasks in the health care system (Bartels, 2005).

In Europe, one of the most reknown theoretical frameworks for high teaching quality assumes three basic dimensions, which impact students‘ learning: classroom management, supportive climate and cognitive activation (Praetorius et al., 2018). The framework is based on strong empirical clues, which indicate the relevance of the three dimensions in education research (Klieme, 2019). The construct of cognitive activation has in particular been found to predict students‘ achievement (Baumert et al., 2010; Decristan et al., 2015).

The construct of cognitive activation is mostly conceptualized through the use of challenging tasks, which encourage students to engage in deeper learning activities and to develop an elaborate knowledge of the learning subject (Klieme, 2019). Nevertheless, the use of cognitively-activating tasks is tightly linked to the specific subject matter (Praetorius et al., 2014) and needs to be conceptualized for the unique specifics of each domain.

So far, neither the construct of cognitive activation nor cognitively-activating tasks have been researched in nursing education. Challenging tasks can foster students‘ deeper thinking and domain-specific problem-solving skills to meet the increasingly complex care needs of patients (Bartels, 2005; WHO, 2010). This is also important because currently an increasing number of culturally and linguistically diverse students worldwide take part in nursing programs (e.g. Jeong et al., 2011). Accordingly, teaching with adaptive and at the same time challenging tasks that enable each student to gain a conceptual understanding of nursing is an indispensable goal in nursing education.

Against this background, the current study aims to gain insight into the quality of tasks and potentially cognitively-activating subject-specific content.

To reach this aim four research questions were outlined to guide this study:

1. Which criteria are described by nurse teachers in the vocational education and training in nursing to design cognitively-activating tasks?
2. What potential for cognitive activation do tasks in the vocational education and training in nursing contain?
3. Which domain-specific matters are especially cognitively-activating in the vocational education and training in nursing?
4. What connection exists between the criteria described by nurse teachers in the vocational education and training in nursing to design cognitively-activating tasks and the actual design of tasks?

The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (funding code 497938308).

The training courses for healthcare assistants and social care workers certified by a Federal vocational education and training (VET) Diploma are relatively recent in the Swiss initial VET (IVET) landscape. Despite this, of the approximately 240 training courses on offer in the IVET, the two training courses rank 2^nd (healthcare assistants) and 4^th (social care workers) respectively in the ten most popular IVET courses undertaken by young people in Switzerland (State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI, 2022). These facts reflect the popularity of training in the social and health professions among Swiss apprentices and justify taking a more detailed interest in this population. More specifically and considering the place that emotions’ management holds in the learning of these professions, it seems to be very relevant to focus on emotional intelligence. Defining emotional intelligence (EI) as the capacities of an individual to identify his/her own emotional reactions, others’ emotional reactions, to express them, to control them and deeply understand and use this understanding as support to the action, the scientific literature reports the important role of EI in the health sector (Vlachou et al., 2016). Indeed, as this type of profession is centered on technical care and compassion, it requires an important emotional commitment, the latter influencing the quality of care. When nurses understand, identify, and manage their own emotions and the patients’ ones, the patient’s satisfaction increases (Dugue et al., 2021). As for the classical education path in health sector, several studies showed the correlation between emotional competences and achievement in nurse school too. Indeed, Nurse students with higher EI experience a higher resilience (Cleary et al., 2018), better chances of success (Singh et al., 2020), and manage stress and anxiety in a more efficient way than students with lower EI (Lewis et al., 2017).

In the field of social work and health, research showed the positive effects of EI on abilities to think, empathy, psychological health and resilience of social workers (Grant & Kinman, 2012; Grant et al., 2014). Despite the large literature covering the positive link between EI and success at school, especially in social and health sector, this subject has not been investigated in the VET context (Sauli et al., 2022).

Our present goal was to demonstrate the impact of EI in the education of professions such as health and social workers. Without trying to answer if EI must be considered as a trait of personality or as a ability (Mayer et al., 2008; Neubauer & Freudenthaler, 2005), we agree that EI as ability and as personality trait are complementary. Thus, we aimed to demonstrate that EI as personality trait and as ability influence positively school achievement in VET context—although in different ways--and will assess both aspects of EI. We predict that students with higher EI will be more successful than student with lower EI, meaning that they will obtain higher grades than students with lower EI. Moreover, we predict that students with higher EI will be more efficient in regulating their emotions and thus manage stress and conflicts in a better way than students with lower IE, leading to increased quality of life and higher engagement at school, both important factors fostering vocational achievement. To our knowledge, this study is the first to show that EI leads to better performance in the VET context.

This paper deals with vocational didactics in vocational education and training (VET) in the context of Upper Secondary Vocational Education and Training (USVET) in Sweden. The aim of this paper is to stimulate and contribute to an ongoing discussion on the growth and diversification of vocational didactics as a strand in research on VET. By mapping Swedish research, the question of what contemporary characteristics of vocational didactics in USVET can be outlined is explored. The theoretical framework applied is continental didaktik (hereafter didactics) in dialogue with vocational pedagogy, foregrounding broader issues of vocational becoming. Vocational becoming encompasses two dimensions, that is both knowledge building and identity formation as regards young people. Internationally, VET is embedded in national contexts with various models in co-existence. Bearing in mind the diversity of VET models from a European perspective, vocational didactics represent therefore a variety of approaches. In general, empirical research on dual VET models and school-based models contributes to the growth of vocational didactics as a scientific field. The integrity of such field must account for novel initiatives such as new training models that are introduced at a national curriculum level. In the case of Sweden representing mainly school-based VET models, the work-based education component is gaining importance, possibly producing effects in vocational didactics as one research strand in research on VET. Such expansion of research on VET raises questions of borders and boundaries of what distinct features characterize vocational didactics as an evolving scientific field.

Times of global change and increasing diversity are associated with transitions that individuals encounter when first engaging in and then continuing to participate in working life. Understanding, elaborating and responding productively to these transitions is salient for at least three reasons. These are the conceptual importance, their methodological adroitness and procedural worth.
Conceptually, most explanatory accounts of human learning and development across the life course acknowledge transitions variously explained through maturation, societal roles, moral and/or cognitive development. The stages of development associated with paid work and participation in it is no exception and is central to adulthood and adults. Much of working age adults’ sense of self, social purpose and engagement with community is premised upon employability, for instance. This process commences with transitions to working life, often for young adults identifying and preparing for specific occupations and then continuing across working life associated with a personal project of employability. That employability is sustaining employment, advancing or broadening occupational engagement or seeking new lines of employment. However, despite its importance as a stage of ontogenetic or lifespan development, explanatory accounts of transitions across working life remain an area requiring more empirically informed and conceptual inclusive accounts, to do justice to the diverse learning and development for working age adults that it comprises.
Methodologically, these transitions offer bases by which that learning and development can be illuminated and elaborated. Whilst learning arises constantly through lived experiences, it is perhaps most intentionally enacted in and through goal-directed activities such when transitions are negotiated. Hence while incremental learning and development remains difficult to capture, those moments of transitions provide experiences that can be captured more readily and provide data that are grounded in those events. Hence, these transitions offer the prospect of securing insights into that learning and development. This can be because these events are often salient to the individual, memorable and reportable, and provide instantiations of how the individual engages with others, institutions, aspects of materiality in negotiating those transitions. In this way, these transitions provide access to insights and explanations that might not otherwise be accessible.
Procedurally, transitions provide insights into how best both younger and working age adults’ learning and development can be guided and supported against the backdrop of increased recognition of diversity. Such insights can be used to identify, trial and validate the range of educative experiences in educational, workplace and community settings that can support these worklife transitions – whether it is about sustaining their current employment, advancing further their capacities in that field or advancing a different and new occupational or career trajectory.
These premises are elaborated through presentations and discussion of empirical research derived from distinct conceptual orientations, from diverse national and cultural situations and stages in adult development: The contributions explore the perilous transitions of young adults from vocational education to working life (1), the different types of learning and changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions (2), career changes in the context of sustainability along with the associated transformative learning experiences (3), and migrants’ learning as they confront labour market barriers (4). The shared concern and goal of these four presentations is to engage diverse perspectives in order to deepen our understanding of transitions to and through working lives.

