Vocational education and training (VET) systems around the world are legitimized by nation-based economic, social, and educational aims. These different aims from different socio-cultural and economic contexts change over time according to the perceived affordances and challenges of VET systems. The perspective on justified and negotiated aims allows us to understand and describe the functioning of VET systems. By adopting an exploratory approach based on discourse analysis, we build a theoretical framework that facilitates international comparisons between VET systems and also the description of their evolution from the past to the future. In this exploratory contribution and diachronic comparative approach, we focus on the Swiss VET system from 1880 up to 2030. Keywords: Vocational education and training, aims, comparison, the evolution of VET, the Swiss case

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