Vocational Education: A Field and Sector of Education

Abstract

This book aims to elaborate what comprises the project of vocational education (i.e. its purposes, processes and outcomes) and how this project should be conceptualised, enacted and evaluated. It seeks to realise this aim through appraising how vocational education is currently positioned and the bases by which it might best be understood and valued as a field of education. Yet, to consider the worth of vocational education, it is necessary to elaborate what constitutes vocations and occupations, as these are its key objects. Then, the origins and forms of vocational education sectors that now occupy a particular niche in many countries’ educational systems are discussed. Therefore, having established what has come to constitute vocational education, its current purposes and the purposes to which it might aspire are able to be elaborated. Through a consideration of conceptions of curriculum, the dimensions of the curriculum processes that are used to enact these aspirations and the factors that shape their enactment, the worth and standing of vocational education are able to be appraised. It follows, therefore, that these foundational premises are necessary priorities in delineating, elaborating and appraising the project that comprises vocational education.