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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative academic effectiveness of vocational education in three countries with early tracking systems: Austria, Croatia, and Hungary.

The authors use an instrumental variables approach to estimate vocational education’s relative academic effectiveness in terms of achievement on an international test, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program of International Student Assessment (PISA), and two possible indicators of non-cognitive outcomes – self-efficacy in mathematics and intrinsic motivation in mathematics, both also available from the PISA student survey.

The results show few, if any, differences in student gains from attending the vocational track in secondary school as opposed to the academic track. Specifically, the results show that attending the vocational or academic track results in similar achievement gains in the tenth grade and generally similar gains in self-efficacy and motivation in mathematics.

The study is unique because in the three countries, the authors can use a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach based on school systems’ age entrance date rules to estimate the gain in test scores over an academic year and to compare the gain for students in the vocational and academic tracks. The results contradict almost all other studies by showing that in these countries student academic gains in vocational education are about the same as in the academic track.

The purpose of this paper is to study how young vocational school students in Finland frame themselves and their participation in society and whether they are seen in various media. The explorative research, with n = 213 vocational school and prepatory VALMA students as co-researchers, tells us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. The purpose is this to present the breadth of their thinking and to draw conclusions from the empirical data produced solely by the co-researchers.

Explorative multidisciplinary research was done as co-research with n = 213 vocational school students in Finland. Research includes theoretical background and focuses on empirical qualitative data to further illustrate the explorative nature and results of the study.

The findings of the explorative co-research tell us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. Co-researchers view themselves as missing in traditional media but find freedom on social media. Content from various media is viewed as reliable and trustworthy but also as problematic propaganda based on personal value framing. The relationship with traditional print media is strained because young people feel that media has othered them and continues to frame them negatively. While they look for that entertaining content across the media spectrum, bullying is an ever-present concern.

This study focused only on vocational school students in Finland. A broader sample of young people, or of minorities, could produce profound results on media literacy, relationships and power relations in the society. Also, framings of the various international media would provide content for analysis. More profound analysis of the data shall be done in the next phase of the research.

Study time was limited. More in-depth study will follow. Implications to future research, media consumption and framing should be done with a larger group of researchers and youth.

Social implications towards framing of youth in various media and the transfer of these framing as knowledge in larger society. This includes notions of power of various actors in media and in society at large.

Multidisciplinary explorative co-research on the topic is largely missing from academia. Additionally, the voices of those in the fringes of society is muted, whilst also those youth studying the vocational schools.

Seeks to examine the extent to which education systems around the world embrace vocational schooling and the degree to which exposure to vocational schooling differs by gender and race.

Uses distributional analysis applied to cross‐country data from Unesco to examine shares of secondary school students enrolled in the vocational track, by gender. Also uses descriptive statistics based on US Department of Education data to examine fields of study within the vocational track.

The emphasis on vocational education and access to different types of training across demographic groups varies considerably around the world. European countries in particular, long known for their heavy emphasis on specialized vocational schooling, have relatively high vocational school shares in secondary school. At the other end of the distribution, almost 30 countries in the sample, most of them low‐income, have vocational school shares below 4 percent. In the majority of countries, a higher share of male secondary school students enroll in the vocational track compared with female students. Latin American countries stand out for having a high female representation among vocational school students. In the USA, male students cluster in trade and industrial courses, while female students cluster in business preparation courses. Also, white students are relatively concentrated in the trades, black and Hispanic students cluster in business courses, and Asian students are concentrated in technical courses.

These stylized facts set the stage for new research on vocational education and for new policy initiatives that create new opportunities for specialization in vocational training.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how vocational education and training (VET) in Ukraine has changed since the Soviet era; and to determine its structure, successes, and challenges.

The author conducted interviews and tours at 15 vocational schools in seven cities in Ukraine.

Ukraine is struggling to establish itself as an independent, modern country; education includes elements from the Soviet era and contemporary European practices; the VET system is taking on the state-regulated bureaucratic model; it has mixed success mainly due to economic development; social support for secondary students is very strong.

Since Ukraine will eventually be a key player in international relations, it is important for scholars to understand how the VET system is developing.

This study provides an in-depth view of VET in this once closed country which is now susceptible to influence from Russia and Europe.

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.

This chapter examines one vocational high school's response to a state exit exam. Many states now require high school students to pass an exit exam before graduating, a key element of standards-based accountability reforms. Little is known about how educators and students inside vocational schools respond to these exams which typically emphasize literacy and academic skills. We examine how one such school attempted to respond to demands linked to the exit exam and the state's labeling the school as underperforming. While teachers reported support for state intervention and placing stronger demands on the school, one remedy involved becoming more selective in terms of new students admitted. As a result, tensions arose between academic subject and vocational teachers. Deep frustrations were voiced by several teachers and students about whether preparation was sufficient to ensure a reasonable pass rate. We employ a critical public policy framework to illuminate how this policy shock spurred positive action while penalizing students for years of insufficient preparation in the public schools.

Since 2007, it has been mandatory for all vocational schools in Denmark to assess the prior qualifications of all students when they begin at the school and to use this assessment to divide students into different ability-based courses (streaming) with the aim of increasing the retention of students. The purpose of this paper is to explore students’ experiences of being placed on a low-ability course by using case studies of two classes from separate vocational schools in Denmark with different practices regarding the streaming of students.

The study draws on theories of student drop-out and engagement (Rumberger, 1993; Finn, 1989) and on the differentiation-polarization theory (Gamoran, 2010) concerning the effects of streaming students into ability-based classes. Two cases are described, representing on the one hand predominately positive experiences of streaming (better relations to teachers and peers) and on the other hand predominately negative experiences of streaming (low teacher expectations and negative peer-learning).

The study shows that the two schools have organized streaming differently and that the students have very diverse experiences of being placed in a low-ability class depending on the way the schools organize streaming.

The paper discusses the basic dilemma that schools face when they have to teach students with very diverse backgrounds and levels of engagement. The study shows that the division of students into separate streams involves a risk of reducing the level of engagement among students in the low-ability courses, but it also suggests how streaming can be organized to increase the engagement of students and possibly reduce their risk of dropping out of vocational education.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the implementation of educational reform processes by applying the concept of social innovation. The paper proposes a model of social innovation and test its applicability in the context of Estonian vocational education reform using two case studies of the school re-organization as an example.

A case study approach has been applied in the empirical study. Different data collection methods have been used including semi-structured interviews with the various change actors, observations and analysis of written documents.

The integrated model of social innovation proved to be a fruitful analytical tool. By focusing on five central aspects – the trigger of change, central change agents, social mechanisms facilitating the adoption of change, implications and social gains – it was possible to explain two school re-organization processes and the reasons behind their success or complications.

The analysis of the cases outlined some lessons that can be learned for the future planning and implementation of school reforms. School changes are more easily adopted if actors experience it as useful and rational, school staff are involved in the process as early as possible and the adoption is facilitated by building certain social mechanisms and network structures into the policy implementation process.

The paper makes a contribution to the literature on educational reform by applying the concept of social innovation. Up until now, the concept of social innovation has remained rather underused to explain the process of implementing and adopting reforms, and in particular, it is rarely used in the context of analyzing educational reforms.