Building on the findings of Cedefop’s research project ‘The changing nature and role of VET in Europe’ (2015-18), the symposium outlines the development and transformation of European VET over the last two decades and discusses possible futures. Exploring change from epistemological-pedagogical, institutional and socio-economic perspectives, the presentations not only illustrate the stability and path dependence of national VET systems (and how this sustains overall VET-diversity in Europe), they also demonstrate how the combination of incremental change and major societal and economic shocks shift the orientation of VET.  This mapping and analysis of the past are used to outline possible scenarios for the future of vocational education and training in Europe. Three main scenarios - pluralistic, distinctive, and special-purpose VET - illustrate the different directions VET can take in the next two decades and the challenges and opportunities involved in this. The work is based both on a comprehensive research project conducted by Cedefop involving researchers from 30 countries (Cedefop, 2020) and a special issue on the Future of VET in the Hungarian Educational Research Journal (2022).

 After a short introduction into this research and the basic scenarios, the contribution by Grollmann and Markowitsch discusses methodological issues related to scenario building in VET by comparing the recent Cedefop scenarios with previous scenario projects. In particular, they examine to which extent VET scenarios depend or build on generalizable future expectations (“myths of the future”) respectively archetypes of the future. They argue that both the relative independence of VET systems and their path dependency – especially in transnational projects – need to be taken into account.

 The contribution by Bonoli, Gonon and Vorpe, taking Switzerland as example, shows that fundamental changes concerning VET such as its importance and status within the overall education and skill formation system or the relationship between its main aims (economic, educational, social) require a longer observation period of at least two or three decades. Clearly, short-term shocks, such as the recent Covid-19 or economic crisis, or earlier the Sputnik shock and the oil crisis, have the potential to reverse trends in this regard, although they never call into question VET as an institution in general. From the research point of view, a central lesson for policy follows from this: Despite the priority that must inevitably be given to acute problems (e.g. offering distance learning or finding solutions for lost training places), more medium- and long-term goals and visions are also needed to help shape the transformation of VET.

 Based on a critical analysis of national literature, the contribution by Benke emphasizes, that the highly centralised VET governance, simplification, considering VET mostly from a short-term labour market perspective, forgetting its complexity as a system with several external factors, has weakened its prestige and compromised its quality in Hungary, especially in the lower ‘branch’ of VET. She points out, for which scenarios the conditions are given in Hungary. Benke considers the potential of the new scenarios as a catalyst for innovations and strategies in VET in the future.

Finally, a critical appraisal of the scenarios is being presented, by Marhuenda. The combination of current VET systems and suggested scenarios indicate that transformations are subject to negotiation among actors within countries (administration, employers, unions, teachers) and across countries; as well as subject to legitimation of decisions before the wider society. Considering the sociology of conventions as a useful approach to analyse processes of negotiation and legitimation behind historical developments in VET systems, Marhuenda suggests applying it to tackle current VET scenarios.

Reference: 

Jörg Markowitsch & Jens Bjornavold: Scenarios for VET  in Europe in the 21st century (HERJ,  https://doi.org/10.1556/063.2021.00116)

Benavot, A. (1983). The Rise and Decline of Vocational Education. Sociology of Education, 56(2), 63-76. Billett, S. (2011). Vocational Education - Purposes, Traditions and Prospects. Dordrecht: Springer. Cedefop. (2002). Scenarios and strategies for vocational education and lifelong learning in Europe. Cedefop. (2020). Vocational education and training in Europe 1995-2035. Scenarios for European vocational education and training in the 21st century. Luxembourg. Markowitsch, J. (2021). Die Expansion der Schweizer Berufsbildung im europäischen Vergleich oder das Berufsbildungsexpansionsparadoxon [The expansion of Swiss Vocational Training in a European comparison or the Vocational Training Expansion Paradox]. In S. Dernbach-Stolz, P. Eigenmann, K. Chantal, & S. Kessler (Eds.), Transformationen von Arbeit, Beruf und Bildung in internationaler Betrachtung. Festschrift für Philipp Gonon. (pp. 199-218). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Markowitsch, J., & Chan, R. (2021). Elucidating Responsiveness. Reviewing Empirical Methods for Comparative Studies of Governance in Vocational Education and Training. In P. Gonon & R. Bürgi (Eds.), Governance Revisited. Vocational Education and Training (pp. 379-415). Bern: Peter Lang Forthcoming Special Issue on the Future of VET in the Hungarian Educational Research Journal with contributions by Jörg Markowitsch, Jens Bjornavold, Magdolna Benke, Wolfgang Wittig, Lorenzo Bonoli, Philipp Gonon, Fernando Marhuenda-Fluixá, Philipp Grollmann, Terence Hogarth, Simon Broek and Tomasz Rachwał. Online first available: https://akjournals.com/view/journals/063/aop/issue.xml