This paper discusses Finnish vocational upper secondary students’ and graduates’ perceptions and experiences on working life transition(s) in the context of changed adulthood and labour market. It is interested in the changed demands of the labour market that make young adults’ working life transitions more complex than before: scholars (e.g., Sennett 1998; Beck 1992) have claimed that the contemporary market-driven labour market has transformed to be more uncertain, increasingly demanding self-reflexivity, flexibility, responsibility, and efficiency especially from young adults who are starting their working life paths (Kelly 2006). Youth researchers have pointed out how young adults struggle with the expectations of education and employment policies because these policies rely on a very narrow ideal of working life transitions at the same time, when the promises of their education do not meet with the realities of labour market and adulthood they face after graduation (Wyn et al. 2020). In this context, vocational upper secondary education’s aim to improve young people’s employability skills and to educate future worker-citizens is particularly interesting, especially if vocational students learn during their education to interpret their value in society through worker-citizenship (Isopahkala et al. 2014; cf. Farrugia 2021). This paper will discuss with two qualitative datasets, how young adults studying in vocational education (12 group interviews) or who have graduated from vocational education (interviews with 21 young adults) perceive worker-citizenship and how they negotiate with worker-citizen ideal, maintained by vocational education, within the contemporary Finnish labour market (see Author 2021, 2023). The paper will illustrate the importance of worker-citizenship for these young adults as a position that improves their sense of belonging to the work community and society and enables them the adult and independent life they aspire for. However, it will also illustrate how, in line with claims in youth research, some of them struggle when their aspirations, life situations, work experiences and actual chances to do work-related choices do not fit with the worker-citizen ideal. From these perspectives, it ponders vocational education’s worker-citizen ideal in relation to the possibilities of these young adults to feel valuable in society and to make choices that support their life situations and well-being in the contemporary labour market from the perspective of Nussbaum’s (2013) ‘human dignity’. It will show how shaping worker-citizenship is inherent part of vocational graduates’ contemporary adulthood and points out vocational education’s role in supporting these young adults’ senses of societal belonging (see May 2011).

Beck, U (1992) Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE Publications. Farrugia, D (2021) Youth, Work and the Post-Fordist Self. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Isopahkala-Bouret, U et al. (2014) Educating worker-citizens: visions and divisions in curriculum texts. Journal of education and work 27(1), 92–109. Kelly, P (2006) The entrepreneurial self and ‘youth at-risk’: exploring the horizons of identity in the twenty-first century. Journal of Youth Studies 9(1), 17–32. May, V (2011) Self, Belonging and Social Change. Sociology 45(3), 363–378. Nussbaum, M (2013) Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sennett, R (1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Wyn, J et al. (2020, eds.) Youth and the New Adulthood: Generations of Change. Singapore: Springer Singapore Pty. Ltd.

Migratory transitions are periods of uncertainty with learning opportunities and demands. One challenge facing adult migrants is the recognition of prior training and work experience. However, even when recognition of prior learning succeeds, challenges to labour market access remain through exclusionary practices. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Canada, this paper explores the requirement to possess Canadian Experience (CE) as one such challenge: How do people deal with the oblique and circular challenge of possessing CE to find work in Canada? Newcomers are expected to possess CE to gain full labour market access. It represents a canon of tacit knowledge to be acquired (Sakamoto et al. 2010). Whereas the exclusionary effects of CE have been well-documented, less is known about how individuals learn to engage with CE. This paper thus aims to elucidate this aspect of learning during transitions into new work contexts and to draw conclusions for policy and practice. To study learning during life course transitions, I adopt a doing transitions framework which asserts “that transitions do not simply exist but are constantly constituted by practices” (Walther et al. 2020:5). Accordingly, I draw on a doing migration perspective which views migration as the result of social practices that “turn mobile (and often also immobile) individuals into ‘migrants’” (Amelina, 2020). Against this conceptual backdrop, I conducted biographical-narrative interviews with 20 adults who moved to Canada as ‘skilled migrants.’ Aimed to investigate how individuals learn during migration, the data have been analyzed within a grounded theory framework using the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2014). I identified three modes of engaging with CE: Replay and readjust is marked by repeated setbacks, frustrations, and – seemingly – resignation. Reset and move forward is marked by a lowering of aspirations and an alignment of future life course decisions with the need to acquire CE. Research and pro-act is characterized by excelling at knowing the rules and playing the game. The analysis of the engagement with challenges point to different approaches to learning and its social embeddedness. These findings have relevance for theorizing learning and build on considerations about subjective learning theories (Säljö, 2021).

Amelina, A. (2020). After the reflexive turn in migration studies: Towards the doing migration approach. Population, Space and Place, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2368 Bohnsack, R. (2014). Documentary method. In U. Flick (Ed.), SAGE knowledge. The SAGE handbook of qualitative data analysis (pp. 217–233). SAGE. Sakamoto, I., Chin, M., & Young, M. (2010). “Canadian Experience,” Employment Challenges, and Skilled Immigrants: A Close Look Through “Tacit Knowledge”. Canadian Social Work Journal, 12(1), 145–151. Säljö, R. (2021). The conceptualization of learning in learning research: From introspectionism and conditioned reflexes to meaning-making and performativity in situated practices. In G. R. Kress, S. Selander, R. Säljö, & C. Wulf (Eds.), Foundations and futures of education. Learning as social practice: Beyond education as an individual enterprise (146-168). Routledge. Walther, A., Stauber, B., & Settersten, R. A. (2022). "Doing Transitions": A new research perspective. In B. Stauber, A. Walther, & R. A. Settersten (Eds.), Life course research and social policies. Doing transitions in the life course: Processes and practices (pp. 3–18).

In the past decade, Sustainable development (SD) has taken much importance in the life of (western middle class) individuals. Sustainability for some has become personal; something to justify changing practices of everyday life, one’s diet, consumption or mobility. This contribution though argues that applying SD in a work-related context, handling it as something professional includes additional complexity. Indeed, making sustainability a priority in one’s working life comes with much (re)negotiations about one’s initial vocation and related competencies, one’s professional ambitions and one’s understanding and relationship to work in general. This paper will present results of an investigation interested in the diverse ways of learning, understanding, and implementing sustainability in one’s professional activity. The empirical research is based on semi-directed interviews with individuals in western Europe as they prepared, were in the middle of, or had conducted a professional transition in the context of SD. Career transitions are favorable life course phases for rethinking and reshuffling life priorities (Ebaugh, 1988), for learning to (re)adjust, (re)position, (re)assess oneself with regards to the constantly evolving job market. These individuals are drawn to deliver a personal story about how and/or when to make sustainability something important in their lives, how this change manifested and how it is turned into a professional project. They all seem to agree about wanting a more sustainable society, but the ideal destination, the way to get there and the things that have to change differ grandly. To counter the highly individualized narratives and seemingly individualized career life projects, this research uses a practice theory approach (Reckwitz, 2002). Through this theoretical lens, human and non-human participants, sayings, doings, artifacts, and affects are equally appreciated (Schatzki et al., 2001) and used to describe practices. The interviews were analyzed using the Documentary Method (Bohnsack, 2010), from which emerged four ways to approach sustainability through work. Three types that range from abandoning a previous profession to practice sustainability in a highly committed way (Exemplary approach), to repurposing competencies of a former profession and make them shine under a new light (Indispensable approach), to juggling between former professional aspirations and new ecological values (Interposition approach). Finally, with Sustainable Development at the heart of this investigation, precise learning experiences embedded at the intersection of work and sustainability emerge that can inform about the way adults are currently navigating and negotiating their professional paths.

Bohnsack, Ralf; Pfaff, Nicolle; Weller, Wivian (Hg.) (2010): Qualitative analysis and documentary method in international educational research. Opladen: Budrich. Ebaugh, H. R. F. (1988). Becoming an ex: The process of role exit. University of Chicago Press. Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. European journal of social theory, 5(2), 243-263. Schatzki, Theodore; Knorr-Cetina, Karin; Savigny, Eike von (Hg.) (2001): The practice turn in contemporary theory. New York: Routledge.

The transitions adults negotiate across their working lives as they secure, maintain and develop further employability through their learning are of interest to governments, workplaces, and workers themselves. Governments and their supra-governmental counterparts are concerned about working age adults respond to changing work and occupational requirements to sustain their employability across lengthening working lives (OECD, 2006). Through analyses of worklife history interview data with 30 working age adults, distinct kinds of changes comprising these transitions have been delineated as representative of changes that have person-particular meanings and impacts. This delineation represents understandings of processes and outcomes for adults’ learning and development. These transitions have specific kinds of scope, duration, and impacts in terms of continuity/discontinuity with individuals’ earlier activities and knowing. Transitions can be observed, captured, and represented by a complex of personal, institutional, and/or brute factors. Understanding the changes comprising these worklife transitions and how they can be supported and facilitated requires accounting for societal factors as well as individuals’ personal histories and legacies and impacts of maturation These transitions were identified as being of six kinds: i) life stages, ii) employment status, iii) occupations, iv) relocations, v) health, and vi) personal preference or trajectories (Author et al 2021). The changes can be seen as being a product of societal factors (i.e., institutional facts) or those arising through nature (i.e., brute facts) (Searle, 1995). Amongst these are those that arise through individuals’ personal histories or ontogenies, referred to as personal facts (Author, 2009). Moreover, learning for and through these transitions were of five kinds and about: i) language and literacy; ii) cultural practices; iii) world of work; iv) occupational skills; and v) worklife engagement. These findings suggests explaining the processes of learning that support sustained employability in times of change and uncertainty need to account for the complex of factors comprising what is suggested by the social world (i.e., the social suggestion - e.g., opportunities, barriers, invitations, , close-distance support, et cetera) and how individuals engage with and shaped by their subjectivities (i.e., sense of self, relations to others), capacities (i.e., what they know, can do, and value), and personal epistemologies (i.e., how they make sense of the world and respond to it). Such findings point to a broader range of educative experiences than those privileged in lifelong educational provisions and the importance as viewing curriculum as being a personal, rather than institutional pathway.

