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Many youth with a disability would like to work but encounter challenges finding employment. Vocational interventions can help youth with disabilities gain employment skills and jobs. In this chapter, we assess: (1) how vocational programs for youth with physical disabilities influence employment-related skills and outcomes; and (2) the common components of vocational programs for these youth.

Our research team conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature with six major databases: Medline, PsychInfo, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, and Embase. Publications selected for inclusion met the following criteria: (1) peer-reviewed journal article, dissertation, or conference paper, published between 1990 and January 2014; (2) addresses vocational program or intervention for youth with physical disabilities; and (3) sample includes at least 50% youth (aged 15–25) with an acquired or congenital physical disability.

Of the 4,588 studies identified in our search, 8 met the inclusion criteria. In six of the studies, the majority of participants gained paid or unpaid employment after participating in a vocational program. Five studies showed improved knowledge and perceptions of employment. Most studies showed improvements in at least one vocational outcome such as knowledge about job searching, job interviews, advocating for workplace adaptations, and how to access services and supports. Common intervention components included: experiential learning, mentorship, and family involvement. Most programs took place in the community or rehabilitation centers that varied in length and were delivered by a variety of professionals. Most programs had a combination of group and individual components.

There is some evidence to suggest that vocational programs can influence employment outcomes for youth with physical disabilities. However, further research is needed with more rigorous and longitudinal designs.

This chapter applies three of the most prominent theories in vocational and career psychology to further illuminate the turnover process. Prevailing theories about attrition have rarely integrated explanatory constructs from vocational research, though career (and job) choices clearly have implications for employee affect and loyalty to a chosen job in a career field. Despite remarkable inroads by new perspectives for explaining turnover, career, and vocational formulations can nonetheless enrich these – and conventional – formulations about why incumbents stay or leave their jobs. To illustrate, vocational theories can help clarify why certain shocks (critical events precipitating thoughts of leaving) drive attrition and what embeds incumbents. In particular, this chapter reviews Super's life-span career theory, Holland's career model, and social cognitive career theory and describes how they can fill in theoretical gaps in the understanding of organizational withdrawal.

The field of teaching technologies is in constant interplay between educational and industrial advances. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, digitalization and automatization have become increasingly important. In industrial and social life, we see similar fast-moving developments. These factors challenge education, specifically vocational education, greatly, and raise two very different, yet very much connected questions: how to prepare students for their vocational lives and how to prepare teachers to communicate the necessary competencies to their students? This chapter provides an overview of advances, challenges, and possible solutions, focusing on the three key fields of vocational education in Germany: Industry 4.0, Education 4.0, and innovative teacher education. Most importantly, however, the text examines the continuous interplay between and among these fields. The beginning of the chapter is dedicated to vocational teacher education, in accordance with industrial and educational advances. Specifying this, characteristics of Industry 4.0, as well as students' and teachers' perceptions of Industry 4.0, are discussed. This is followed by an introduction to the concept of so-called learning factories as a possible way of integrating aspects of Industry 4.0 in German vocational schools. The end of the chapter is dedicated to the required changes in educational settings today and in the future. Though Industry 4.0, Education 4.0, and innovative teacher education are each widely discussed in the current literature, the interplay of all three fields reveals a research gap. This chapter tries to close this gap and provide an important contribution to the research field.

The German institutional setting of skill formation is supposed to enable young people smooth and structured transitions into the labor market. For decades, the large majority of graduates of the “dual system” of vocational education experienced good chances to immediately access appropriate job positions. However, labor market entry has become less stable in the last two decades. In this paper, we examine the changing transition from vocational training to the first job in Germany. We analyze the consequences of inter-firm mobility and unemployment after finishing vocational education for the transition to the first job. Our results show that leaving the training firm, and especially unemployment, strongly enhance occupational shifts at labor market entry. In addition, not keeping one’s trained occupation negatively affects the chances to enter skilled job positions.

This introductory chapter develops the overall research focus and the aim of the present special issue ‘Gender segregation in vocational education’. Against the backdrop of strong horizontal gender segregation in vocational education and training (VET), we ask how institutional arrangements affect gendered (self-)selection into VET, and to what extent the patterns of the latter vary by context and over time. In order to expand our knowledge about the impact of educational offers and policies on gendered educational pathways and gender segregation in the labour market, we have gathered comparative quantitative studies that analyse the relationship between national variations in the organization of VET and cross-national differences in educational and occupational gender segregation from an institutional perspective. Following a review of the core literature within the field of gender segregation in VET, this introduction presents a discussion of education system classifications and institutional level mechanisms based on the contributions made in this volume. We then discuss gendered educational choices at the individual level, with particular emphasis on variation across the life course. Finally, we conclude our introductory chapter by commenting on the main contributions of the volume as a whole, as well as addressing suggestions for further research.

