Vocational Schooling Research Articles

Beyond Dualism, Splits, and Schisms: Social Justice for a Renewal of Vocational–Academic Education

To fulfill the democratic dream for American schooling, educators and policymakers need to work together for the same common cause: reforming the academic-vocational dichotomy of schooling that has persisted over the past century. Academic subjects continue to be separated from vocational schooling with the effect of diluting each domain's effectiveness. The Deweyian vision of social justice provides a solution for healing this fundamental dualism that characterizes schooling. Even where integration has been attempted using academic-vocational models, tracking continues in public schools without commitment to whole-school reform design. This article discusses these issues in the context of the history of vocational education and Dewey's perspective of integrated education through the occupations. The authors also illustrate the concepts presented through promising whole-school reform designs for democratizing the public education system. Policy implications are addressed for moving toward a socially just system of schooling.

Educational level and decreases in leisure time physical activity: predictors from the longitudinal GLOBE study

STUDY OBJECTIVEThis study describes educational differences in decreases in leisure time physical activity among an adult, physically active population and additionally attempts to identify predictors of these differences from information...

General versus Vocational High Schools and Labor Market Outcomes in Turkey

The main objective of this paper is to provide evidence on the extent of wage differential between general and vocational high school graduates who do not go on to higher education. School selection is modeled with a three way multinominal logit model. Selectivity corrected wage equations are estimated for general and vocational high school graduates. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of the wage differential is performed. Analysis is carried out for men and women separately. Individual level data from 1994 household Expenditure Survey conducted by the State Institute of Statistics are used in the analysis. The main finding is that when controlled for observed characteristics and sample selection, for men, the wages of the vocational high school graduates are larger than that of the general high school graduates. It was not possible to make a comparison for women due to poor wage equation estimates for the vocational high school graduate women. Second, lower unemployment rates are observed among vocational high school graduates than among general high school graduates. Third, for men private returns to vocational high schooling are higher than to general high schooling. Thus, labor market outcomes in terms of private rates of return to schooling, unemployment rates and wages favor vocational high schools than general high schools.

Can Vocational Education Improve the Wages of Minorities and Disadvantaged Groups? The Case of Israel

There is a considerable empirical literature which compares wage levels of workers who have studied at secondary vocational schools with wages of workers who took academic schooling. In general, vocational education does not lead to higher wages. However, in some countries where labor markets are characterized by employment growth, skill shortages and a good match between vocational skills and available jobs, the record of vocational schooling has been more positive. Israel constitutes a case in point. However, little attention has been given to examining the success of vocational education in raising the wages of various sub-sections of the labor force, in particular of minorities and disadvantaged groups. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of vocational education in raising the wage levels of four such groups: recent immigrants, Jews of Eastern origin, Israeli Arabs and females. The results are mixed, differing from group to group, thus justifying our approach of examining the impact of vocational schooling on finer breakdowns of the population of secondary school completers.

Vocational higher secondary education graduates in the state of Gujarat

The Indian Government remains committed to the policy of diversification of the secondary curriculum, despite considerable evidence that vocational secondary education is struggling to establish itself. This article provides detailed information on the experiences and views of the limited number of successful graduates from secondary vocational courses who have entered the world of work. It draws on evidence from a large survey, conducted in Gujarat in 1996, of the views of students and exstudents of such courses. The evidence confirms the findings of previous studies that participation in vocational secondary education is linked to the students' socio-economic status, caste background and parental educational level, but also indicates that poorer students, driven by economic necessity, and with fewer private and familial resources, are the most likely to accept entry into the world of work at the end of their vocational schooling.

The Changing Nature of Non-formal Education in Latin America

This article highlights the history of innovation and creativity in non-formal education programming in Latin America since the 1920s. These include community-based programmes, literacy, fundamental education, community development, technical vocational training, extension education, consciousness raising, popular education, and community schooling. With the economic downturn in the 1980s, non-formal education became less viable as part of socio-economic development strategies owing partly to the social progress made in the region, a shift to schooling as a priority and the pulling back of governments from social service funding. Nevertheless, the 1980s saw the informal economy and social movements as emerging avenues for non-formal education programming and non-governmental agencies became the dominant vehicle for educational delivery. During the 1990s, technical education was going through privatisation and adult basic education was being criticised and overhauled. Citizenship education, a potential avenue for non-fomal education investment in the newly democratised region is identified as an area overlooked by policy makers. Similarly, the growing needs of the indigenous populations of the region and urban youth unemployment are singled out as potential areas for non-formal education programming.