Andersson, P., & Köpsén, S. (2018). Maintaining competence in the initial occupation: Activities among vocational teachers. Vocations and Learning, 11(2), 317-344. Bocciardi, F., Caputo, A., Fregonese, C., Langher, V., & Sartori, R. (2017). Career adaptability as a strategic competence for career development. European Journal of Training and Development, 41(1), 67-82. Bradley, H., & Devadason, R. (2008). Fractured transitions: Young adults' pathways into contemporary labour markets. Sociology, 42(1), 119-136. Olesen, H. S. (2016). A psycho-societal approach to life histories. In Routledge international handbook on narrative and life history (pp. 214-224). Routledge. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2006). Live longer, work longer: A synthesis report. OECD.

The path-dependent differences among European VET systems are widely noted, attracting attention well beyond the sphere of VET and educational studies (Greinert 2005; Crouch, Finegold and Sako 1999). Less attention has been devoted until recently to the different ways in which VET has been theorised in different national contexts, and how such theory draws on foundations and paradigms developed within and outside the spaces of knowledge production that provide the intellectual foundations of VET research. Following a recent upsurge in questioning about the aims and purposes of VET, European interest in Bildung has been supplemented by contemporary attention to classical theories of VET (Sanderse 2021; Kuhlee et al. 2022; Zuurmond et al. 2023; bwp@ forthcoming). This symposium builds on the last-named Special Issue, which will explore the distinctive role of foundational VET theory in Germany and other DACH countries, sometimes described as Berufbildungstheorie. This body includes the ‘classical’ work of Kerschensteiner (1966/1904), Fischer (1967/1932) and Spranger (1923) as well as critical accounts that helped to shape modern VET systems (e.g., Siemsen 1948; Lempert 1971; Blankertz 1974) and have implications for other European countries.

Our aim in this meta-theoretical symposium is to extend this discussion, examining the continued relevance of these foundations and whether a wider range of theory can be helpful to examine the internal tensions and external forces that affect VET systems in Europe. VET has been theorised distinctively in different countries, reflecting the range of intellectual traditions, institutional formations and fields of practice across Europe. Some aspects of theorisation relate to the distinctive patterns of knowledge production, with education departments that also provide VET teacher education programmes contributing to the research base and drawing on various forms of theorisation; other university departments, research institutions and national agencies also contribute to research and, whilst in some cases this may be under-theorised, these may also use and contribute to theory. These institutional aspects together represent the social basis on which educational research has been constructed and these foundations contribute to national differences in the way education is theorised. The symposium will not only shed more light on the ways that internal contradictions of VET and VET research can be understood through theory but will also present different national perspectives on how to deal with them.

The theoretical foundations on which much research into VET builds have an international provenance. For example, VET research in English-speaking countries draws heavily on philosophers, sociologists and economists from France, who are located outside education departments, and from the USA which lacks any coherent system of VET. This field is also subject to powerful external forces in the shape of policy discourses supported by powerful international institutions with universalising prescriptions. Thus, international bodies as the European Union, UNESCO, ILO World Bank and OECD have generated a significant volume of well-resourced empirical research, although this tends to be under-theorised and sometimes explicitly seeks to reframe VET around a universalising neoliberal model.

The symposium will examine how far a reinvigorated theorisation of VET, addressing contemporary challenges, needs to draw on new theoretical approaches that can enable researchers to answer questions posed by contemporary crises of health, inequality, globalisation and technological change; or whether older concepts can also play a valuable role in reaffirming educational aims and practices within VET, and across its boundaries.

By contrast with the German ‘in-house’ foundations of VET theory described as Berufbildungstheorie, VET research elsewhere in Europe positions itself to varying degrees outside such boundaries, drawing on a wider range of disciplines and theoretical resources, especially in countries where VET itself and VET research enjoy less state support. This distinction is especially salient in the English-speaking world: here research in the field of VET emerged later than in continental Europe and has a more diversified institutional base, is liminal to the broader field of education research and competes with alternative institutional and external claims to expertise. Whilst the distinctive features of VET in these countries are widely associated with its liberal market philosophy (see e.g., Winch 2000), we ascribe these Anglophone approaches to theorising VET in an immediate sense to their more diversified institutional base (c.f. Bates 1999), which competes with alternative institutional and external claims to expertise and is liminal to a broader (but also marginalised) field of educational research (Furlong and Whitty 2017). In these countries, VET research has drawn on educational perspectives to critique VET as a marginalised and marginalising educational pathway and on theories developed in external disciplines to theorise the understandings generated by its research. In this paper we illustrate the interplay since the 1980s among the neoliberal ascendancy and its diminution of VET to the acquisition of narrowly defined occupational competences (Brockmann et al. 2008; Wolf 1995), processes of economic and educational tertiarisation, and the changing theorisation of VET in these countries. As the economic structures and forms of organisation that sustained VET in the early post-war years have given way to more service-based economies, and to academicisation and tertiarisation, its theoretical interests have also experienced diversification if not fragmentation. This work has been less influential on policies that have largely responded to an international ‘policy-making assemblage’ (Thompson et al. 2022) in which well-resourced research contributes to an international reframing of VET on neoliberal lines (e.g., OECD 2010, 2014). We conclude that this approach to theorising VET has nevertheless made important contributions to the study of VET and has continued to develop during ongoing crises of health, economy and environment. It may also usefully draw on the renewal of earlier bodies of European theory to understand of VET’s challenges and possibilities.

Bates, I., Hodkinson, P. &Unwin, L. (1999). Editorial, British Educational Research Journal, 25 (4), 419-425. Brockmann, M., Clarke, L., Méhaut, P., & Winch, C. (2008). Competence-based vocational education and training (VET): The cases of England and France in a European perspective. Vocations and Learning, 1(3), 227–244. Furlong, J. & Whitty, G. (2017). Knowledge traditions in the study of education. In: G. Whitty & J. Furlong (Eds.) Knowledge and the Study of Education: An international exploration. Oxford. OECD. (2010). Learning for jobs: Synthesis report of the OECD reviews of vocational education and training. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2014). Skills beyond school: Synthesis report: OECD Reviews of secondary vocational education and training. Paris: OECD. Thompson, G., Sellar, S. &Buchanan, I. (2022). 1996: the OECD policy-making assemblage, Journal of Education Policy, 37, (5), 685-704, Doi: 10.1080/02680939.2021.1912397 Winch, C. (2000). Education, work and social capital: Towards a new conception of vocational education. London: Routledge. Wolf, A. (1995). Competence-based assessment. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Vocational education and training (VET) systems and practices, unlike higher or general education, are considerably national in scope, which is why the field is highly fragmented (Gessler et al., 2021). Despite the fragmented architecture, international blueprints like the dual apprenticeship system à la Germany, Switzerland, or Austria (OECD, 2010, pp. 12, 27, 34–36) become increasingly important: on the one hand because they create pull factors for countries eager to reform their VET systems (e.g. Láscarez & Schmees, 2021) and on the other hand as they create push factors through international organisations (IOs) like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as they marketise these blueprints globally. Both observations can be associated with the same mechanism: As successful perceived VET policies in a particular nation are decontextualised by IOs (and sometimes national (non-)governmental organisations) in order to create international blueprints. Through an international discourse around these blueprints, a shared belief in their legitimacy and rationality unfolds. From this perspective, countries tend to implement policies more on the basis of shared beliefs than because of rational arguments (beyond the discourse). Accordingly, the discourse entails a narrative causal relationship of these blueprints (described by sociological institutionalists as a “myth”, see Koch 2009, p. 113), e.g. that implementing the dual apprenticeship system will lead to a low youth unemployment rate (see OECD 2010). Chabbott and Ramirez (2006, p. 174) conceptualised links between discourses from the global through the national, and further to the local level. National actors adopt these ideas to create reform pressure on the VET system. In doing so, these actors prove their willingness to acknowledge current problems concerning VET, as well as their willingness to implement solutions perceived to be rational (see Láscarez & Schmees, 2021). The theory of sociological institutionalism, as well as the mechanisms explained by it regarding the internationalisation of VET systems, complement existing VET theories that are functionalist in nature by explaining e.g. how “Bildung” unfolds, how skills gaps can be closed, or how literacy spreads. While these attempts are important, they need to be accompanied by theories (further developed in VET research and by VET researchers) that set these functionalist approaches and practises in a meta-theoretical perspective to explain and reflect upon the success of one over the other. In our view, sociological neo-institutionalism is able to function as a meta-theory for VET research.

