The ‘Europeanisation’ of Vocational Education between Formal Policies and Deliberative Communication

Abstract

This article deals with current European policies of vocational education and training, namely the Copenhagen Process, the Open Method of Coordination and the framework of the Lisbon Agenda. The analysis shows that there is no standard European path of achieving the Lisbon Goals, but rather that there are considerable variations depending on the prevailing VET systems and the respective VET policy. Two antagonistic scenarios on the possible effects of the current activities to implement a European Credit Transfer System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET), and the European Qualification Framework (EQF) are sketched. The best and worse case scenarios can be used to assess the current national activities to improve the quality of European VET systems and stimulate processes of discursive communication. The concluding section outlines some prospects of a European VET policy by utilising the presented findings and proposes some cornerstones of a European VET policy aiming at improving the teaching and learning processes. It is argued that the coherence of policies formulated through the so-called Lisbon Goal is not mirrored in concurrent European policies of VET and that more ‘deliberative’ processes of communication between different actors in VET spanning from the level of practice to the level of European policies are needed in order to truly ‘Europeanise’ VET in Europe.