The study concentrates on the educational change process in Estonian VET as presented in school leaders` discourses. The Soviet VET system in Estonia, an extremely centralized and tightly related to planned economy, was completely interrupted in the process of the regime change in the early 1990´s. At that time, the paradigm of vocational education changed radically, transforming from “Soviet” dual system to the school-based system. During the last two decades several reform initiatives has been introduced including introduction of occupational standards and qualifications system, development and implementation national curricula, transformation of the vocational school network and merger of several previous vocational schools into regional vocational training centres (Ümarik et al., 2014). In spite of the implementation of extensive reform policies, the quality of training and practical training offered in different VET schools varies considerably (Ümarik et al., 2010:148). The top-down initiated reform policies has been adopted by vocational schools in different speed and via different adaptation strategies.

This paper focuses on educational change process by analysing discursive practices of leaders` of vocational schools. The educational reform policy implementation has been regarded not as a linear process with discrete stages of implementation but as a complex process of several stakeholders at different levels involved (Ball, 1994) and trespassing different cycles of re-interpretation leading to “mutual adaptation” (McLaughlin, 2008; Anderson, 2010). The agency of individual and collective actors defines much of the direction of educational changes. The sense-making of the changes by central agencies in the reform process (teachers but also school leaders) play a central role in reform policy implementation (Drake & Sherin, 2006; Fullan 2007). New policies introduced to schools has been interpreted and selected by the school leaders who can adapt the policy requirements suitable to the school context. Second round of the re-interpretation and sense-making of changes take place on the school level by teachers and other school staff. During these sense-making processes the original meaning of the new requirements may be re-interpreted. Agencies need to generate discursive practices on change processes and discursive adaptation strategies in order to handle changes. The question having both practical and theoretical value is what have been the schools` strategies in adapting successfully with the changes resulting from the reform policies. On the other hand, as evidence from the previous studies have shown, the need to adapt with the changing situations can have a triggering effect on novel grassroots` level educational innovations (Wallace and Pocklington, 2002) that might have a significant impact on the development of VET system in a long run. The question of interest in this paper is how the change agencies themselves (school leaders in this case) interpret the reform policies.

The discourse analysis is based on three central research questions:

• How the reform processes in VET has been interpreted?

• What kind of adaptation strategies has been discursively constructed?

• How has the vocational school`s identity been constructed?

   

Although the empirical study concentrates mainly on the analysis of the discourses constructed by school leaders, the results will be interpreted in the light of the specific school context as well as the wider context of the vocational education and training policy. The analysis of interview extracts in this paper mainly concentrates on most discussed VET policy area – re-organization of the network of vocational schools. The analysis of discursive practices of school leaders reveals several problematic aspects and contradictions on the field of VET in Estonia.

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