Chabbott, Colette & Ramirez, Francisco O. (2006): Development and Education. In: Maureen T. Hallinan (Ed.): Handbook of the Sociology of Education, pp. 163–187. New York: Springer (Handbooks of sociology and social research). Gessler, M., Nägele, C., & Stalder, B. (2021). Scoping review on research at the boundary between learning and working: A bibliometric mapping analysis of the last decade. International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IJRVET), 8(4), 170-206. Koch, S. (2009). Die Bausteine neo-institutionalistischer Organisationstheorie – Begriffe und Konzepte im Laufe der Zeit. In S. Koch (Hrsg.), Neo-Institutionalismus in der Erziehungswissenschaft. Grundlegende Texte und empirische Studien (Organisation und Pädagogik,Vol. 6, pp. 110–131). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Láscarez Smith, D. & Schmees, J. K. (2021): The Costa Rican business sector’s concepts of the transfer of German dual training. Revista Actualidades Investigativas En Educación, 21 (2), pp. 1–30. URL: https://doi.org/10.15517/AIE.V21I2.46792 Meyer, John W.; Rowan, Brian (1977): Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony. In: American Journal of Sociology 83 (2), 340–363. DOI: 10.2307/2778293. OECD (2010). Learning for Jobs (OECD Reviews of Vocational Education and Training). Paris: OECD. Retrieved from: https://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/Learning%20for%20Jobs%20book.pdf

For a comprehensive theoretical review of vocational training, not only the subject has to be considered, but also its environment. Such a sociological approach has already been suggested by respected representatives of vocational training science such as Kell (2010, 1995), Kutscha (1990) and Zabeck (1980). Instruments such as Luhmann’s theory of social systems (2012, 1998a, 1998b, 1986) can be used for vocational training theory. The case examined here is such a project. At its core, it deals with the systemic design of the transition system, which has been criticized again and again (see e.g., Steib 2022; Euler 2010; Münk 2010; Krekel & Ulrich 2009; Baethge, Solga & Wieck 2007). If one understands this as an apparatus with which to deal with the large number of young school leavers who could not find an apprenticeship (see e.g., Friese 2011; Kutscha 2010; Beicht 2009; Euler & Severing 2006), then its function needs to be understood in terms of social justice and the welfare state (see e.g., Luhmann 2011). The planned contribution will examine in the light of Luhmann's system theory how the transitional system is constituted in relation(s) to the educational, economic and political system of society. To do this, not only the respective network of relationships, but also the function and logic (code and medium) inherent in the transitional system must be determined. Finally, based on these findings, it will be presented what possibilities there are to solve and "educate" the transitional system from its current one, primarily to the functional context of the welfare state. Although German vocational education and training is assumed to be relatively well-founded, the transition system has historically developed into a structure that was never intended, either in itself or in terms of its quantitative and qualitative design (Steib 2020).

Baethge, M.; Solga, H. & Wieck, M. (2007). Berufsbildung im Umbruch. Signale eines überfälligen Aufbruchs. In M. Baethge, H. Solga & M. Wieck (Eds.), Berufsbildung im Umbruch. Signale eines überfälligen Aufbruchs pp. 7–111. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Retrieved from: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/stabsabteilung/04258/studie.pdf [09.03.2014]. Beicht, U. (2009). Verbesserung der Ausbildungschancen oder sinnlose Warteschleife? Zur Bedeutung und Wirksamkeit von Bildungsgängen am Übergang Schule – Berufsausbildung. BIBB-Report, 11, 1–12. Retrieved from: http://www.bibb.de/dokumente/pdf/a12_bibbreport_2009_11.pdf [02.10.2012]. Euler, D. (2010). Einfluss der demographischen Entwicklung auf das Übergangssystem und den Berufsausbildungsmarkt. Expertise im Auftrag der Bertelsmann Stiftung. St. Gallen: Bertelsmann Stiftung. Retrieved from: http://www.jugendsozialarbeit.de/media/raw/xcms_bst_dms_32525_32526_2.pdf [20.03.2014]. Euler, D. & Severing, E. (2006). Flexible Ausbildungswege in der Berufsausbildung. Nürnberg & St. Gallen. Retrieved from: http://www.bmbf.de/pub/Studie_Flexible_Ausbildungswege_in_der_Berufsbildung.pdf [02.10.2012]. Friese, M. (2011). Das Schulberufssystem: Restkategorie oder Innovationsfaktor der beruflichen Bildung? Berufsbildung, 65(131), 2–6. Kell, A. (1995). Das Berechtigungswesen zwischen Bildungs- und Beschäftigungssystem. In H. Blankertz, J. Derbolav, A. Kell & G. Kutscha (Eds.), Sekundarstufe II – Jugendbildung zwischen Schule und Beruf. Teil 1: Handbuch pp. 289–320. Stuttgart & Dresden: Klett. [Full list available on request]

The paper explores young people’s accounts on their experiences from Vocational Education and Training (VET) concerning factors supporting and hindering successful completion. The study is part of a cross-national research project, Vocational education and workplace training enhancing social inclusion of at-risk young people (EmpowerVET) involving four countries: Lithuania, Norway, Estonia, and Latvia. The purpose of the project is to investigate how vocational education and training (VET) may enhance social inclusion of young people who are at risk of becoming economically and socially marginalised. Counteracting social exclusion of young people at risk for early school leaving and unemployment has been a high priority in EU policies during the last decades. Across Europe, young people face labour market exclusion; they may experience long unemployment periods, or they may be non-participating in either employment, education, or training (NEET). Many young people leave upper-secondary school with no worthwhile qualifications (Ainscow, 2020), whilst non-completion of upper-secondary education and failing to achieve an upper-secondary qualification reduces young people’s labour market prospects, leading to economic and social marginalisation (Albæk et al., 2015). Recent comparative studies have found that especially young people with lower educational levels are most vulnerable in labour market situations (Rokicka, Unt, Täht & Nizalova, 2018), whilst the economic and educational inequalities that reduce the life chances of young people already affected by adverse life circumstances, seem hard to overcome (Sammons, Toth, & Sylva, 2015). In this climate, Nilsson (2010, p. 251) reports an international increase of academic and political interest in VET as a “potentially powerful tool for fostering social inclusion”, largely due to its ability to bridge the school-to-work transition through apprenticeship, making young people ‘insiders’ in the labour market and counteracting unemployment. In the context of deepening socio-economic challenges and polarization of socio-economic possibilities, VET has a potential to support youth at risk for social exclusion (Piketty, 2013, 2019; Tirole, 2016; Banerjee, Duflo 2019). At the same time, VET may itself become a source of social exclusion due to mismatches between provided skills and competencies and changing labour marked needs, as well as problems concerning the quality of VET provision (European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN), 2020). To gain insight in strengths and weaknesses of VET-trajectories across four different countries, 80 young people aged 16-29 were interviewed about their experiences, providing authentic accounts of how the young people understand and negotiate their opportunities, prospects and limitations, and the contextual factors influencing these issues. With reference to Allan (2009), from an inclusive perspective, the young people’s accounts embody an expertise that requires to be acknowledged as such. The article explores the following research questions: In their accounts on their experiences in VET, what do the young people convey about factors that may support and hinder successful completion, and how may this be understood? Through analysing first-hand experiences spanning four countries, the purpose is to develop knowledge that may contribute to strengthening vocational educational trajectories, increasing opportunities for successful completion for young people at risk of social exclusion.

One of the most critical indicators of the Spanish educational system is the Early School Leaving (ESL) rate, which refers to the percentage of the population aged 18 to 24 who have not completed any post-compulsory secondary education and are not following any type of training. In fact, while the European rate is 9,7%, the Spanish one is 13.3% (Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2022). In view of this situation, the fight against ESL is one of the strategic objectives of the European framework for Education and Training ET2020.

