Parity of esteem remains a persistent challenge in vocational education and training (VET), particularly in senior secondary contexts where vocational/applied pathways are frequently positioned as secondary to academic routes (McGlynn, Rawoelle 2025). In Victoria (Australia), recent reforms to senior secondary and VET provision have increased expectations that schools implement coherent applied learning cultures and pathways that respond to young people’s transitions amid intersecting pressures (economic volatility, post-pandemic disruption, and rising living costs). Yet applied learning is still enacted unevenly across schools and commonly sits within organisational arrangements that reproduce vocational-academic hierarchies.

This paper reports emerging empirical findings from the Leading Applied Learning Program, a partnership with the Southern Melbourne Department of Education Jobs, Skills and Pathways team, involving leaders from twenty-five secondary schools. The program is designed as an intervention to advance parity of esteem by strengthening leadership capability, building a shared applied learning pedagogy, and reconfiguring whole-school conditions that influence the legitimacy of applied learning (e.g., staffing, timetabling, curriculum planning routines, recognition practices, and community narratives).

Rather than treating parity of esteem as an attitudinal problem solvable through promotional messaging, the study conceptualises esteem as a systemic outcome produced through the organisation of everyday practice: what is valued, resourced, assessed, and publicly recognised. Early program data indicate that parity of esteem is disrupted not only by external perceptions, but by internal school contradictions that position applied learning as “additional” or “residual” work, often vulnerable to timetable compression, staffing instability, and accountability logics privileging academic metrics.

Research questions.

1. How can a CHAT-informed approach support the co-design and implementation of whole-school applied learning practices that advance parity of esteem under senior secondary VET reform conditions?
2. What systemic tensions and contradictions shaping parity of esteem in applied learning become visible through CHAT, and how are these addressed through intervention design?
3. How do CHAT-informed professional learning and leadership frameworks impact leader capacity to legitimise and embed applied learning practices at school level?
4. How do boundary-crossing practices enable leaders to foster applied learning cultures and strengthen opportunities and pathways for young people in their communities?
5. What key enablers and barriers to parity of esteem are identifiable through a CHAT lens, and how do these inform scalable models for system change?

Conceptual framework and international dimension. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Engestrom, 1987, 2001) is used to analyse applied learning as historically formed and collectively organised across interacting systems (schools, policy, regional partners, community and pathway stakeholders). This enables parity of esteem to be examined as a question of material practice, including contradictions across tools, rules, division of labour, and dominant definitions of “success.” Boundary crossing extends the analysis by examining how leaders coordinate across academic/vocational domains within schools and across school, system, community relationships. Status hierarchies between academic and vocational/applied pathways are a shared concern across many European VET contexts; this paper contributes a transferable intervention logic and contradiction map for parity of esteem work under reform conditions.

The study uses an intervention-oriented research design embedded within delivery of the Leading Applied Learning Program. The program combines coaching, collaborative inquiry, and co-design to support leaders to implement whole-school applied learning and to address esteem-related contradictions shaping vocational/applied provision. Participants and setting. Participants are applied learning leaders and school leaders from twenty-five Victorian secondary schools in the Southern Melbourne region, in partnership with a Department of Education team focused on Jobs, Skills and Pathways. The program structure creates a cross-school learning network to enable shared problem analysis, exchange of practices, and iterative tool development. Data sources (current phase). Surveys administered across the professional learning series (baseline and follow-up points) capturing shifts in leaders’ clarity about applied learning pedagogy, confidence to lead implementation, perceived legitimacy/status of applied learning within the school, and reported changes to whole-school practices (e.g., time allocation, staffing stability, recognition and communication practices). Case studies of selected schools drawing on program artefacts (implementation plans, co-designed tools and routines, reflective products, partnership strategies) and follow-up interviews to document enacted change, local adaptations, and persistent contradictions. Analysis. Data are analysed using CHAT-informed activity system mapping to identify contradictions shaping parity of esteem (e.g., policy expectations vs local resources; applied learning pedagogies vs assessment/accountability rules; division of labour tensions around ownership and expertise; competing objects such as compliance, retention, or pathway quality). Boundary-crossing analysis examines coordination across school departments and external stakeholders, and the development of boundary objects (shared templates, routines, narratives, indicators of success) that stabilise applied learning legitimacy.

Emerging findings suggest that parity of esteem is advanced when applied learning becomes a legitimate whole-school object supported by coherent leadership practices, stabilised tools, and recognition structures, rather than being positioned as an optional pathway for a subset of students. Four preliminary findings are developing across the dataset: Esteem is organisationally produced. Leaders describe parity of esteem as rising when applied learning is embedded in timetable architecture, staffing stability, shared planning routines, and visible leadership ownership. Conversely, esteem is undermined when applied learning is repeatedly reorganised around short-term staffing fixes or treated as “extra” to the core work of schooling. Contradictions reproduce vocational/academic hierarchies. CHAT mapping highlights persistent contradictions that shape status: accountability measures privileging academic outcomes; curriculum/assessment rules that constrain applied pedagogies; and divisions of labour that isolate applied learning expertise, limiting cross-school coherence. Leadership learning requires boundary crossing, not just training. Leaders identify that legitimising applied learning depends on cross-boundary work: aligning academic and applied domains internally; negotiating shared expectations with system actors; and shifting community narratives of “success” through pathway partnerships and recognition practices. Intervention tools function as boundary objects. Co-designed resources (shared language for applied learning, implementation templates, practice indicators, and partnership routines) are emerging as boundary objects that support coordination and stabilise new meanings of applied learning as rigorous and future-facing. The paper concludes with a scalable model for leading applied learning for parity of esteem, showing how a CHAT-informed intervention can support system alignment and durable practice change in senior secondary VET contexts, with implications for international VET debates about status, governance, and equitable transitions.

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