Conference Agenda

The transition from school to work is a matter of academic, political, and practical discourse. As for Czechia, for example, the Strategy 2030+ touches on the school‑to‑work transition, mainly through its emphasis on professional competencies and the alignment of vocational education with labour‑market demands. The document highlights a focus on competencies needed for professional life, which is one of its two main strategic goals. A further modernisation of vocational education should improve the relevance of schooling to labour‑market needs, thereby targeting better transitions to employment. The following question reflects the paper's aim: Does the policy align with the key themes and positions in the relevant professional and academic discourse?
Theoretical Concepts Behind an Institutional Perspective on School‑to‑Work Transitions
An institutional perspective argues that the transition from school to work is not an individual, meritocratic process, but a trajectory structured by the institutional design of education and labour‑market systems. Comparative research shows that key theoretical concepts include institutional embeddedness, meaning that educational qualifications, occupational destinations, and youth labour‑market outcomes are shaped by historically developed structures that constrain and enable action. This approach focuses on how educational systems vary in stratification and standardisation, as initially theorised by Allmendinger (1989), who showed that differences in tracking, credential specificity, and school–employer linkages generate cross‑national variation in the predictive power of educational credentials for occupational outcomes.
A second foundational concept is that of allocation mechanisms, which refers to how education systems sort young people into labour‑market positions. Research in the Shavit & Müller tradition demonstrates that systems with strong vocational tracks and tight institutional linkages (e.g., apprenticeship systems) provide structured, predictable allocations, while more comprehensive or liberal systems rely on less formalised, competitive hiring processes. These allocation rules are mediated through institutional linkages—the organisational connections between schools, employers, labour‑market authorities, and occupational bodies that govern entry routes and credential recognition.
A further concept is transition regimes, which relate to cross‑national patterns of how institutional configurations (education systems, labour‑market institutions, welfare states) jointly shape youth trajectories. Comparative scholarship shows that countries can be placed on a continuum between occupational labour‑market (OLM) systems—characterised by strong occupational closure, certified skills, and structured pathways—and internal labour‑market (ILM) systems, where firms hire general‑skills graduates and train internally. These regime differences account for why some countries exhibit smooth and rapid transitions, while others feature prolonged, uncertain ones.
Finally, an institutional perspective highlights institutional complementarities, meaning that education systems and labour‑market institutions reinforce one another. For example, highly standardised vocational education complements coordinated employer associations and occupational labour markets, producing strong credential‑to‑occupation matching; conversely, general education complements flexible labour markets, producing more open but uncertain transitions. This theoretical framing positions school‑to‑work transitions as the product of interlocking institutional arrangements rather than individual characteristics alone.

Vocational training in Europe takes different institutional forms across countries. In Germany, it is organized through a combination of company-based training and formal vocational schooling (Fürstenau et al. 2014; Salas-Velasco 2024). A third learning location complements apprenticeship training: inter-company vocational training centers (ICVTC, “Überbetriebliche Berufsbildungsstätten”). These centers provide practice-centered vocational learning that individual companies cannot offer due to structural, technological, or safety-related limitations. They teach specialized techniques or simulate work processes that are not available in smaller firms (Franke 2013). More fundamentally, ICVTC teach core craft practices and vocational skills that are increasingly difficult to accommodate into tight work schedules and an increasing pre-manufacturing of construction materials (Pfeifer & Köhlmann-Eckel 2018). In this sense, ICVTC do not merely complement company-based training, but have become formal educational organizations that institutionalize the teaching of essential professional practices (Sachse & Eisermann 2020). ICVTC are also increasingly seen as multipliers of workplace innovations, especially with regard to digital and climate-centered transformations.

In view of the standardizing and innovating role of ICVTC, the question arises how such organizations translate broad vocational curricula into hands-on training concepts. Existing research has rarely examined ICVTC as independent organizations and has paid limited attention to how they operate between nationally standardized curricula (“Überbetriebliche Lehrunterweisung”, ICVT) and experience-based, practical forms of knowledge (Parolin & Mattozzi 2013; Heusdens et al. 2019). ICVT curricula define learning objectives, content, and time structures. However, they largely leave open how these formal specifications are translated into concrete actions, routines, and situated learning processes.

The construction sector encompasses both craft associations and the construction industry under the umbrella of ICVT curricula. The recent reform of national training regulations in the sector and the implementation of new ICVT curricula provide an opportunity to investigate how standardized knowledge changes over time. They also make it possible to examine how skill objectives are translated into local organizational action, which pedagogical and organizational challenges arise in the process, and how informal practices and knowledge guide local curriculum implementation.