In this context, in recent years significant attention is being paid to the study of student engagement, i.e. the commitment with the educational process from various levels and structures (Reschly and Christenson, 2012; Fredricks, Reschly and Christenson, 2019), due to its relevance for understanding the diversity of students’ pathways. Specifically, research on engagement allows us to deepen the study of the phenomena of absenteeism, failure and ESL. Although school disengagement is developing n primary school, it is in secondary school when it becomes more visible and also when it begins to generate difficulties in classroom management (González González & Cutanda López, 2015; Salvà-Mut, Oliver-Trobat & Comas-Forgas, 2014). It is a gradual process of disengagement to learning and school life that progressively distances students from a positive educational experience, and in which factors of different nature come into play (Rumberger, 2011).

In this context students do not constitute a homogeneous group, although they share socioeconomic, family, cultural and academic factors considered as 'risk factors'. In a review on the state of the matter, González González (2017), points out that the students’ heterogeneity is evident and that this entails different types of measures and supports. On the other hand, the research of Ramos-Díaz, Rodríguez-Fernández, Fernández-Zabala and Zuazagoitia (2016) concludes that family and peer support activate the general self-concept as a mediating variable, which in turn directly influences on school involvement, along with the influence of teacher and family support (p.349). The results of this study reveal the important mediating role of general self-concept in the indirect influence of social support on school involvement.

Thirdly, it is also interesting to emphasize that the analysis of school engagement is sometimes reduced to measuring good school behavior, while less observable variables such as cognitive or emotional ones are ignored. The research of Aina Tarabini and her team (Curran, 2017; Tarabini, Curran, Montes, & Parcerisa, 2019) suggests focusing on these three dimensions and studying them jointly in order to have a global look that can provide relevant information. Their work points out that the 'center effect' acts on (dis)engagement and it concludes that both the social composition and the mechanisms of attention to diversity influence this process. Therefore, we should take into account that the type of dynamics of work established in the centers can be decisive in terms of engagement.

Under this theoretical framework, this communication proposal is framed in a study that has been developed in the region of Valencia (Spain) in the framework of a state research, with continuity at the regional level, whose main objective is the analysis of VET students’ pathways.

This study examines the lived experiences of vocational education students through 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews with students from vocational schools in Israel. Vocational schools in Israel tend to be populated by students of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and stigmatized ethnic groups who have failed academically in academic education frameworks (Eini, et al., 2022).

Despite the pedagogical diversity in vocational education, many countries share common characteristics. Firstly, most students come from a low-SES background, their parents are not highly educated, and they are members of minority groups (Chong, 2014; Ling, 2015; on the link between ethnicity and vocational school education, see Avis et al., 2017.) Second, vocational education graduates are characterized by low social status and low pay, which, in turn, produces an inferior public image of them (Down et al., 2019). A comprehensive European survey showed that the public views vocational education as mostly offering non-prestigious professions (Spruyt et al., 2015). Another comprehensive study conducted in Europe and Israel found that the learning environment in vocational education is typified by outdated learning methods, both in content and in teaching methods (Bartlett et al., 2014).

Some studies described that the social image of vocational education students is of academically failing students and "at-risk youth" (Ling, 2015). The existing stigma views vocational education as failure spaces, last chance, schools designated for disadvantaged groups in society. Similar findings have been described in various countries such as China (Ling, 2015), Denmark (Juul & Byskov, 2020), England (Avis et al., 2017), Cambodia (Miller, 2020), Singapore (Chong, 2014), and Israel (Eini et al., 2022). Congruently, the OECD published a report in 2018 called Apprenticeship and Vocational Education and Training in Israel. It found vocational training in Israel to be at an inferior level. The offered vocational fields are characterized by low salaries and status, and vocational education graduates do not see their vocational certificates benefiting them in the job market. This report also revealed no advantage to vocational education graduates over those with similar characteristics who did not possess a vocational certificate.

In light of the noted characterizations and perceptions regarding vocational education students, it becomes crucial to ascertain their life experiences in their own words. However, only few studies have examined this among student samples. These studies have focused mostly on life experiences relating to the school-to-work transition (Pantea, 2020). Among these findings are those that have shown that students relate to their life experiences in terms of a "jungle" where they are required to navigate independently and seek vocational training through personal relationships (Tanggaard, 2013).

Youths in Swedish vocational education schools reported a sense of exclusion in training, manifested in a lack of interaction with the employees at the training facility and a lack of space for their opinions to be heard. At the same time, the students felt that the training helped them feel confident in their ability to perform tasks (Rönnlund & Rosvall, 2021). Similarly, in a Chinese study, the interviewed youths reported feeling exploited when placed in jobs that addressed the needs of the workplace rather than in tasks related to their studies (Pun & Koo 2019).

A Cambodian study found that youth who think and view the world independently are inclined to consider vocational education studies as an empowering force that enables freedom and facilitates their realizing individualistic values ​​like achieving economic independence (Miller, 2020). The ability to work is a key motivating force to persevere in fulfilling these two values––financial independence and providing for the family––despite the tension between them (Pantea, 2020).

Vocational education systems play a central role for social participation in general and especially for immigrants, people with disadvantages or special educational needs. This is pointed out by the cross-national and comparative research on vocational education and training that has been established in European countries in recent decades (cf. Koch 1991). The high employment-oriented integrative power of vocational education in the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) is positively emphasized. At the same time, educational disadvantages and homogenization efforts persist along the categories of migration background, ability and impairment (cf. Kimmelmann et al. 2022). The commitment to increased inclusion orientation in general education schools and vocational education from the 1990s was confirmed by the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD). VET research increasingly relies on a broad understanding of inclusion that takes into account all dimensions of learner diversity and addresses potential threats to educational participation (exclusion) (Barabasch, Scharnhorst & Leumann, 2016).
Entry into VET and the transition to employment is characterized by two dominant thresholds. At the first threshold, the vocational integration of young adults is supported with differentiated transition systems, adapted training formats, through partial qualifications as well as via accompanying measures. The transition system fulfills an important vocational integration role throughout German-speaking countries (Miesera et al. 2022). Nevertheless, differences between the countries can be seen above all in the establishment of vocational structures, formats and measures for dealing with diversity. Different frameworks are suspected to emerge from recontextualization processes in different places (nation, region, institution) (Mejeh & Powell, 2018). These considerations are the starting point for this article, which reflects on the scope of the findings regarding a counseling service offered at vocational schools in Switzerland. This is an offer that has been shown to be a successful form of dealing with exclusion risks in vocational education and training in German-speaking countries, but is still little institutionalized as a measure of Supported Education.
In Switzerland, measures of the transition system are called bridging offers. These offers not only have a vocationally integrating effect, but also extend the training period. About 20% of young people start their education delayed by one year (5% are without education) (Gomensoro & Meyer 2021). About a quarter of a cohort is in transition. Discontinuous educational trajectories affect a majority of young adults with social-emotional problems or with learning and performance difficulties. These factors are usually closely related to disadvantaging diversity characteristics, such as socio-cultural origin, gender, migration experience or impairment, and are empirically widely supported (Hofmann & Schellenberg 2019; Pool Maag 2016).
Rarely studied to date have been problems during training and measures to encourage learners to remain in training. Little is known about whether and how problem situations of young people change with entry into VET. Known is that in Switzerland 21% of learners in dual VET programs are affected by apprenticeship contract terminations. More than half of apprenticeship contract terminations (55%) occur in the first year of training and around 31% in the second (BFS 2021, 9). Overall, more than 40% of young people are in transition between the first and third year of training. The situation is similar in Germany (Beinke 2011). They are either looking for a follow-up vocational solution or an apprenticeship. The topic is currently gaining importance due to the ongoing shortage of skilled workers, increasing apprenticeship contract terminations and psychological stress among young people in the post-Corona period. The following question is examined: What specific problem situations do young people encounter during their apprenticeship, how can the target group be defined, and what is the need for counseling?

The Europe 2030 Project proposes for EU countries the continuation of a firm commitment to Education, as the cornerstone on which to ensure a sustainable society in the short, medium, and long-term future; thus following the line of other international proposals (Secretary of State for the 2030 Agenda, 2021). One of the challenges facing young people is linked to their socio-occupational integration, in which the promotion of Vocational Education and Training (VET) is a major strategy for growth, employment, and the path to professional success for this sector of the population (European Union, 2010).

Taking into account the rates provided by the Ministry, 41.7% of Basic Vocational Education and Training (BVET) students and 30.7% of Intermediate Vocational Education and Training (IVET) students would have dropped out of the qualification and the education system 4 years after having enrolled in a VET course (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2022). These data highlight the need to make progress in reducing this trend and in supporting VET to tackle educational failure and the difficulties of insertion of the young population (Michavila and Narejos, 2021; National Office of Foresight and Strategy of the Government of Spain, 2021).

