This paper draws on research that documents the work, financial and personal benefits, and skill trajectories of trade and bachelor graduates' for the 10 years after completion of their initial education. The primary aim of the project is to better understand how people draw on their initial education and training. We suggest that while there is…

Addressing connections between higher education and "industry" framed by UK government creative industries strategies, this article draws on research with games design students to explore their transition from being a student to being "industry-ready". The article introduces broader currents within higher education around personal development and…

This paper portrays the inferences that employers in Greece draw from particular aspects of study programmes, as recorded on educational qualifications. Based on semi-structured interviews with human resource managers in 37 industrial and service organisations and general directors of careers offices in eight higher education institutions, and…

Formal education not only educates individuals, it reconstitutes the very foundations of society through a pervasive culture of education with a legitimate capacity to reconstruct work and its central components such as ideas about human productive abilities, new organisations and management, widespread professionalism and expertise, and the…

This article critically examines the effects of chance, turning points and periods of routine on the careers of ten male returners to further education. Chance is an under-theorised influence on career development and there is also a dearth of qualitative data on this phenomenon. The qualitative data I present demonstrate that chance events can…

This paper develops a social realist critique of competency-based training (CBT) by drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and the sociology of Basil Bernstein as complementary modes of analysis. CBT is the mandated model of curriculum in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia. It results in an impoverished…

Workplace learning is complex in form. It is explorative, social and creative enquiry, and because it is carried out in the socio-political domain of the workplace, it is potentially exploitative of all who contribute. This paper suggests that the workplace researcher might conceptualise the contributions of participants as benefits and/or gifts,…

The principal aim of this article is to promote the more effective integration of interprofessional learning with practice developments in health and social care. Ten specific recommendations are offered for the successful management of recent central policies for collaboration at the interface of the higher education and service sectors.…

In the period immediately preceding the 2007 Australian election, much attention was accorded to the impact of the nation's labour laws on vulnerable employees. This debate centred on specific groups including women, youth, migrants and workers on individual employment contracts. International students, by contrast, were ignored in the debate.…

Teach First is an educational charity that places graduates to teach in "challenging" schools for two years. It is marketed as an opportunity to develop employability while "making a difference". In this paper, I examine the process of class reproduction occurring in this graduate employment scheme through examining the discourses used in Teach…

This paper examines how vocational teachers negotiate their professional identity in the context of a major externally imposed curriculum reform. The focus is on the teachers' orientations towards the reform in its initial stage. Sixteen Finnish vocational teachers were interviewed using open-ended narrative interviews. The data were analysed in…

In this article, we frame "productive learning" in a sociocultural perspective to show how it ties into a cluster of concepts on activity and transformation and illuminates the relation between learning processes and learning products. Based on two case studies, we argue that understanding learning as action entails developing the students'…

As one of the world's largest exporters of asparagus, Peru has developed a high-tech system of asparagus production, processing and delivery that requires well-trained and responsive workers. In this study we examine the role of both private and public sectors in preparing workers for the asparagus industry and the implications of this skill…

This is a comparative study of the career drivers of accounting students in Singapore, Australia and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). The study examines the motivational factors that steer accounting students into choosing accounting as a programme of study in their respective countries. Comparative analyses are performed to…

As elsewhere, vocational education and training (VET) has a poor image in Hong Kong. To remove the stigma, the Vocational Training Council of Hong Kong embarked on pro-active strategic planning to make it more relevant and cost-effective, exposed long and widely held myths that VET is for dullards which leads only to low-paid and low-status jobs,…