This study presents an innovative approach to Information and communication technology (ICT) skill training and employment generation for out-of-school and disadvantaged youths in Africa. With technical and policy assistance from the World Bank, ICTs can be used to revitalize technical and vocational training to meet skill and employment needs of disadvantaged youths in the region. The deplorable conditions of out-of-school youth and the state of secondary education in Africa underscore the urgency to engage disadvantaged youth in productive economic activities. An ICT-enhanced technical and vocational training program in Africa provides both private and social gains: it provides economic prospects for disadvantaged youth and; it adds to the development of the knowledge economy in Africa. The NairoBits Digital Design School in Kenya is presented as a model of a vocational and training school that uses ICTs to improve skill formation among disadvantaged youths in informal settlements in urban Africa. Meeting the objectives of an ICT-based training and employment generation program for underprivileged youth in Africa require strong regulatory frameworks and contributions from the World Bank. The involvement of the bank, particularly through private sector grants for ICT skill train in Africa will help to revitalize technical and vocational education and training in the region. Above all, the collaboration of government agencies, private businesses, other international development agencies and civil society groups in ICT skill training will help to meaningfully engage African youths in the development of their communities in the emerging knowledge economy.

The aim of the chapter is to investigate the changing structural position of post-secondary schools in Poland, seen from the perspective of the expansion of higher education from one side and the current reform of vocational education from the other. Do post-secondary schools enhance opportunities for those who might not otherwise consider further education, especially when we consider lower cost, open admissions and greater accessibility in comparison with higher education institutions? Or do they play a role of a ‘discounted’ and ‘undervalued’ education for those who could not manage to enter three-year-bachelor cycles in tertiary education and thus were forced to lower their initial educational aspirations? The opening up of higher education to new student populations was done by the rapid expansion of the private (paid for) sector and the fee-paying courses in the public sector. Liberal educational policy not only opened an opportunity for the privatization in higher education, but also expanded the market-driven provision at the post-secondary level. The discussion on the relevance of post-secondary vocational qualifications must be seen within the context of the continual inflation of diplomas/degrees and the unemployment of graduates after finishing higher education. Since 2010, there has been a reverse process initiated at the governmental level in Poland: reform schemes to increase the participation of young people in vocational education and training. However, the structural position and functions of post-secondary schools, as well as their role in the employability of young people, are not subject to any open discussion at the political level. This sort of status quo concerning post-secondary institutions means that their institutional identity issues are resolved and their structural position defined predominantly by market forces.

How do institutional settings and their embedded policy principles affect gender-typed enrolment in educational programmes? Based on gender-sensitive theories on career choice, we hypothesised that gender segregation in education is higher with a wider range of offers of vocational programmes. By analysing youth survey and panel data, we tested this assumption for Germany, Norway and Canada, three countries whose educational systems represent a different mix of academic, vocational and universalistic education principles. We found that vocational programmes are considerably more gender-segregated than are academic (e.g. university) programmes. Men, more so than women, can avoid gender-typed programmes by passing on to a university education. This in turn means that as long as their secondary school achievement does not allow for a higher education career, they have a higher likelihood of being allocated to male-typed programmes in the vocational education and training (VET) system. In addition, social background and the age at which students have to choose educational offers impact on the transition to gendered educational programmes. Overall, gender segregation in education is highest in Germany and the lowest in Canada. We interpret the differences between these countries with respect to the constellations of educational principles and policies in the respective countries.

This study seeks to ascertain whether there are regional gender differences in vocational education in Bulgaria at the upper secondary level and to shed more light on the main factors for the (non-)emergence of these differences. The research has drawn on data from the National Statistical Institute and the Centre for Information in Education in Bulgaria as well as a nationally representative school-leavers survey (2014); it has applied descriptive statistics and multilevel modelling for the data analysis. Overall, the present study demonstrates that the regional dimension is indispensable for understanding the development of vocational education and gender differentiation in education. The analysis provides evidence that the mechanism by which the education system contributes to regional gender segregation in vocational education is its opportunity structures at the regional level, which are related to vocational education offers. In addition, we found a positive association between industrial development and the share of women in engineering at the regional level.

Human beings are dependent upon social approval to strengthen their identities. Therefore, they practice impression management: They anticipate which behaviour provokes which reactions in their social environment, and they tend to exhibit the kind of behaviour that promises positive feedback. Based on the assumption that human beings also show this behaviour in their choice of vocation, we hypothesise that young people are more likely to expect negative reactions from their social environment when choosing a gender-atypical occupation. Furthermore, we assume that the expected reaction of the social environment influences vocational orientation: The anticipation of negative reactions to gender-atypical vocational choice might contribute to explain why young people ignore this occupation. We tested both hypotheses with the help of data retrieved from a survey of young people in Germany who are interested in vocational education and training (VET). The results support our hypotheses; however, they also show that the relevance of a gender-typed vocational choice is weaker if adolescents have a higher educational background. In this case, the choice of an occupation that expresses a high educational status becomes more important. It may lead to an exclusive kind of social approval that is denied to people with a lower educational background.