In ICVTC, knowledge is acquired through doing, that is, through embodied practice and direct engagement with materials and tools (Jensen et al. 2016; Thomä 2017). Likewise, those teaching the crafts predominantly rely on a past career in a craft, drawing from experience and tacit knowledge associated with skillful repetition. Integrating into a multilevel competency framework, ICVT curricula combine changing social norms (sustainability etc.) and tacit skills that are “exceptionally difficult to teach apart from engaging in the activity itself” (Scott 1998, p. 313). Yet, teaching in ICVTC takes on an organized pedagogical setting, allowing for observation, standardization, evaluation, and comparison. Coordinators and training instructors make sense of new regulations, organizing around changes and integrating them into their local teaching plans and practice (cf. Czwarniawska 2014). Abstract teaching requirements are “transported into and made manifest in particular settings” (Nespor 1994: p. 4; cf Nonaka & Konno 1998).

In drawing on historical document analysis, the study, in a first step, typifies the form of standardized vocational knowledge as taught in ICVTC over time, the way it relates to occupational tasks, and how it is pedagogically framed. In a second step, it inquires how contemporary ICVT curricula are enacted in inter-company vocational training organizations. It uses the unique opportunity to investigate changes during the overhaul of the standardized nationwide curriculum in order to identify challenges to new knowledge frames for practice-based learning settings and contestations of knowledge abstractions with tacit and informal action within ICVTC.

In Nordic welfare services, organisational challenges such as workforce shortages and rising service demands are increasingly framed as “wicked problems” that generate tensions across interconnected systems (Rittel & Webber, 1973; Lönngren & Van Poeck, 2021). Addressing such challenges calls for partnering and for strengthening innovation and learning as capacities for coordinating knowing and acting through co-creation and co-design (Head, 2019; George et al., 2024). In welfare pathways spanning employment support, vocational education and workplace participation, integration becomes a practical, situated co-produced accomplishment.

Against this background, we examine learning circles as an integrative infrastructure for more coherent work-integrated learning (WIL) across jobcentres, the Danish social and health care VET programmes (SOSU), and elder care workplaces. We show how learning circles (Aakjær & Wegener, 2023; Avby et al., 2025) enable co-created knowledge-for-action and address the knowing–doing gap by bringing diverse experiences into shared inquiry, co-framing what matters, and agreeing practical next steps to try out in everyday practice.

Drawing on WIL and partnership-oriented WIL curriculum perspectives (Kligyte et al., 2023; Billett, 2023; Choy & Delahaye, 2011), we frame our project as an effort to strengthen adult pathways into SOSU education and care work by supporting integration across organisational arenas. While WIL research typically centres enrolled students moving between educational institutions and workplaces, our case concerns a tri-partite pathway where the focal “learner” is not necessarily (or not yet) enrolled and where integration is negotiated across jobcentres, SOSU programmes, and care workplaces. In our context, “work” is constituted by everyday care practices and workplace expectations, while “education” refers to curricular practices linking school learning and workplace participation; jobcentres shape conditions for participation through support and coordination. From a WIL perspective, the central challenge is that learning across these arenas does not automatically align: experiences can remain parallel rather than integrated.

In the paper, we therefore propose learning circles as a recurring infrastructure that scaffolds collaborative inquiry, sensemaking and integration across school–work–jobcentre settings (Wenger, 1998; Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Lotz & Aakjær, 2024). Our empirical focus is the learning that takes place between circle participants from the three organisational contexts: how they build shared understandings, negotiate expectations, and co-develop workable coordination practices that sustain more coherent pathways across settings. Learners’ perspectives inform this work through ongoing interviews, yet our primary analytic attention is on the cross-organisational learning dynamics in the circles, including how the group brings forward, explores, and revises understandings of next steps, responsibilities, and support needs.

Empirically, the paper draws on experiences from a Danish research project supporting collaboration across jobcentres, SOSU programmes and elder care workplaces to enable more sustainable career trajectories. We contribute by conceptualising learning circles as WIL infrastructure and showing empirically how cross-organisational inquiry can generate a shared learning framework and support arrangements that strengthen continuity across welfare pathways. We describe how the circles provide a shared rhythm for revisiting practice experiences in dialogue—attending to critical transitions between settings—and making sense of what happened, what it points to, and what to try next. We also show how the circle work helps shape a “mini-curriculum” across sites by clarifying shared learning intentions, agreeing next steps, and developing supportive roles and materials (e.g., practice supervisor roles, mentoring and language partners, peer-to-peer training, and brief guidelines). This curriculum-making work strengthens alignment while making differences between institutional logics explicit and workable. Finally, the paper discusses typical points of misalignment where integration breaks down and how learning circles help make such tensions discussable and workable, thereby strengthening coordination and continuity across the welfare pathway.