Could the labour market gender balance be improved by introducing new types of apprenticeship-trained workers? This article investigates what happened in the wake of the Norwegian VET programme for health and social care, a new approach introduced via the 1994 educational reform. By upgrading this traditionally female-dominated area of education,…

The last two decades have seen an increasing political concern in the high dropout rates and low performance in education of boys compared to girls--at times in the form of a "moral panic". This has also been the case in Denmark where "the boy problem" in education now is placed high on the agenda of education policy. The…

This article discusses a project designed to build a community of enquiry in the first year of a foundation degree in early years at an English university. Derived originally from Lipman's ideas of Philosophy for Children, this approach became a regular part of the fortnightly session for these early childhood practitioners, in order to…

In Canada, youth apprenticeships have been promoted as an educational alternative that leads to the development of valuable skills, allows for the opportunity to earn an income while learning and helps youth to gain a head start into lucrative, creative and in-demand careers. Yet, these programmes have remained rather marginal and continue to be…

In Australia, all vocational education and training (VET) qualifications must be based on competency-based training (CBT) and training packages. Yet, since 2005, there has been a major expansion in the number of VET international students in Australia, 85% of whom are from Asia. Given this development, the teaching and learning contexts in which…

Research material from ethnographic studies of vocational upper secondary educational programmes in Finland and Sweden presented here indicates that the discourse of schoolwork as being either theoretical or practical is firmly fixed. However, the students on the researched programmes were aware of recent changes in the labour market that raise a…

Nursing in Western countries has become increasingly more theoretical, and nurse education has been integrated more often with the higher education system. Historically, nursing has been viewed as a non-academic domain. Establishing Nursing Science (NS) in Finland in the 1970s has meant that the new discipline is defined as the core of nurse…

This article discusses the piloting and evaluation of the Research-informed Teaching experience (RiTe) project. The aim of RiTe was to link teaching and learning with research within an undergraduate diagnostic radiography curriculum. A preliminary pilot study of RiTe was undertaken with a group of level 4 (year 1) volunteer BSc (Hons) diagnostic…

The present paper addresses the phenomenon of student dropout from vocational education in Denmark. It does so by addressing the need to critically discuss the term "drop-out" taking the perspective of students' own reflections on the topic. The empirical findings indicate that dropout is considered in terms of two very different,…

This paper sheds light on how competence assessment takes place in the Danish Vocational and Educational Training System. It discusses how intentions formulated by the government have unintentional effects when implemented in practice. The qualitative methods used in this study consist of participant observations from my field study of dropouts in…

Little has been published in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) literature on the topic of pre-apprenticeships, which are a loose type of preparatory courses for apprenticeships available in some trades. Nevertheless, pre-apprenticeships have been in existence for several decades. With continuing concern over skill shortages in…

The demands placed on medical trainees by the different specialty training programs are important considerations when choosing a medical specialty. To understand these demands, 193 junior doctors completed a web-based survey, and: (a) ranked medical specialties according to perceived level of training difficulty (incorporating entry difficulty,…

In this article we seek to explore the motivations for studying a vocational qualification of 40 students currently in further education. We consider student decision making, in terms of the support and guidance received, and examine the value these students place on their training, particularly with respect to their future employment. Drawing on…

It is not unusual to hear study in the vocational education sector referred to as a "stepping stone" into further studies in the higher education environment. What this pathway entails for those who choose it is not immediately clear however. This article reports on research conducted with a small cohort of students who arrived at an Australian…

In this article, we examine the relationship between different career guidance styles of vocational education teachers and vocational education students' career competencies (i.e. career reflection, career exploration and networking). Questionnaires on students' perceptions of the career guidance of their teachers during career conversations, and…