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a model of analysis based on motivation and focused on defining student behavior as self-motivated and self-determined (Ryan and Deci, 2002). Self-determination theory (SDT) shows a direct relationship between the influence of teaching practices on the teaching-learning processes, the type of student motivation, intrinsic or extrinsic, and their academic performance, with their drop-out or continuation of studies. Thus, student motivation, student's perception of their level of competence, and the fact of feeling autonomous and empowered have positive consequences on students in terms of engagement, well-being, and learning (Froiland & Worrell, 2016; Gottfried et al., 2008; Taylor et al., 2014).

According to SDT, students' intrinsic motivation improves when teachers foster autonomy, work towards competencies and promote engagement. Thus, a teaching practice focused on supporting autonomy, and structured and promoting self-regulated learning can be decisive in students' learning processes (Hardre & Reeve, 2003; Vallerand et al., 1997).

Thus, the theoretical framework proposed by SDT is taken as a reference in the project: "Teaching practice and the prevention of early dropout from vocational training: empirical approach and intervention proposal" subsidized by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness within the framework of the R+D+I Program aimed at the challenges of society 2019 (reference PID2019-108342RB-100) in which the results of this research are framed.

This project includes a phase of application of results, based on the action-research methodology (Elliot, 1990; Molina et al., 2021) through which, together with two educational centers, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a pilot plan consisting of the improvement of the teaching practice for the prevention of dropout and the improvement of the academic performance of students of BVET and IVET.

This communication presents the results of the design phase of the pilot plan carried out with the schools, in which, from the perspective of action research, we collected the voice of the teaching staff to construct the improvement process from the perspective of its protagonists (Pérez-Van-Leeden, 2019).

Each student deserves to be seen and heard, thrive and grow up from one’s own strengths. This presentation presents the main results of the dissertation by Ryökkynen (2022) which aim is to give a voice to vocational students with special educational needs and gain a deeper understanding of the elements of support that they perceive as the most relevant.

The overarching research questions of the thesis are: RQ1) Of vocational students receiving intensive special learning support, which elements do they perceive as enhancing their studying? RQ2) Of vocational students receiving intensive special learning support, which elements do they perceive as enhancing their sense of belonging? RQ3) What are the students’ perceptions of what constitutes the elements of good VET?

The study participants (N=29) are students who have serious learning difficulties, disabilities, or serious health problems. These students represent the minority of vocational students (two per cent) in Finland.

Currently, the explicit aim of VET in Finland and the rest of Europe generally seems to be to provide skills, competence and knowledge needed in work but at the same time ‘to include the socially disadvantaged as well as high potentials (e.g. migrants, refugees, low-skilled and unemployed, inactive groups, including women), so as to enable them to stay and/or (re-)enter the labour market and to move freely and in a self-determined manner through their educational and professional careers’ (Advisory Committee on Vocational Training, 2018; Council of European Union, 2020). However, people with special needs are in a different social and educational position from the rest of the population though the main objective of international and national policies has been to improve their position (Kauppila et al., 2020; UNESCO, 2020). These measures have systematically focused on education and based on the view that improving educational opportunities will make disabled people more independent and employable (Cavanagh et al., 2019; Kauppila et al., 2018). Even so, the employment rate and social participation of disabled people are still low (OECD, 2010; Sjöblom, 2016). The reality is mixed: Although every person has the right to equal treatment and opportunities at work, regardless of any attributes other than the ability to do the job, people with special needs or partial work ability are in the most vulnerable position in the labour market (International Labour Organisation, 2022; Mäkinen, 2021).

The dissertation's theoretical framework is Axel Honneth’s (1995) theory of recognition, which suggests that an individual’s identity is established in social relations when one’s abilities and achievements are recognized. Recognition is not merely a phenomenon that has psychological, social and political importance but it is also an ontologically important phenomenon in that it is part of what constitutes human persons and their social and institutional world. According to Honneth (1995), the prime mover for us as human beings is our need for recognition which we seek from others. Furthermore, the study follows the considerations of Gert Biesta (e.g., 2010, 2020) and argues that in education the question of purpose is multidimensional and suggests that three domains can be found: qualification, socialization and subjectification.

Languages serve as communicative and social tools that are the foundation of all learning and communication. Therefore, language competences in the workforce are strategically important to develop and maintain external contacts, such as with national and international customers, clients and patients. In addition, they are of importance internally within companies and work teams, where often people with different language backgrounds work together. VET programmes that prepare learners for future work situations, attract linguistically diverse cohorts. These can include young people who have resided in a particular country from birth or for a long time, as well as those who have arrived more recently in a country.

Typically, many languages come in contact in VET programmes, such as the instructional language, any curricular foreign languages, learners’ family languages, and further languages that might be present in the workplace.

Especially those learners who have newly arrived from abroad, often struggle linguistically and may drop out before completion of their course (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2021). Therefore, considering how languages are learnt, used and perceived in VET programmes is not just a practical concern, but also one of social justice and one related to equal opportunities for individual VET learners, and the wider economy (Blixen & Hellne-Halvorsen, 2022).

Representatives of the LiVE network (Languages in Vocational Education) will present findings from four projects (Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein) that shine a light on technical, healthcare and trade-oriented vocational programmes, addressing the following questions:

• What language resources do learners bring to their VET programmes?
• How can newly arrived young people enrolled in VET programmes be supported to develop communicative competence in the locally dominant language?
• What additional languages do young people enrolled in VET programmes learn privately or desire to learn in the future?
• What is the role of English as a curricular subject, a language of instruction or a communicative tool in VET programmes in non-English dominant countries?

Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from VET learners, as well as classroom and work-place educators, we discuss our findings with the help of critical perspectives and socio-culturally informed theoretical frameworks.

The findings presented in our symposium confirm for instance that, on the one hand, VET cohorts are likely to be highly international and multilingual (Meier & Styger), and on the other hand, that learners require language support not only to develop the language of learning where necessary (Andreassen; Brekke & Kjelaas) but also additional languages in which they may already have competences or in which they desire to develop competences (Andersen; Meier & Styger). Languages are also tied to identities (Meier & Styger; Andreassen), while apprentices’ language competences enable internal and external work communication and socialisation (Meier & Styger).

Our work has implications for VET colleges and workplaces that may not always be aware of their learners’ language competences or communicative needs. Our joint findings and considerations lead us to formulate a series of recommendations, which we will present in our symposium, above all that this research area deserves greater attention by VET programme leaders, teachers, workplace instructors, as well as respective employers, business leaders, policy makers and researchers. This is of significance, because linguistically diverse VET cohorts and work contexts are a realty for many; because workplace integration and learning is related to wider social participation and inclusion; and because multilingualism is a potential asset for individuals, employers and the wider economy.

Two thirds of young people in Switzerland (WBF, 2017) and half in the Principality of Liechtenstein (LFL, 2021) choose a vocational programme rather than academic-focussed education. These cohorts are often rather multilingual, in our study 71% of surveyed apprentices (n=674) reported that they can speak three or more languages. However, the role of language diversity, language use and language socialisation more widely in vocational programmes seems severely under-researched (Coray & Duchêne 2017). Guided by language socialisation (Meier, 2018) and social cohesion frameworks (Meier & Smala, 2022), we developed the following questions: What languages do apprentices bring to their VET? How do they develop and use their languages? What role do languages play in their linguistic socialisation in different professions? We explored these questions with technical and trade-focussed apprentices, such as masons, electricians, mechanics and hairdressers. VET programmes in Switzerland and Liechtenstein are of the dual-track variety. In our case, the apprentices all attended a vocational college in eastern Switzerland right on the border to Liechtenstein. Their workplace training thus took place at a host company in either Switzerland or Liechtenstein, where German dialects are the predominant mode of communication. In Spring 2022, we collected 674 survey responses and conducted 11 interviews with apprentices in nine professions. In Autumn 2022, we then invited academics, employers, teachers and policy makers to respond to our first findings via a survey (n=90). Consequently, we analysed and interpreted these findings together. Findings related to apprentices (Meier & Styger, 2022) show that the participants in our study have 42+ nationalities, and they can use 56 languages and varieties at different levels of proficiency, thus constituting a very international and multilingual group that brings much linguistic capital to their work and learning. The learner findings further suggest that a majority of apprentices are interested in learning an additional language in the future, but that language learning opportunities at present (at college, at work and privately) are distributed rather unevenly. Similarly, apprentices in some professions are likely to be exposed to more than one language at work, where many mediate and translate between languages, thus smoothing communication in work teams and with customers. Alternatively, in other professions exposure to several languages is less likely, as German, or dialect, is often deemed predominant in their work. In this talk, we will unpack and discuss these results, taking into account stakeholder views, and draw conclusions for practice, policy and research.

