Conference Agenda

Technical and vocational education (TVET) in Ireland is delivered through the further and higher education (HE) institutions at a national level. There are sixteen regional Education and Training Boards (ETBs), and a consolidated HE sector of traditional universities and five Technological Universities. Due to their prior history as Institutes of Technology (IoTs) with a regional focus on the development of technical and vocational education, the recently amalgamated Technology University (TU) sector is strategically positioned to deliver on TVET qualifications to advanced and higher levels nationwide. A significant number of TU lecturers have had previous technical, vocational and professional careers prior to working in a HE organisation. They bring the knowledge, skills and experience of working in practice-based settings to their teaching role in TVET educational programmes.

The aim of this research study is to explore the experiences of individuals who have moved from a technical, vocational or professional career to teaching their expert knowledge and skills in a TVET programme in higher education.

Primary research questions:

Why do practitioners make a career change decision to teach TVET programmes in technological universities? What are TU lecturers’ experiences of their career change from practitioner to teaching their technical, vocational and/or professional knowledge and skills?

The objectives are:

1. To explore what can be learnt from TVET faculty experiences to inform successful career transitions from practitioner to teacher.
2. To advance knowledge how an individual’s career adaptability can influence TVET teacher engagement in their work role
3. To map the transition from an expert practitioner to the teacher career cycle to inform and enhance skills, mobility and career prospects.
4. To develop a conceptual model of how prior educational background and professional experience contribute to an evolving TVET professional identity and agency.

This paper uses insights from the literature on career construction theory, teacher/educator career cycles, employee engagement, perspective transformation, identity self-states.

Career construction theory and career adaptability formed a core construct to understand why individuals move career, their readiness/willingness to change career, personal resources and adaptive behaviours (Savickas, 2021).

Teacher/educator career cycles emphasis the personal, organizational, and career cycle influences on the teacher role (Fessler & Christensen, 1992), and are support by an exploration of the stages in the teaching career (Hubermann, 1993) and evolving expectations for teacher educators (Smith and Flores, 2019).

Employee engagement informs how individuals use varying degrees of their ‘self-in-role’ to perform at work (Kahn, 1990).

Perspective transformation as described by Mezirow (1991) and Cranton, 2016) is a psychological process during which an individual identifies and challenges their existing assumptions that may lead to a change in habits of mind resulting in a new worldview.

Identity self-states and discrepancy theory (Markus & Nurius, 1986) are cognitive expressions of aspirations and fears that are connected to interpretations of past and current selves. These can also explain how prior educational backgrounds, and professional experiences contribute to evolving identities for TVET lecturers (Ping, Schellings and Beijaard, 2018).

This paper argues for an informed understanding of the benefits to HE organisations of practitioner career transition and adaptability to HEs. As TVET education and training advances, the importance of the professional knowledge and experience second-career TVET lecturers bring to their teaching cannot be underestimated. Nor the valuable connections to industry they bring that aligns closely with the TU industry-focused mission as they work to fulfil TU eligibility criteria while adapting and developing their HE careers.

For decades, international development agencies have promoted the transfer of Western vocational training models as a primary solution for youth unemployment in the Global South. Yet, in contexts dominated by vast informal economies, these top-down initiatives, which typically involve importing models of institutional architecture, such as German-style governance structures, qualification frameworks, and curriculum standards, have consistently failed to take root (Walther & Filipiak, 2007). This persistent policy failure stems from a critical oversight: a focus on formal systems at the expense of understanding the relational dynamics of how skills are actually formed, shared, and recognised in practice. If policy continues to ignore the lived realities of learning, it is doomed to repeat its past mistakes. This paper confronts this challenge directly by shifting the analytical focus away from institutional mimicry and towards an examination of relational processes. We ask: how is vocational learning accomplished in a complex, hybrid system where formal institutions are just one part of a much larger picture?

We present preliminary findings from a large-scale study on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy. The study focuses on the construction sector, a critical engine of employment and economic activity (Ofori, 2012), and spans several of the country’s diverse economic and cultural regions, including the Northwest, North-Central, and southern geopolitical zones. Nigeria provides a critical case for this research, as its TVET landscape is a complex hybrid of traditional apprenticeships, state-run technical colleges, and a growing number of donor-supported dual training initiatives. This complexity makes it an ideal setting to investigate how learning is organised when formal institutional coordination is weak, and to understand the tensions and synergies which arise as global policy models interact with local practices.

To understand this complex situation, our analysis uses two main theoretical tools. First, drawing on critical policy sociology (Ball, 1993), we examine how global TVET policies are interpreted, adapted, and often resisted by local actors, revealing the gap between policy-as-written and policy-as-practiced. Second, we use the principles of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970) to analyse the power dynamics within the learner-teacher-trainer nexus, questioning educational approaches that create passive, hierarchical relationships rather than fostering active, collaborative learning partnerships. This combined approach allows us to both deconstruct policy failures and understand the lived experiences of those navigating the vocational training system. It moves beyond a simple critique of policy transfer to offer a constructive, empirically grounded alternative for understanding skills formation.

Drawing on document analysis, a mixed-methods survey, and in-depth interviews, our preliminary findings reveal three central patterns. First, vocational learning is primarily organised around participation in productive activity, with formal instruction playing a supplementary role. Second, recognition of competence is largely socially embedded, with informal validation by experienced practitioners often holding more currency than formal certificates. Third, learning opportunities are shaped by relational asymmetries, where access to mentoring and skilled tasks is mediated by social proximity and power relations.

This paper argues that sustainable vocational development depends less on replicating external institutional forms and more on strengthening the relational configurations through which learning is accomplished. It makes three contributions: conceptually, it advances a relational theorisation of vocational learning; empirically, it provides preliminary evidence of skills formation in a major African economy; and analytically, it challenges transfer-oriented approaches by privileging relational process over institutional form.

