In this study, we look further into the organization of Vocational education and training (VET) in a rural district of Norway. In Norway, the concept rural indicates peripheral areas consisting of at least one municipality that is eligible for national aid concerning transport, investment, and adjusted payroll taxes. In Norway collaboration to uphold VET is diverse and interlinked in a continually ongoing organizing (Czarniawska, 2014). The term “organizing” indicate the intertwined work that the school, training agency, and companies and institutions of a rural community conduct (Czarniawska, 2014; Weick et al., 2005). To study organizing, we utilize the understanding of action net. Action is a motion or happening to which an intention can be ascribed by relating an event to the social order in which it occurs (Harré, 1982). Organizing is characterized by interconnected cycles and is understood as causal loops rather than linear chains of cause and effect. In practice, the organizing of VET moves from one place to another and happens in several places simultaneously. As loosely coupled elements, the different actors who carry out organizing have various rationalities for engaging in the process. Loosely coupled organizing provides flexibility that is vital for survival; thus, it is necessary to acknowledge the existence of both rationality and indeterminacy when examining this organizing (Czarniawska, 2004). In general, VET is connected to a nation's policy; thus, its context differs as do the social systems in which the school are embedded. Studies have pointed out that to understand how to promote diversity and opportunities in VET, research should not only examine individual-level hindrances but also look at how institutions cooperate and participate to create possibilities for young people (Angus et al., 2011; Milmeister et al., 2022). VET is valued differently in Europe depending on the country. Nordic countries have a more positive outlook of VET, while more southern countries give it decreased value (Cedefop, 2017; Milmeister et al., 2022) Albeit a positive outlook of VET in the Nordic countries, an urban-rural debate on settlement indicates there is an uneven balance of political power between the country's center and its periphery (Cedefop, 2017; Milmeister et al., 2022). Rural policy of education is characterized by a lack of priority regarding the organizing of local schools and their contribution to the social and cultural variety of a democratic welfare state (Kvalsund, 2019; Knutas; 2017). Internationally, political incentives often neglect rural education due to higher infrastructure costs and politically preferred budget cuts, which indicates that rural families have limited choice of schools and educational programs compared to urban families (Weiss & Heinz-Fischer, 2022). International research on rural schools’ reports that a locally situated education is central to the community and its development process as education, contributes to the local culture and welfare (Gristy & Hargreaves, 2020). A school contributes to economic and social development and VET in a rural area has the potential to develop mutually beneficial partnerships between schools, local businesses, and regional industries (Beach et al., 2019). In rural areas, if no school is available in the nearby area, the transfer to a post-compulsory school has a cultural, social and material impact on youngsters' life chances and choice of course (Corbett & Forsey, 2017; Rosvall, 2022). Not only are the vulnerable young ones mostly affected. Diversity as a social and cultural variety of a democratic welfare state is linked to the possibility of upholding economic stability which in turn supports the reconstruction of a community (Beach et.al. 2019). We ask: In what ways is diversity addressed and organized in VET to uphold the reconstruction of a rural community.  

The object of our study is rural village of 4,000 inhabitants. The local labour market consists of one large construction company and several small ones, small electrical businesses, and two large industries (aluminium and circuit card production). Norwegian VET is a mixture of a state-controlled and corporatist model that has integrated an apprenticeship system into the formal education system. The main model comprises two years in school and two years doing an apprenticeship at a company or public institution. Counselling and feedback from the school, training agency and businesses/ institutions are used to direct students throughout their learning process (Johansson-Wyszynska, 2018) The village has a sawmill and a municipality-owned electricity company. Additionally, the public sector and the municipality are important employers in healthcare, education, childcare, and other public and welfare sectors. The upper secondary school has 115 students (2022), of which 65 students are enrolled in the vocational track. Despite its small size, the school offers both first- and second-year programs on childcare, healthcare, construction, and electronics. The area has an interdisciplinary training agency that assists students in the navigation of their respective sectors after (normally) the second year. The inter-disciplinary training agency is situated at the school. Data include in-depth interviews, carried out with staff representing the local school, training agency, and businesses/institutions. Using narrative analysis as the method to synthesize our data, theories, and concepts of organizing deepens insight into the complexity of promoting diversity in a rural setting. In the process of interpreting fully transcribed material the interpreters’ horizons of understanding are challenged when prejudices are put to the test, for example, by examining relevant literature and holding discussions with colleagues concerning reasonable outcomes; this also assists the process that underpins validity (Flyvbjerg, 2001). Our narrative analysis builds on a series of anecdotal pictures connected to the theoretical concepts of action net, interconnected cycles, causal loops and loosely coupled elements clustering contributed to synthesizing. Themes were set up as temporary suggestions supporting a narrative analysis. We worked with feasible plots which could draw together the anecdotal pictures of the themes synthesized. Discussing back and forth, we discarded some plots while finding that others were workable and fit the criteria for a plot (beginning, middle and end) as well as contributing to insight into the ways in which diversity is addressed and organized in VET in a rural community.

In a rural community diversity in education (VET) is a continually ongoing work, intertwined and connected to the re-construction of casual loops between actions nets in the school, the training agency and the business/institutions, which in turn contributes to the economy, culture, welfare and reconstruction of the community. The social construction of diversity comes to the fore at connection points through a stabilizing process of interaction between actants of action nets (Buchholtz et al., 2020; Czarniawska, 2004). The collective endeavour of action net underpins the trust network recognizing the organizing of VET. The process of constructing diversity stretches over time – past, present, and future – where organizational members make some events meaningful by identifying certain points of connection (Czarniawska, 2004; Weick et al., 2005). This happens, for instance, when integrating VET students’ educational settings and apprenticeships into the first term of their studies, which enhances their engagement with the daily life of their community. Promoting apprenticeships at this initial stage also provides students with an opportunity to be a part of society now rather than at some point in the distant future. It also gives students opportunities to face complex issues that are important early on in their education and enhances their curiosity about education and learning.  From the results, we find that the various action nets and actants involved in the VET are engaged with diversity when taking both the individual students and the local rural environment into account (Buchholtz et al., 2020). We find organizing is an ongoing process in which different sets of institutions that are not necessarily coherent shape their organizing around the concept of “human beings first.” Even if they do not by definition agree on all topics, their contribution to the organizing of diversity benefits all involved actors in reconstructing the rural community.

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