Quasi‐market Reforms and Vocational Schooling in England: an economic analysis

The creation of a quasi‐market in England has changed pupil, parent and school behaviour in a way which has reinforced the dominance of traditional, academic schooling. We summarise the results of research into this quasi‐market behaviour, with particular emphasis upon the upper secondary age group. Whilst schools now face greater incentives to respond to consumer choice, we argue that only certain groups of consumers have been effectively empowered by these reforms. Schools thus respond only to the wishes of a sub‐sample of consumers. In effect, they receive a signal which is biased against the provision of quality vocational schooling. We link this analysis to changes in the structure of contemporary labour markets and the attempt to gain credibility for a national system of vocational qualifications. Our analysis concludes with proposals which seek to improve the quality of the information flows between parents, schools and the labour market.

Caps and Gowns: Historical Reflections on the Institutions That Shaped Learning for and at Work in Germany and the United States, 1800–1945

This study explains how and why Germany and the United States institutionalized radically different educational and training systems. Germans rely upon regulated apprenticeships supplemented by vocational schooling to prepare and certify the majority of their youth for work. Nearly 70 percent of all Germans eventually undertake an apprenticeship. Americans, in contrast, educate, train, and certify their young almost exclusively in academically oriented schools. These divergent strategies have strikingly different consequences for the distribution of knowledge and skills, the organization of work, and the division of labor in the two societies.

Vocational Education in Israel: Wage Effects of the VocEd-Occupation Match

In an earlier paper based on Israeli census data, the authors showed that vocational school completers achieved higher earnings than their counterparts who attended academic secondary schools, but only if they worked in occupations related to the vocational course of study pursued. These findings were challenged by Lawrence Hotchkiss; using U.S. follow-up data from the High School and Beyond survey, he argued that the wage advantage of vocational school completers working in related occupations stemmed from employment in a well-paid occupation (a possibility not examined in our earlier estimating model) and was not the result of the training received. In this paper, we replicate the U.S. study using our Israeli data base; the results strongly confirm those from our earlier study. How may the contrasting results for Israel and the United States be explained? We suggest that the U.S. study may be faulted; its focus on young workers in theirfirst job after graduation, may have led to unduly pessimistic results with regard to the labor market outcomes of vocational schooling.

Is apprenticeship better? a review of the economic evidence

The merits of apprenticeship can be considered from two standpoints, according to whether it is viewed as vocational education or job training. In the first case, the relevant comparison is to full-time vocational schooling; in the second, to the youth labour market, including employment, unemployment and labour market programmes. Economic evidence on both comparisons is reviewed, based primarily upon subsequent labour market outcomes for participants along the two routes. The statistical and economic obstacles to reaching conclusions based upon such evidence are discussed. International comparisons and studies of aggregate productivity are then considered as additional sources of information. The evidence suggests that in contemporary advanced economies apprenticeship is associated unevenly with economic advantages, primarily as a source of more stable employment for young male adults, and more in relation to regular youth employment and training than to vocational education. The value of apprenticeship for females is low in some countries. Differences relative to full-time vocational education appear to be country-specific and generally only secondary in magnitude.

Education for decline: Soviet vocational and technical schooling from Khrushchev to Gorbachev