Corary, R. & Duchêne (2017). Mehrsprachigkeit und Arbeitswelt: Literaturübersicht. Wissenschaftliches Kompetenzzentrums für Mehrsprachigkeit. Universität Fribourg. LFL (2021) Satistikportal. Bildungsverläufe. Landesverwaltung Fürstentum Liechtenstein. https://www.statistikportal.li/de/themen/bildung/bil-dungsverlaeufe Meier, G. (2018). Multilingual socialisation in education: Introducing the M-SOC approach. Language Education and Multilingualism: the Langscape Journal, 1, 103-125 Meier, G. & Smala, S. (2022). Languages and Social Cohesion: A Transdisciplinary Literature Review. Routledge. Advances in Sociology. Meier, G. & Styger, E. (2022). Zwischenbericht zum Projekt Mehrsprachigkeit in der gewerblich-industriellen Berufsbildung: Erste Analysen und Erkenntnisse zur Perspektive der Lernenden aus der Schweiz und dem Fürstentum Liechtenstein. https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/m-voc/reports-and-surveys/ WBF (2017). Förderung des Fremdsprachenerwerbs in der beruflichen Grundbildung. Eidgenössisches Departement für Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung WBF. www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/de/home/dienstleis-tungen/publikationen/publikationsdatenbank/fremdsprachen.html

In Norway, a high proportion of newly arrived immigrant students (NAIS) are enrolled in vocational education (Blixen & Hellne-Halvorsen, 2022). Oral communicative skills in Norwegian are foundational in the professions that these students are training for (Batenburg et al., 2020). Therefore, a strong emphasis on oracy in the locally dominant language is important in VET in general, and in VET for NAIS in particular. However, to our knowledge, research on oracy in vocational education is scarce. Whereas the emphasis on literacy and literacy skills in both academic education and VET has increased over the last 10-20 years (e.g., Visén, 2021; Hellne-Halvorsen, 2019), oracy has received far less attention both in research and classroom practice (Batenburg et al., 2020). Thus, it is crucial to explore what characterizes the oracy demands in various professions, as well as what role these abilities play in the training of the students. In this study, we therefore investigate the following questions: What do educators in VET perceive as the key requirements for oral skills in Norwegian in their professions? What part does oracy in Norwegian play in the training of students? And how are Norwegian oral communicative skills assessed? The study started in January 2023. Qualitative data was collected from seven upper secondary schools with vocational programmes, mainly in the Healthcare, Childhood and Youth development-programmes as well as in Technical and Industrial production-programmes. Both educators (N=30) and students (N=30) participated in our study. The data analysis is guided by a sociocultural framework, especially the principles of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) (e.g., Gibbons, 2015). This will enable us to develop insights into the oracy demands and training in VET, crucial for both educational policy and practice, especially with regards to better targeted pedagogies for newly arrived and linguistically diverse immigrant students. We will share first findings and main themes in this talk.

Batenburg, E. v. Oostdam, R., Gelderen, A. v., Fukkink, R & Jong, N. d. (2020). The effects of instructional focus and task type on pre-vocational learners’ ability in EFL oral interaction. ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 171(2), pp. 153–190. Blixen, T. B. & Hellne-Halvorsen, E.B. (2022). All teachers are language teachers – A Norwegian Study on How Teachers in Vocational Education and Training Programs Experience and Reflect on Complementary Literacy Practices and Didactic Strategies in Multicultural Classrooms. In: L. M. Herrera, M. Teräs, P. Gougoulakis & J. Kontio (eds). Migration and Inclusion in Work Life – The Role of VET. Emerging issues in Research in Vocational Education and Training, vol. 7. Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning. Heineman. Hellne-Halvorsen, E. B. (2019). To kontekster – to skrivepraksiser? Skriving i skole og bedrift i fag- og yrkesopplæringen. Nordic Journal of Vocational Education and Training (NJVET) 1 (2019). Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research (2021). Norwegian White Paper 2020-2021 The Completion Reform [Norwegian: Fullføringsreformen]. Visén, P. (2021). Tricks of the trade or situated literacy – disciplinary reading literacy practices in vocational education. Nordic Journal of Literacy Research 7(1).

In Norway, workplaces are becoming increasingly multilingual, and the use of English is more prevalent than ever in the professional sphere (Språkrådet, 2018). Still, Norwegian proficiency is a significant factor in employability and success across professional settings (e.g. Staalesen et al., 2018). In line with national language and education policies (e.g. Innst. 253 L, 2020) and requirements in the professional realm, Norwegian is the dominant language in mainstream VET. However, exceptions exist, and in this paper I explore such a case: A hairdressing class where the teaching materials are in English rather than Norwegian, even though teaching, assessments and the students’ future working lives are mainly Norwegian-monolingual. I report from a VET class in which I conducted linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in 2020-2021. The participants are ten linguistically diverse students and one teacher in the hairdressing program. The teacher reports that the students overall are not advanced English users. Despite this and the Norwegian-monolingual education context, the class uses a mainly English-language digital multimodal learning platform when working with the hairdressing/vocational subject. The platform replaces the subject’s textbooks, and offers a range of resources, e.g. instruction videos, vocabulary quizzes, etc. in English. I investigate how the hairdressing teacher and the students orient to the digital platform in their work with the vocational subject. Core questions are: What are the perceived benefits and challenges of the digital learning resource? Are the affordances of the digital resource perceived to outweigh the (primarily linguistic) limitations and challenges it poses in a diverse vocational classroom? Analytically, the study adheres to a linguistic-ethnographic methodology (Copland & Creese, 2015). The theoretical framing includes language ideologies and elite multilingualism (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019), and Bourdieu’s (1986, 1991) capital. Preliminary results suggest that the digital platform is viewed as an asset in the teaching of the vocational subject, especially by the vocational teacher, despite the language-related challenges some students experience. This speaks to the relative anglonormativity in Norwegian educational settings (e.g. Beiler, 2021). The students’ positions vis-a-vis the platform vary more. The use of the English-language digital platform (and its specialized vocational vocabulary) is arguably incongruent with the linguistic profile of the student group and the established norm of using Norwegian in the classroom. Moreover, it contrasts the formal curricular framework of the vocational program subject, which has a Norwegian-monolingual form and intention.

Barakos, E., & Selleck, C. (2019). Elite multilingualism: Discourses, practices, and debates. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 40(5), 361–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2018.1543691 Beiler, I. R. (2021). Marked and unmarked translanguaging in accelerated, mainstream, and sheltered English classrooms. Multilingua, 40(1), 107–138. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2020-0022 Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Polity Press. Copland, F., & Creese, A. (2015). Linguistic ethnography: Collecting, analysing and presenting data. Sage. Innst. 253 L. (2020). Innstilling frå familie- og kulturkomiteen om Lov om språk (språklova). Familie- og kulturkomiteen. https://www.stortinget.no/no/Saker-og-publikasjoner/Publikasjoner/Innstillinger/Stortinget/2020-2021/inns-202021-253l/?all=true Språkrådet. (2018). Språk i Norge – kultur og infrastruktur. https://www.sprakradet.no/globalassets/diverse/sprak-i-norge_web.pdf Staalesen, P. D., Heglum, M. A., & Berg, H. (2018). Arbeidsgiverperspektivet i inkludering. En undersøkelse blant NHOs medlemsbedrifter. (Rapport No. 2018–12). Proba samfunnsanalyse. https://www.nho.no/contentassets/b36417854c2749d48b243abd4ccf4f34/190322_probarapport-18047-arbeidsgiverperspektivet-i-inkludering-.pdf

In Norway, most newly arrived minority language speaking students choose the vocational path in upper secondary school. Only half of this group complete their education within 6 years and for those who have a limited school background, the completion rate is expected to be even lower (Integrerings- og mangfoldsdirektoratet, 2021; Thorud, 2017). Migrant students are faced with several challenges when entering the mainstream school system and linguistic barriers have been identified as a major obstacle (Bakken & Hyggen, 2018; Dewilde & Kulbrandstad, 2016; Lunga et al., 2020). The education of newly arrived students has been a relatively under-researched area, particularly when it comes to the students’ own experiences and to the many transitions they go through in the educational system (Jama, 2018; Nilsson Folke, 2017). Furthermore, vocational education has overall received little attention in research and theory development (Hellne-Halvorsen, 2014; Herrera et al., 2022). This study attempts to address these voids by investigating one student’s experiences with transitioning from an introduction class for newly arrived migrants to vocational school. I investigated this student’s experiences related to first language use in the two school contexts by asking: 1) what characterizes his experiences concerning first language use in the transition from introduction class to vocational school? And, 2) How can these experiences be understood? I will share findings from a relevant study drawing on data material from critical linguistic ethnographic fieldwork where I followed 22-year-old Hamid in his transition from an introduction class for newly arrived migrants to vocational school. Connections, or potentially disconnections, with language practices in students’ previous school contexts appeared as a key element towards understanding linguistic challenges experienced in vocational school. The use of first languages as a resource to both second language and subject content learning became an increasingly important factor as Hamid transitioned to vocational school. Data material consists of fieldnotes from participatory observation and transcripts of in-depth interviews with the student, his teachers, and school leaders. I consider ideological and pedagogical underpinnings influencing the student’s experiences by drawing on critical sociolinguistic theory on language and language learning.

