Conference Agenda

This symposium collects four papers that look at relevant dimensions of vocational education and training (VET) for international comparisons. Papers will include conceptual considerations as well as empirical findings from different countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom and the USA). Specific emphasis will be put on the concept of occupations (and related concepts such as vocation or profession) that is often neglected in comparative research on VET. Instead, recent comparisons have concentrated on the organisation of educational programmes and structures, the integration of general content into VET or mechanisms of systemic governance (e.g. Busemeyer &Trampusch, 2012, Nylund & Virolainen 2019 or Pilz 2016).

This type of governance research is, however, to a certain extent blind to questions that are directly focussing at other very relevant issues for educational research, such as the organization and practice of vocational teaching and learning in companies and schools or the subjective side of learning processes and its results. Whilst socio-cultural accounts of vocational and work-based learning and related concepts such as boundary crossing or the concept of tacit knowing have developed some significance in the international VET research discourse, they have only scarcely been tackled by comparative research. And this despite the fact that they constitute particularities that make VET distinct from general or academic education, and hence, are at the heart of vocational education (Cedefop 2017).

On the one hand, (comparative) VET research has to start from the assumption that it is different from other forms or programmes of education and therefore needs a common concept of “occupation” or “vocation”; on the other hand, the concept of occupation is questioned repeatedly. Some of the most important reasons for this are the discussion about the decreasing importance of occupations in life histories with quite different jobs, the decreasing importance of occupations in increasingly liberalized and flexible labour markets and the disappearance of entire occupations due to the rapid development of digital technologies.

The first contribution will introduce a framework that was developed in two Cedefop-Projects over the last six years and that is intended to provide a frame of reference for the comparison of VET-systems and concepts. It integrates three perspectives on VET: an educational system perspective, a socio-economic perspective and an epistemological-pedagogical perspective. In accordance with the three perspectives the symposium will include considerations from different disciplines and empirical fields of research and reflect on the significance of “occupation” as an important parameter of VET research. This includes sociological, educational and economic considerations. At the end of each contribution findings from all the contributions will be related to the framework.

The second contribution looks at the development of occupation as the reference system for VET in a Swiss-German comparison and relates it to overall developments in the vocational education and training systems of the two countries.

The third contribution represents a look at changes relevant to VET from the socio-economic perspective and is based on insights and theoretical concepts from a number of interviews that were carried out with eminent academic experts from different countries and disciplines in the relation between rapid technological changes and the way how work is organised.

The last paper will analyse the significance of the concept of “occupation” and “occupational practice” for the comparison of VET and how this integrates into the general framework. Specific emphasis will be laid upon the role of “occupation” and “occupational practice” as a “tertium comparationis” in comparative research.

Finally, a discussant advocating a psychological perspective on vocational education and "occupation" as a means of individual growth will round out the needed multidisciplinary view of “occupation” and VET.

Comparative research on VET in Europe has taken on a new dimension as a result of the enlargements of the European Union and increased educational cooperation since the mid-1990s (Clarke, Westerhuis, & Winch, 2021). Especially due to the accession of Central and Eastern European countries to the European Union, the variety of systems to be considered as well as the intensity of research has increased massively in the last two decades (Tūtlys, Markowitsch, Pavlin, & Winterton, 2022). To manage this increasing complexity various VET typologies have been developed (for excellent overviews see for instance Rageth and Renold (2017), Gonon (2016) or Bosch (2016)). However, putting national VET systems into prefabricated boxes runs the risk of overlooking national specificities of VET and of reproducing cultural prejudices. Apart from that, many typologies focus on a very limited set of dimensions of comparison. More open systems for the analysis or descriptions of countries’ VET systems tend to be the exception. The paper presents a new framework for comparing VET building on previous conceptual frameworks in particular on works by Moodie (2008); Rojewski (2009) and Billett (2011) and uses design principles of the ‘morphological analysis’ (Zwicky, 1969). The framework has been developed jointly by an interdisciplinary group of VET researchers over a seven-year period as part of Cedefop's research on the future of VET. It essentially consists of 50 dimensions to analyse VET systems, as well as parts of them, structured according to three overlapping main perspectives: an epistemological and pedagogical perspective, an education system perspective, and a socio-economic or labour market perspective. It is expected that the research paper presenting the framework will be published in spring 2023. The presentation will focus on the methodological principles of the framework, illustrate various applications and provide an outlook on a possible new theory of comparative VET research.

