While enjoying the respect and prestige in some countries, in others, despite being a significant educational sector, vocational education continues to suffer from low status and negative societal sentiments. Vocational education in China has been positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, absorbing the 'left-over' students with 'less…

Today, creativity is considered a success factor in many occupational fields and a core competence of the 21st century. In vocational education and training (VET), creativity is defined as problem-solving ability and ascribed to the transversal competences. Creativity is always context-dependent in terms of the work environment and specific…

Whether there is or should be a relation between 'occupation' and 'qualification' is a contested issue in vocational education and training (VET). The privileged shelter of structured occupational labour markets stands pitted against the near impossibility of access by those at the margins of employment opportunities. This paper investigates the…

Informed by the capability approach and critical discourse analysis, this article examines how the development of green skills among master craftspersons and apprentices in the informal sector of Ghana could be promoted for cleaner production and sustainable futures. The findings show that inequality and poverty; cyclical policy trap; sectoral…

This paper provides an account of the everyday workplace learning of cycle technicians. Derived from an ethnography of working cultures and practices at a bike shop in the North of England, this paper rests on a critical reading of Communities of Practice theory in order to explore the complex and heterogeneous learning of cycle technicians.…

Germany's VET system is highly gender-segregated and marked by high dropout rates. This article investigates the dropout behaviour of apprentices in gender-atypical training occupations. First, we investigate whether gender-atypical apprentices drop out at a higher rate than their majority peers. Second, we examine differences in the self-reported…

The marked and persistent gender segregation in apprenticeship has been well documented. The social construction of 'male' and 'female' jobs is a key factor in the gendered patterns evident in career choice. Research on young women who have chosen careers in male-dominated occupations risks constructing them as 'Other', typically concluding that…

In Australia, the relatively low standing of vocational education and the occupations it serves is of growing concern. This standing is held to contribute to an increased number of young people preferring to engage in higher education and to look past vocational education as a potential post-school pathway. Consequently, there are skill shortages…

In this study, we argue that vocational education and training in Spain have increased their status and value over the past four decades at a steady and consistent pace. This pace has been perhaps too slow for the wishes of some but has been properly grounded on a wide consensus among all involved stakeholders (companies, union representatives and…

This paper extends arguments for differentiating knowledge into conceptualisations of occupational practice. It is argued that specialised forms of knowledge and practice require recognition and differentiation in ways that many contemporary approaches to practice theory deny. Drawing on Hager's interpretation of MacIntyre, it is suggested that…

Skill development has been a major policy agenda in several countries and there is a lot of emphasis on the promotion of vocational education and training (VET) programmes. This paper investigates the labour market outcomes of the vocationally trained population in India using the data from a nationally representative survey on employment and…

The standing of vocational education is salient for how it is perceived by those who sponsor, participate in and work within it and how its provisions are supported and administered. Yet, this standing continues to be intractably low, compared with other education sectors, more so in some countries than others. The consequences for this low…