Review of Vocational Education and Training Research Revisited: Key Findings and Research Agenda

Author(s):

Martin Mulder(presenting / submitting)Eline Roelofs

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

02 SES 02 A, Review of VET Research and Theory Construction in VET

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-10

15:15-16:45

Room:

A-101

Chair:

Philipp Gonon

Contribution

This paper is a follow-up of the paper ECER-presented in 2012, ‘A Critical Review of Vocational Education and Training Research and Suggestions for the Research Agenda’ (Author & Co-author, 2012). The previous paper gave a description of research in the field of Vocational Education and Training (VET). It was observed that the field of VET research was quite scattered, so giving a full overview was hardly possible. Nevertheless, the VET research presented at the European Conference of Educational Research 2011 (Berlin) was reviewed, as well as the content of a number of VET research journals of publication year 2011. Research themes and topics were defined, and according to the categories the research was reviewed. The conclusions of the review were: 1. there is a large amount of research on VET which is quite diverse and fragmented; 2. much VET research lacks theoretical and empirical foundation; 3. the dominant research methods are case and desk studies and explorative and analytical studies; there are hardly any experiments and intervention and design-based research studies; 4. there are various urgent topics for further research, which were elaborated in the paper.

Based on an analysis of the content of the documents studied, main themes for further research are identified. This is done by qualitative interpretation of the published research.

Method

A number of key publications on VET research were used, such as the research report of Cedefop (Descy, Tchibozo and Tessaring, 2008; 2009a; 2009b), and the Handbook of TVET Research of Rauner and Maclean (2008). A final comprehensive classification was used consisting of six categories (see below). The research agenda emerged as robust research themes for the coming years. Research published outside VETNET and the given journals was reviewed, using the Web of Science. The following numbers of papers were included: of the 2012 VETNET 34, of Vocations and Learning 16, of JVET 33 papers, and from Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 9. In the Web of Science we systematically searched for articles with ‘vocational education’, ‘vocational training’ and ‘vocational learning’ in the title that were published in English in the year 2012. The term ‘vocational education’ resulted in 50 papers, the search term ‘Vocational training’ in 28, and ‘Vocational learning’ in 9 articles. In the number of selected papers double papers are excluded. This resulted in a total of 179 papers which were reviewed.

Expected Outcomes

The classification scheme we used consist of the following categories regarding VET: 1. society, 2. policy, organization and management, 3. teacher education and teacher behaviour, 4. Curriculum, Learning and Instruction, 5. Assessment and testing of educational achievement, 6. Apprenticeships/internships/workplace learning. The results of the review are presented according these categories. The main conclusions of the 2012 review are comparable with those of the 2011 review, although now wider substantiated. Drawing upon the 2011 review, we suggest research priorities on the themes listed above. Next to that we have various topics that are hardly or not represented in the selection of papers we reviewed, but which deserve ample attention, such as VET history, VET research methodology, studies on professions and occupations and education in the professions, studies on the organisation of work and consequences for VET, VET impact studies, issues regarding VET and economic sector development, regional innovation by VET, longitudinal learning trajectories/upward education mobility in the VET column, and others. This set of research priorities will be further elaborated in the paper. We further believe that research should address relevant problems in practice, and that practice- and policy-oriented and fundamental research should be combined to solve these problems.

References

Author & Co-author (2012). A Critical Review of Vocational Education and Training Research and Suggestions for the Research Agenda. Paper presented at the ECER conference, Cádiz, Spain. Descy, P., G Tchibozo and M. Tessaring (Eds.). 2008. Modernising vocational education and training. Fourth report on vocational training research in Europe: background report Volume 1. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Descy, P., G Tchibozo and M. Tessaring (Eds.). 2009a. Modernising vocational education and training. Fourth report on vocational training research in Europe: background report Volume 2. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Descy, P., G Tchibozo and M. Tessaring (Eds.). 2009b. Modernising vocational education and training. Fourth report on vocational training research in Europe: background report Volume 3. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Rauner, F & R. Maclean (Eds.) (2008). Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research. Heidelberg: Springer.

Author Information

Martin Mulder (presenting / submitting)

Wageningen University, Netherlands, The

Eline Roelofs