This paper critically examines how European research has addressed the relationship between migration and Vocational Education and Training (VET, hereinafter) over the past two decades. This contribution adopts an analytical approach, drawing on the corpus assembled through a recently published systematic review (SR, hereinafter) as reported in Bell Sebastián et al. (2025), and re-analysing it from a mapping/meta-research perspective, to reflect on the most salient research trends, the conceptual frameworks employed and the areas that remain underexplored in this field, as identified by the literature, which consistently points to the limited, fragmented and uneven nature of the existing scientific production (Aleghfeli et al., 2024; Jørgensen et al., 2021).

In this way, VET systems in Europe are increasingly being positioned as crucial elements for social inclusion and labour market integration, especially in the context of growing migratory flows (Avis et al., 2022; Jeon, 2019). For this reason, research focusing on the educational trajectories of migrant students in different national contexts has steadily increased (Echeverría & Martínez-Clares, 2021; Gessler et al., 2021). However, several studies have highlighted that there has been less attention to how this body of knowledge has been constructed (Gessler & Siemer, 2020) or to gaps in institutional dimensions (Lyckander et al., 2025) that remain on the margins of academic debate.

Accordingly, this paper addresses three interrelated research questions: (1) What thematic, methodological, and theoretical patterns characterise European research on migration and VET? (2) Which dimensions of VET systems and integration processes have been underexplored in existing research? and (3) What implications do these patterns have for future research agendas and to produce knowledge that informs policymaking in the field of European VET?

Beyond organising what is already known about VET and migration, this mapping-oriented analysis allows us to observe how available knowledge has been constructed, which approaches have gained greater prominence, and which aspects have received less attention. Accordingly, a reflexive approach is adopted towards the scientific production reviewed, examining patterns of concentration and visibility across different national contexts, languages of publication and academic traditions, as well as the unequal representation of methodological approaches or the voices of students who have experienced migration. This perspective is key, as it not only helps to identify thematic gaps, but also to understand how objects of study have been defined and which dimensions have been more accessible within academic debate.

Based on this analysis, the contribution is situated within a tension that runs through much of the literature on VET and migration. On the one hand, there are approaches that explain students’ difficulties in individualised or culturalised terms; on the other, there are studies that link these obstacles to factors such as discrimination, institutional segmentation, administrative uncertainty or the limited recognition of prior trajectories, all within a broader framework of structural and institutional conditions. This highlights the need to complement the prevailing focus on students’ experiences and barriers with more systematic attention to the conditions under which VET systems operate, since it is at this level that the effectiveness of inclusive measures and the possibilities for transfer across different European contexts are largely determined, according to what has been reviewed in the literature.

Profound transformation processes – including digitalisation, demographic shifts, and growing geopolitical tensions – are reshaping labour markets in complex and often unpredictable ways (Aggarwal, 2021; OECD, 2023), with far-reaching implications for how educational knowledge, responsibility, and professionalism are understood.

As future skill requirements become less certain, the relevance of vocational education and training (VET) is gaining renewed attention at the individual, institutional, and systemic levels. In this context, professionals working in development roles within the VET sector are gaining visibility. Positioned at the intersection of educational and organisational concerns, they play a crucial role in shaping adaptive and future-oriented learning environments.

These professionals are typically employed in organisations such as employer associations, training departments of large companies, hospitals, or public administrations. Their responsibilities include the design of training programmes, coordination of learning processes across institutions, and the management of quality assurance and development. Operating at the interface of pedagogical and organisational logics, their work is both educational and strategic in nature. While these actors exert considerable influence in shaping the VET ecosystem, their pedagogical orientation and professional self-understanding remain largely under-researched – particularly when compared to the relatively well-studied roles of in-company trainers and vocational school teachers (Büchter & Meyer, 2024; Forster-Heinzer, 2019).

This study addresses the identified research gap by conducting a systematic narrative literature review. It aims to synthesise key academic contributions from the fields of vocational and adult education, with particular attention to professionals occupying strategic governance and development roles. Their work reflects and responds to changing expectations around knowledge, accountability, and the public role of education.The study is guided by the following central research question: What characterises pedagogical professionalism in vocational education, and how is the concept theoretically conceptualised in the literature on vocational and adult education?

The analysis reveals a theoretically heterogeneous landscape. Three predominant conceptual orientations were identified. The first is a structural-theoretical approach, which conceptualises professionalism in terms of system logics and institutional frameworks. The second is competence-oriented, focusing on skills, standards, and qualification profiles. The third approach is subject- or biography-related, examining identity development and meaning-making processes. Additional perspectives – such as lifelong learning, professional learning communities, and boundary crossing – function as cross-cutting frames that enrich or connect the main theoretical strands.

The review highlights the conceptual ambiguity surrounding pedagogical professionalism and illustrates the difficulty of balancing educational values with organisational objectives – a tension that becomes particularly pronounced in hybrid professional roles. These findings raise broader questions about how educational responsibility is constructed and negotiated in contexts shaped by shifting epistemic cultures, digital transformation, and increasing demands for accountability.

This study advances our understanding of how knowledge, action, and responsibility are negotiated within VET-related knowledge work by bringing a previously underexplored group of strategic professionals into the discourse on professionalisation. Its findings are particularly relevant for ongoing debates about how educational research can respond to systemic uncertainty and how theoretical models of professionalism can inform practice in times of societal transformation.

Although this study is grounded in the German-speaking VET context, its findings speak to broader European debates on the professionalisation of educational actors amidst institutional transformation. Specifically, it aligns with EU-wide initiatives aimed at strengthening VET systems through upskilling strategies, lifelong learning policies, and an increased emphasis on digital and green transition competencies (CEDEFOP, 2023).