Dennis Soltys. Education for Decline: Soviet Vocational and Technical Schooling from Khrushchev Gorbachev. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. 222 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60.00, cloth. $21.95, paper.In its title, this book promises assess Soviet vocational and technical schooling in the years from Khrushchev Gorbachev. However, it focuses primarily on the last decade of the existence of the Soviet Union, from 1981 1991, leaving the periods in the shadows.The book has four parts and a total of ten chapters. The first part has an historical and contextual character. In the introduction and chapter 2, Dennis Soltys provides a review of the Western literature in the field of his research. His following chapter is based on Soviet sources and further substantiates the main features of Soviet education and economy as portrayed in the Western literature reviewed earlier (p. 9). Unfortunately, the author decided dispense with the review of Soviet publications on the same topic, which could have significantly benefited his research.The second part of the book covers education policies from 1981 1984. It outlines the making and substance of the 1984 educational (p. 10), trying find out whose political or institutional interests were behind the reform. Soltys makes the point that the impulse for the reform came from a modernizing central government, but it was not supported by many in the country because intellectual ferment and policy criticism were virtually absent during Brezhnev (p. 10). The result was a generally backward-looking concept of reform.The third part of the book considers the implementation of the reform up 1988. It analyzes the steps made by the central government implement the reform. The section also pursues the question of whether co-ordination of central policy was achieved at the different levels of the administration of education.The fourth part covers discussions on the course and implementation of the reform in 1988 and attempts summarize the result of Soviet educational policies. In the tenth and final chapter the author provides a summary of his major findings. The book has an impressive bibliography and contains a good index and endnotes.The book will certainly be of interest those who analyze Soviet educational policies or specialize in and study late Soviet history. The basic underlying thesis is that in the 1980s, Soviet education continued be deeply rooted in a vocational education/applied science paradigm (p. 137). Soltys suggests that Soviet policy in the field of education was idea-driven and managerial and that the 1984 reform was designed within a context of the ideological self-isolation of the Soviet elite and of the USSR as a whole (p. 137). He also justly believes that lack of public interest, involvement, and criticism contributed the poor character of the reform. As he presents it, the two major targets of the reform were to increase the proportion of vocational/technical students at the secondary level and strengthen the integration of school and factory (p. 138). However, the clash of different interests represented by the central government, enterprises, municipalities, and educational institutions led the failure of the reform.In approaching the period associated with Mikhail Gorbachev, the author admits that the era brought more freedom in the discussions of the fate of the reform. He states that, [h]owever, most criticisms centred not around basic assumptions and strategies in education, but around narrower topics of institutional fragmentation and implementational slippage (p. 138). It is difficult disagree with such statements, as they are well supported by quantitative and qualitative evidence from different sources.However, the author attempts enlarge his agenda by taking the reader out of an analysis of vocational-technical schooling and into a general evaluation of the Soviet education system. …

The new information technology ‐ international diffusion and its impact on employment and skills

The technological revolution is creating new goods and services and altering how and where they are produced. One of the principal issues for all countries is how these new technologies will affect employment and the composition of skills demand. Surveys the literature to attempt to answer three main questions: to what degree are the new technologies becoming diffused around the world? How much do they reduce, or increase employment? And do they reduce, or increase, the skills required in the labour force? Touches briefly on implications for educational policy. The survey suggests that because of new technologies, new organizations of production, changing employment conditions and the development of new sectors of production, the complementarity of general, formal schooling, in‐plant training and learning‐by‐doing to capital investment are increasing over time and that general schooling plus on‐the‐job training is more complementary to new technologies than is vocational schooling. The former combination is more likely to give workers the flexibility they need in such changing conditions.

The Sea of Items Returns to China: backwash, selection and the diploma disease revisited

The Chinese educational landscape has been transformed since the 1970s when The Diploma Disease was first published. At that time, the Cultural Revolution was coming to an end and a process of educational reconstruction was about to start. Much of what Dore described was swept away by the enthusiasm of modernisers intent on re‐establishing a competitive, examination‐based system that valued competence over ideology, individual rewards, and the virtues of studying ‘to become a dragon’. This paper charts the changes that have taken place in assessment, the regeneration of the ‘key school’ system, the expansion of private schooling, and the university entrance and job placement system. Some of what Dore valued remains—Confucian values still permeate learning and teaching, an all‐round education is promoted which balances the intellectual with the moral and the physical, and vocational schooling is heavily promoted. Chinese education, and the role assessment plays in it, appears to be converging towards forms common in other East Asian countries. In the increasingly unregulated climate that is contemporary China, this appears to be happening with few checks and balances that might protect educational quality and preserve schooling from the excess backwash on learning and teaching that examinations create in other countries in the region. Dore's general thesis thus retains its relevance and stands as a salutary reminder to what the future may bring.

Mathematics Programs as a Means To Improve Job Qualifications for Women

Pass rates in courses for vocational (re)schooling of adults are generally low. Lack of mathematical skills is one of the factors that can be responsible. To enhance pass rates, most courses supply additional mathematics schooling. The present study investigated whether the effectiveness of additional mathematics schooling can be improved by new materialsfor the students and interactive teaching. Subjects involved in this study were female students following a business administration course. The results support the expectation that proper use of the newly developed materials help to improve the application of mathematics knowledge in job-related situations.