Billett, S. (2011). Vocational Education - Purposes, Traditions and Prospects. Dordrecht: Springer. Bosch, G. (2016). Typologien nationaler Berufsbildungssysteme [Typologies of national VET systems]. Zeitschrift für Berufs-und Wirtschaftspädagogik, 112(1), 15-36. Clarke, L., Westerhuis, A., & Winch, C. (2021). Comparative VET European research since the 1980s: Accommodating changes in VET systems and labour markets. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 73(2), 295-315. Gonon, P. (2016). Zur Dynamik und Typologie von Berufsbildungssystemen. Eine internationale Perspektive [On the Dynamic and typology of VET systems. An international perspective]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 62(3), 307-322. Moodie, G. (2008). From vocational to higher education : an international perspective. Berkshire, England ; New York, NY: SRHE and Open University Press. Rageth, L., & Renold, U. (2017). The linkage between the education and employment systems: Ideal types of vocational education and training programs. Rojewski, J. W. (2009). A conceptual framework for technical and vocational education and training. In R. Maclean & W. D. (Eds.), International handbook of education for the changing world of work (Vol. 1, pp. 19-39): Springer. Tūtlys, V., Markowitsch, J., Pavlin, S., & Winterton, J. (Eds.). (2022). Skill formation in Central and Eastern Europe. Bern: Peter Lang. Zwicky, F. (1969). Discovery, Invention, Research through the Morphological Approach. Toronto.

The development of the notion of occupation (“Beruf”) as an organising principle of VET in Germany and Switzerland (and beyond) will be discussed. Specifically, dual apprenticeships, like in German-speaking countries and regions are closely linked to occupations. That is why in both countries around 230-320 different occupations are designed for learning and acquiring skills through VET. Specific organizations (in Germany employer and employee representatives and chambers, in Switzerland -interprofessional ad hoc-committees) are entitled to steer– together with firms, state and school representatives - the ongoing development and innovation of dual apprenticeships in VET. Professional associations play a dominant role in defining and shaping occupations and VET requirements and renewing the regulations for learning an occupation. Although occupations – in times of globalization, technical changes and in the context of economic uncertainties, in short in the knowledge economy - are not any more stable concepts, nevertheless they set standards and requirements in fulfilling a highly qualified work. Thus, debates if occupations loose their importance, are popping up from time to time, do not really fit to the fact, that while some occupations disappear, in the meantime others emerge. The contribution is based on an analysis of aims – that can be located in the framework for comparing VET- that are expressed by different actors within the reform discussions in the two countries. Occupations reveal to be quite an important reference for all actors in the field regarding the reform of a national VET system as a whole, but also for defining the required competences and skills for specific tasks and for the syllabus. Although the concept of occupation is quite fluid, occupations are crucial for the further development of dual apprenticeships because they link work qualifications in the firm with educational standards, forwarded by professional organizations and state bodies. These insights are also important for countries, which recently developed apprenticeships.

Bürgi, R., Eigenmann, P. & Gonon, P. (2022). Reshaping the Role of Professional Associations and the Federal State in Swiss VET: Ambiguous Reactions to the Knowledge Economy. In Emmenger, P. & Bonoli, G. (eds.) VET and the knowledge economy (65-75). Oxford: University Press Bürgi, R. and Gonon, Ph. (2021). Varieties within a Collective Skill Formation System: How VET governance in Switzerland is shaped by associations. In International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IJRVET), 8,1, 46-64. Deissinger, T. (1998): Beruflichkeit als organisierendes Prinzip der deutschen Berufsausbildung. Markt-Schwaben: Eusl. Gonon, Ph. (2017). Renaissance der dualen Berufsbildung durch Modernisierung. In: Schlögl, Peter, Stock, Michaela, Moser, Daniela, Schmid, Kurz & Gramlinger, Franz (Hrsg.): Berufsbildung – eine Renaissance? Bielefeld: Bertelsmann, S, 44-60. Gonon, Ph. (2017): Beruflichkeit: In: Berufsbildung- Zeitschrift für Theorie-Praxis- Dialog, 71,164, 1. Gonon, Ph. (2016). Beruf und Profession im Kontext der Expansion der schweizerischen Berufsbildung. In: Zimmermann, Th., Jütte, W. & Horvath, F. (Hrsg.): Arenen der Weiterbildung. Bern: hep Verlag, S. 190-199 Kutscha, G. (1992). 'Entberuflichung' und 'Neue Beruflichkeit' – Thesen und Aspekte zur Modernisierung der Berufsbildung und ihrer Theorie. In: Zeitschrift für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik 88, 7, 535-548

