This study explores the political dynamics of agenda-setting in Finnish vocational education and training policy in the context of European integration from 1990-2020. The operational environment of both Finnish and European Union vocational education and training (VET) has undergone dramatic changes in the last few decades due to globalization, digitalization, and increased migration (see Avis, 2018). Both Finland and the EU have sought to harness vocational upper secondary education in response to many of the political, economic, and social changes and associated crises that they have faced in recent times, including reducing high youth unemployment after the 2010 Eurozone Crisis and using education to integrate migrants into their new host societies after the 2015 refugee crisis. Although the EU does not have its own education system, it nevertheless has a distinct education policy framework that it promotes to Member States and neighboring countries (Bartlett & Pagliarello, 2016; Powell et al., 2012).

Finnish VET has undergone significant changes over the last decade, starting with the announcement of massive budget cuts in autumn 2014 and culminating in the 2018 VET reform. The central idea of the 2018 VET reform was to create a competence-based, customer-oriented, and efficient VET system by merging adult and youth education together, increasing learning in the workplace and transforming funding to encourage education providers to be more efficient (Prime Minister’s Office, 2015; Räisänen & Goman, 2018). This has led to Finnish VET focusing more on creating closer connections to working life and enhancing students’ self-responsibility (Niemi & Jahnukainen, 2018; Räisänen & Goman, 2018).

European integration has resulted in Member States’ national policies increasingly involving a trans-national dimension, making trans-national contrasting and comparison an integral part of understanding any national system (Nóvoa & Yariv-Mashal, 2003; Simola et al., 2017; Steiner-Khamsi, 2010). Employability and labor market adaptability have increasingly dominated VET policy over the past two decades, both in Finland and in the EU (Brunila et al., 2013; Powell et al., 2012). Finnish VET reforms have largely been motivated and guided by bigger changes in VET’s operational environment across Europe (Avis, 2018; Koivumaa, 2020). Increasing cultural diversity as well as European integration are re-shaping the political, cultural, and social context of VET in Finland.

The main aim of this study is to produce new insight into how leading Finnish experts and policymakers challenge, legitimize, and elaborate on the political dynamics of agenda-setting and policymaking in Finnish VET. The timeframe of the study is 1990-2020, although many of the political dynamics that have shaped the last three decades have historical roots that go significantly further back than this. To adequately explain something as multifaceted and complex as national and trans-national agenda-setting and policymaking in VET, a flexible yet systematic approach to theory is necessary. This study examines Finnish VET policy through a dynamics framework, according to which educational policy is discursive, historical, and contingent (Kauko, 2013; Kauko & Wermke, 2018; Simola et al., 2017). The dynamics framework proceeds by looking at how and why actions related to VET policy are unfolding, how they are being constrained or enabled through institutional rearrangements and how relevant actors (individuals, groups, and institutions) make sense of these dynamics and conditions (Hansen et al., 2020; Simola et al., 2017). Expert interviews are particularly useful when trying to understand the complex relations between policymakers, stakeholders, and institutions (Ozga, 2020). Research questions are as follows:

1. What are the historically established actors and discourses in Finnish VET?
2. How do actors utilize changes in the operational environment of VET to challenge or legitimize agenda-setting?
3. How has European integration shaped the dynamics of agenda-setting in Finnish VET?

The material consists of in-depth interviews with leading policy experts and stakeholders (n = 32) in Finnish VET as well as supplementary analysis of key policy documents from Finland and the EU. Participants were identified through cross-referencing and selected based on their deep personal and professional knowledge of Finnish and its interaction with EU VET policy. Experts come from organizations with different historical and political orientations and conflicting interests, which makes their insights and perspectives particularly interesting for critical discourse analysis. Experts have extensive experience in dealing with the European dimension of VET policymaking. Although most of the interview subjects would likely refrain from describing themselves as members of “the elite”, their power and influence in VET policymaking connects this study with the research tradition of elite interviews (Harvey, 2011). Most prior research in Finnish VET tends to focus on the micro-level, often utilizing ethnographic approaches for studying students, teachers and their pedagogic interactions in specific vocational fields (e.g. Brunila et al., 2013). In contrast, the participants in this study work with the macro- and meso-levels of VET where political, institutional and administrative decisions about legislation, funding and steering take place (Ozga, 2020). Participants are divided into the following categories: Group 1: key political influencers N=8 Group 2: senior government officials N=11 Group 3: leaders/representatives of vocational education providers N=10 Group 4: established scholars from research and working life N=3 The interview and documentary data in Study I and Study III will be analyzed by first identifying who the experts consider central actors and institutions in the VET policy field and then critically examining the relationships between these stakeholders, particularly those relationships that experts consider most important for agenda-setting in VET policy. Critical exploration of the relational dynamics between actors will make it possible to identify key discursive formations. These discursive formations will, in turn, be examined against the historical development of VET as it appears through documentary evidence, providing a multifaceted and in-depth overview of how the political dynamics of VET function on a systemic level (e.g., Kosunen & Hansen, 2018). Careful analysis of policy documents will help to show how agendas are produced and distributed in VET. Experts’ discursive formations produce tension-laden practices and competing agendas in VET. Analysis will concretize and situate the ideologically abstract into the politically concrete, highlighting the ways in which reforms reproduce and reconfigure older dynamics and give rise to new ones.

The present moment offers a unique opportunity to study how leading Finnish VET experts make sense of the previous three decades of policymaking in both its national and transnational dimensions. Understanding the dynamics of VET policymaking in Finland, particularly in the context of European integration, also has the potential to generate knowledge that could be beneficial to other EU member states. The article contributes to long-standing discussions of the socio-historical formation and development of Finnish vocational education and training (e.g. Kettunen, 2011; Virolainen & Thunqvist 2017) as well as discussions regarding its current agenda and future directions (Isopahkala-Bouret et al., 2014; Nylund & Virolainen, 2019). It also sheds light on the intersection between Finnish and EU VET policy spheres, which is a subject yet to be thoroughly studied. The study is expected to reveal the most powerful discursive formations in the last three decades of VET policymaking in Finland. These include the gradual shift towards marketization and individualization in VET, which reached its culmination point in the 2018 VET reform. Experts identify key actors as well as key institutional and political tensions in national and transnational VET policymaking. Ongoing conflicts reflect historical struggles between different labor market factions and political parties over the institutional control of agenda-setting in VET policy. The study will bring into focus the politico-historical development of agenda-setting and policymaking over the last 30 years and connect this to future challenges that still need to be resolved, particularly in terms of the balance between employability and the “broader social curriculum” of VET. The role of European integration in shaping Finnish VET policy over the last thirty years as well as the role that Finnish VET policy has played in shaping the common European Union VET policy framework will also be explored.

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