In recent years, vocational education and training (VET) research has increasingly addressed the social and civic role of educational institutions. This development is particularly visible in European research contexts and debates within ECER networks, where questions of social cohesion, democratic participation, and sustainable development have gained prominence. Beyond their role in skill formation, VET institutions in Europe are increasingly expected to contribute to societal integration and to respond to external political, ecological, and economic challenges (Moodie, Wheelahan & Kost, 2024, Kost, Mou & O’Shea, 2024).

While European research has produced important conceptual advances, empirical evidence on how VET institutions process broader societal impulses remains limited. Moreover, comparative perspectives beyond Europe are often underdeveloped, despite the fact that European VET systems are themselves embedded in global political and economic dynamics. Research from the Global South therefore offers an important lens for reflecting on European assumptions and theoretical frameworks (Alphonsus & Schmees, 2025, Pozzer & dos Reis Neuhold, 2025).

Against this background, the project aims to advance a theoretically grounded and empirically informed understanding of the social role of VET institutions that is relevant to European VET research while drawing on comparative insights from South America. The first phase of the project focused on the development of a conceptual framework that provides a shared analytical language for describing and comparing the social role of VET institutions across contexts (presented at ECER 2025). This framework builds on theoretical traditions that are well established in European educational research.

First, governance theory (Maag Merki & Altrichter, 2015; Altrichter et al. 2007), widely applied in European education research, is used to analyze actor constellations and coordination mechanisms shaping institutional responses to societal demands. Second, network theory (Granovetter, 1973; Powell & DiMaggio 1991) informs the analysis of institutional embeddedness in local and transnational networks, a topic of growing relevance in European VET systems. Third, new institutional theory (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott 2014) provides a lens for examining normative expectations and legitimacy claims surrounding the social role of VET institutions, which are central to European policy discourses on education and training.

Building on this completed theoretical work, the project has entered its empirical phase. The empirical study addresses the following research questions:

• How are vocational training stakeholders institutionally integrated into the education and employment system, and what options for action do they have with regard to social integration?
• How do vocational training stakeholders perceive their role, and where do they see potential for development?

• To what extent do cross-national patterns of social roles of VET institutions emerge that are analytically relevant for European VET debates?

Empirically, the study focuses on six South American countries—Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. This comparative design allows for an analysis of how VET systems outside Europe respond to challenges that are also highly relevant in European contexts, such as ecological and digital transformation, social inequality, and changing governance arrangements.

The analysis follows a theory-guided comparative research design that builds on governance, network, and new institutional perspectives commonly applied in European VET research. These theoretical lenses provide an integrated framework for examining how VET institutions perceive, interpret, and process broader societal impulses beyond their core educational mandate. The selection of objects for comparison ensures the focus on the relevant parts for answering the above research question (Pilz, 2022): The selection of cases and objects of comparison is guided by their relevance for capturing institutional responses to social, political, ecological, and economic challenges. By focusing on key dimensions of institutional governance, embeddedness in networks, and normative expectations, the comparative design enables the identification of cross-national similarities and differences in the social roles attributed to VET institutions across South American contexts, with explicit analytical relevance for European VET debates. The ongoing empirical phase of the project follows a qualitative comparative research design (Flick, 2018). Data is collected through approximately 30 theme-centered, structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015) with leadership-level actors from VET practice (with a particular focus on vocational schools), vocational education policy, and public administration (Meuser & Nagel, 2009). This actor-centered approach reflects a strong tradition in European governance and institutional research. The interview guide is theoretically informed by the conceptual framework developed in the first phase of the project and operationalizes key analytical dimensions derived from governance theory, network theory, and new institutional theory. The interviews focus on how external societal impulses—such as political reforms, ecological challenges, and global development agendas—are perceived and processed within different VET systems. The interviews are analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2022). In a first step, interviews are coded deductively based on the theoretical framework and inductively refined to capture context-specific meanings. In a second step, cross-case analyses are conducted to identify similarities and differences across countries and actor groups (Yin, 2018). The comparative analysis aims to identify patterns of institutional sense-making and role attribution that are transferable to European research contexts. In this way, the empirical material from South America is used not as a contrasting case, but as a reflective mirror for European VET systems and theoretical debates.

The project is expected to contribute to European and international VET research in several ways. Empirically, it provides comparative insights into how VET systems process external societal impulses that are also central to European policy and research debates, including ecological transformation, social cohesion, and shifting governance arrangements. Analytically, the study is expected to identify recurring patterns in how VET institutions and their leadership actors construct and enact social roles across different national contexts. These patterns offer a basis for reflecting on similarities and differences with European VET systems and for critically examining implicit assumptions in European research and policy discourses. Theoretically, the project contributes to the refinement of a conceptual framework for analyzing the social role of VET institutions that is grounded in theoretical traditions widely used in European educational research and tested through empirical material from non-European contexts. Overall, the project strengthens ECER-relevant comparative research by linking European theoretical debates with empirical insights from South America and by fostering a more reflexive understanding of the social role of VET institutions in times of societal transformation. The paper addresses the need for multidimensional comparative studies to assess the future development and challenges for VET in the light of overall dynamics and different responses to transformation processes (Clarke, Westerhuis & Winch, 2021). This makes a conceptual contribution to international VET research and shows how sustainable development is structurally supported or limited in different national contexts.

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