Bakken, A., & Hyggen, C. (2018). Trivsel og utdanningsdriv blant minoritetselever i videregående. Hvordan forstå karakterforskjeller mellom elever med ulik innvandrerbakgrunn? NOVA. Dewilde, J., & Kulbrandstad, L. A. (2016). Nyankomne barn og unge i den norske utdanningskonteksten. Nordisk tidsskrift for andrespråksforskning, 11(2), 13–33. Hellne-Halvorsen, E. B. (2014). Skrivepraksiser i yrkesfaglige utdanningsprogrammer [Universitetet i Oslo]. I Norbok. https://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-nb_digibok_2019091977070 Herrera, L. M., Teräs, M., Gougoulakis, P., & Kontio, J. (Red.). (2022). Migration and inclusion in work life—The role of VET (Bd. 7). Atlas Akademi. Integrerings- og mangfoldsdirektoratet. (2021). Gjennomføring av videregående opplæring blant unge innvandrere. IMDi. https://www.imdi.no/om-integrering-i-norge/kunnskapsoversikt/gjennomforing-av-videregaende-opplaring--blant-unge-innvandrere/ Jama, H. (2018). Nyankomne elever i det norske utdanningssystemet: Overgangen fra innføringstilbud til ordinær undervisning [Masteroppgave, Universitetet i Oslo]. https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/64321/Masteroppgave-Hibo-Jama---v-r-2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Lunga, W., Bislimi, F., Momani, F., Nouns, I., & Sobane, K. (2020). Barriers to access to education for migrant children. G20 Insights. https://www.g20-insights.org/policy_briefs/barriers-to-access-to-education-for-migrant-children/ Nilsson Folke, J. (2017). Lived transitions: Experiences of learning and inclusion among newly arrived students. Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University. Thorud, E. (2017). Immigration and Integration 2016–2017 (s. 180). regjeringen.no/contentassets/005e1d69ad5141958451b8770552dab9/immigration-and-integration-20162017.pdf

This workshop is conducted in the framework of the Baltic Research Programme Project “Vocational education and workplace training enhancing social inclusion of at-risk young people” (No. LT08-2-LMT-K-01-010). The main research goal of the project is to investigate the ways in which vocational education and training (VET) can enhance social inclusion of young people at-risk, both in terms of combating school dropout and promoting transitions between various (social) learning contexts, such as school-work transition in the Baltic countries and Norway. Among others one of the research goals, which will be discussed in this workshop, is conducting “Educational Learning Lab intervention” in all partner countries, in order to pilot and evaluate innovative approaches, methods and technology-based tools for supporting both young people at risk for social exclusion to develop their key skills (vocational and personal) and teachers in VET to advance their instructional approach and practices.

The intervention study in Estonia is focused on development of competence of vocational teachers/support personnel to support emotional wellbeing of young people at risk for social exclusion. The intervention is implemented in several VET schools of Estonia. It consists of 5 contact sessions including executing of independent tasks by the teachers between the sessions. During these training sessions VET teachers and pedagogical staff members are introduced to strategies and methods to support group dynamics, collaborative codesign in the classroom, mindfulness practices.

The intervention study in Latvia seeks to strengthen the competence of vocational schools administration, vocational teachers/support personnel to support social and emotional wellbeing of young people at risk for social exclusion through findings of the EmpowerVET project and the Baltic Nordic experience and the results of the European Commission project "New European Bauhaus" to involve the risk groups in the ecosystems. The interventions in Latvia focuses on updating the competence and knowledge of the relevant staff by sharing the experience and findings of the Baltic and Nordic partners as well as improving their professional competence in special courses as well as disscussing materials in special program on TV.

The intervention study in Lithuania focuses on the development of competence of VET teachers and trainers in design and implementation of propaedeutic VET curricula (modules) for vocational integration of young people at risk for social exclusion. It seeks to raise awareness of VET teachers and trainers on the propaedeutic qualities of the VET curricula which facilitate motivation of at-risk VET students to learn and integrate themselves in the labour market, as well as to provide methodical know-how on how to design and apply propaedeutic VET curricula for training of at-risk VET students. The intervention is based on the 4 workshops for the VET teachers and trainers which is held in the 5 VET centres of Lithuania.

In Norway, the intervention is initiated by the county administration and carried out by language teachers in collaboration with supervisors in the workplace. The intervention is to provide language teacher resources to VET schools to support students with a migration background, who need additional support to learn the Norwegian language. The intervention supporting the development of students’ language and communicative competence is targeted to the apprenticeship phase, i.e. the workplace practice. Two VET schools are participating in the intervention, collaborating with a language teacher hired for intervention purposes. Each language teacher is assigned 10 students (apprentices), which they teach, guide, and supervise. Besides language and communication, and in collaboration with workplace supervisors, the teachers support the students’ cultural socialization in building bridges between the school - workplace / apprenticeship transition.

All the interventions are implemented in the period from September 2022 to April 2023.

Summary

Practitioner research has the potential to contribute to educational renewal. However, in order to successfully contribute to sustainable educational renewal, it is crucial that knowledge, insights and products delivered through practitioner research is utilized by teacher teams. In what way can a researcher stimulate knowledge utilization? In this workshop knowledge utilization is viewed as a dynamic process, where researchers, research products and end-users continuously interact. Both researcher and end user use knowledge utilization strategies (Castelijns & Vermeulen, 2017). Based on a recent NRO study, this workshop will present a practical coding scheme that will help participants to gain insights into knowledge utilization strategies. The coding scheme is illustrated with practical examples. Participants will actively engage with the coding scheme to identify and analyse the knowledge utilization strategies used by themselves and their end-users. In the end, participants create a personal knowledge utilization plan that will enable them to increase the impact of their research on educational renewal.

Theoretical background

Contributing to educational renewal through knowledge utilization is one of the most important goals of practitioner research. However, achieving this goal is characterized by challenges and difficulties (Van Schaik, 2018). In order to successfully contribute to educational renewal, knowledge obtained through practitioner research must be utilized by teacher teams. Following Castelijns and Vermeulen (2017), we consider knowledge utilization as a dynamic interaction between the researcher, the research product (which can have many shapes or forms), and the end-user (teacher teams). Castelijns and Vermeulen (2017) distinguish between knowledge-utilization strategies of end users and researchers. End-user strategies are (Cain, 2015, Landry et al., 2001):

1) Receiving and retrieving knowledge

2) Accepting and adopting knowledge

3) Applying and using knowledge

4) Using knowledge in collaboration with researchers for educational renewal through co-creation/transformation

In addition, Castelijns and Vermeulen (2017) describe researcher strategies for knowledge utilization. These four strategies can be viewed as the supply-oriented counterparts of strategies used by the end-users:

1) Sharing and transferring knowledge

2) Influencing and convincing end users to use the knowledge

3) Developing applications and procedures to promote knowledge utilization

4) Utilize knowledge in collaboration with end users to renew education through co-creation

These strategies were specified and operationalized in the study ‘Working on sustainable educational renewal in the context of Practoraten’, financed by the The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO).

Practoraten are centres of expertise in senior secondary vocational education (SSVE) that are installed to foster educational renewal by means of practice-based research.

For six Practoraten, current practices aimed to promote knowledge utilization were compared to desired practices using the Context-Intervention-Mechanisms-Outcome-logic (CIMO). Interviews with project leaders and members of the Practoraten uncovered which knowledge utilization strategies they used. End-users filled in questionnaires to investigate their interaction with the research products as provided by the Practoraten. Based on the knowledge utilization strategies by Castelijns and Vermeulen (2017), a coding scheme was formulated. This coding scheme was enriched with practical examples.

This study provided insights into the interaction between knowledge utilization strategies of the Practoraten, the research products and their end users. The insights showed the extent to which Practoraten succeed in stimulating the use of knowledge, products, and insights among their targeted end users, or in other words, the extent to which they succeed in stimulating educational renewal.