This contribution is based on the analysis of a series of interviews (see as an example Latour 2018) with twelve leading academic researchers from France, the United Kingdom, Austria, the USA and Germany on the impact of digitalisation on the economy, work and society as a whole. The multiple perspectives expressed in these interviews constitute a widening of the discourse on the relationship between work and technology that can be made productive for the discussion on vocational education and training and the role of occupations. The interviews are available online as approximately 25-minute videos and took place in 2018 and 2019. They broaden the view beyond the common thesis of the substitution of human labour by digital technological solutions to various considerations regarding the actors, effects and opportunities resulting from technological change. The statements and present analyses are to be understood as theoretical markers of a strangely neglected field. Technical change is known to have an influence, but the mechanisms are seldomly explicated. They are also said to have an impact on occupations (see the economic substitution-idea (Frey/Osborne 2017), but occupations are only seen as statistical, time-irrelevant concepts. Thus, the analysis of theoretical approaches provides an insight into the effect of technologies on the structures of human-technology coexistence and their interdependencies, while it also points to very current specific conditions that are said to be capable of dissolving and altering even political and economic structures. This contribution to the symposium will be an extension to prior analysis of the interviews (Tiemann, Helmrich 2019) with a designated look at the relevance of the different approaches to comparative work on VET and the role of the concept of occupation, theoretically and statistically.

Frey, Carl B.; Osborne, Michael A. (2017): The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization? In: Technological Forecasting and Social Change (114) C, S. 254-280. Tiemann, Michael; Helmrich, Robert (2019): Auf dem Weg zu einer KI-Welt von morgen. Soziale, ökonomische und technologische Entwicklungen. In: Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis (3), S. 19–22. Latour, B. (2018) ‘Theory-Interview on the Relationship Between Societal and Technological Change’, www.bibb.de/dokumente/pdf/a12_latour_kurz-transkript.pdf .

This contribution is based on reflections on the further development and the application of the framework presented by Symposium Paper I. Specific emphasis will be laid upon the role of “occupation” and “occupational practice” as a “tertium comparationis” for comparative VET research. In an analysis of concepts of curriculum and comparative research in VET we found that the literature that in many cases does not refer explicitly to the notion of occupation or vocation. It only does so in an implicit way. Sometimes approaches refer to theory and practice, however, given the close connection between the knowledge and the practice itself, which is a genuine feature of VET a simple theory-practice-divide is not useful (see also Dietzen 2017, 2020). Based on concepts and terms from the socio-cultural approach (Billett, 2017; Billett et al., 2018; Harteis, 2018) we examine if ‘occupational practice’ can serve as the major reference system for comparative VET. Concepts from this approach, such as situated knowledge, canonical occupational knowledge and vocational knowledge will be located within the framework for comparative VET. Situated knowledge is the knowledge that is required at certain workplaces or in specific organisations – the concept remains largely within the scope of the socio-economic perspective. Canonical occupational knowledge is the knowledge that is generally accepted as the knowledge required to practice a certain occupation and spans different perspectives from the framework. Situated and canonical occupational knowledge - can become ‘vocational knowledge’ by processes of learning, internalisation and identification located in the focus of the epistemological-pedagogical perspective. In the contribution the benefits and limitations of making “occupational practice” the major reference for comparative research in VET will be discussed based on examples from the prior contributions and with reference to other concepts from VET research that were analysed in producing the framework for comparative research mentioned in the first contribution.

Billett, Stephen (2017): Theorising occupational practice and its learning: Personal, institutional and brute factors. In: Peter Grootenboer, Christine Edwards-Groves und Sarojni Choy (Hg.): Practice theory perspectives of Education and Pedagogy. Dordrecct: Springer, S. 67–86. Billett, Stephen; Harteis, Christian; Gruber, Hans (2018): Developing occupational expertise through everyday work activities and interactions. In: The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance, 2nd ed. New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge handbooks in psychology), S. 105–126. Dietzen, Agnes (2017): Knowledge Concepts in Competence-based VET Research Perspectives on Cognitivist and Social-Constructivist Approaches. In: Martin Mulder (Hg.): Competence-based vocational and professional education, Bd. 23. Cham: Springer (Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects), S. 719–737. Dietzen, Agnes (2020): Implizites Wissen, Arbeitsvermögen und berufliche Handlungskompetenz. In: Rico Hermkes, Georg Hans Neuweg und Tim Bonowski (Hg.): Implizites Wissen. Berufs- und wirtschaftspädagogische Annäherungen. 1. Auflage. Bielefeld: wbv Media (Wirtschaft - Beruf - Ethik, 38), S. 87–107.