The social effects in adult life of chronic physical illness since childhood

An unselected group of 487 (222 females, 265 males) patients with juvenile onset chronic physical disorders was studied at the age of 19-25 years for their social outcome and compared with an age-matched group of 202 physically healthy controls. The interview covered both comprehensive and vocational schooling, data on their employment status, relationship to parents and sexual development in detail. The overall social maturation index showed poor social maturation in patients more often than in the controls. At the time of the study 23% of the patients and 11% of the controls had no vocational education or were not on their way to gaining it. Excluding those with a disability pension (10%), working experience, employment status and unemployment were fairly similar in both groups. Sexual development was delayed more often in the patients than in the controls and the patients were significantly more often unmarried and living in the same household as their parents. However, social and psychological factors accumulating in excess in the patient group were observed more significant than the physical disease to the delayed social maturation. Among patients with chronic physical disorders there is a minor group with delayed social maturation. Those at risk can easily be recognized even before adolescence in order to offer them and their parents support to achieve reasonable social development in early adulthood.

Vocational schooling and economic development: A Maltese case study

This article explores the promise, problems and pitfalls of vocational forms of secondary schooling when these are set up in developing, newly independent countries. Taking Malta as a case study, the author presents empirical evidence to examine some of the assumptions of human capital theory, and concludes that there are important limitations which stop ‘trade schools’ from responding adequately to the declared requirements for economic development. The reasons for the failure of such innovations need to be identified not only from within the educational institution, but also from the wider, macro-economic context.

Secondary Vocational Education and Earnings in Latin America[1

ABSTRACT Household survey data for II Latin American countries are used to assess earnings differentials by type of secondary education during the late 1980s. Introduction of the cost of the curriculum allows for the estimation of private and social rates of return to investment in education by type of secondary school curriculum. The paper documents mixed results. In some countries the private returns to vocational schooling are higher than the returns to general secondary schooling. Introducing differential cost of curriculum and estimating social returns to schooling results in much lower returns to vocational schooling. [1] The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the World Bank.

Vakteksten Lezen In Nt2 Een Verkennend Onderzoek

In the Netherlands, as well as in other Western European countries, many minority children are unsuccesful in their school careers. Their lack of achievement is, among other things, due to a language problem which is most probably related to literacy. In vocational education they are faced with the specific task of text comprehension in the content areas, which is a reading task and a learning task at the same time. The study on which will be reported, concerns the assessment of text comprehension in relation to vocabulary and knowledge about some topics of the texts used in the same text-comprehension test. Dutch (L1) and foreign (L2) students were submitted to these tests in the first year of their vocational schooling. It was found that the L2-readers tend towards a top-down way of reading, which implies a stronger reliance on conceptual guidance than in L1-reading.

Vocational Schooling, Occupational Matching, and Labor Market Earnings in Israel

The authors conducted a comparative analysis of the earnings of workers in Israel who had last attended vocational schools and those who had last attended academic secondary schools before entering the labor force. Their findings suggest that Israel may provide an example of an educational system in which vocational schooling is economically effective. Vocational schooling in Israel has proven more cost-effective than general academic training. In particular, vocational school attenders who later worked in occupations related to their course of study earned more. Their wages were up to 10 percent more a month than their peers who studied at academic secondary schools and those who attended vocational schools but found employment in other occupations not related to their field of study. These results reinforce similar findings in recent research on vocational schooling in the United States. A caveat is necessary to temper the generally positive findings concerning vocational schooling in Israel. While vocational schooling is cost-effective compared with other forms of secondary schooling, it does not compare favorably with other forms of training for skilled trades, such as apprenticeships and factory-based vocational schools. Another factor is the national consensus in Israel favoring education designed to equip young people for the social and cultural role of integrating the country's heterogenous, largely immigrant population.

The professional socialisation of midwives: balancing art and science.

Mastery of esoteric knowledge is one of the central features assigned by sociologists to fully professionalised service occupations, together with an orientation towards public service. There are, nevertheless, different views about the best way in which this education and socialisation can be provided for new recruits for practitioner roles. Some maintain that the university provides an ideal training ground. Critics of this view, however, call for a rejection of "university diploma mills' and a return to the type of apprenticeship socialisation common during the premodern era. This paper tests the usefulness of these perspectives in understanding the occupational socialisation of Newfoundland and Labrador midwives. Three major styles of training - traditional apprenticeship, vocational schooling and university education - can be discerned. In comparison to both apprenticeship and academic styles of occupational socialisation, only vocational training nicely blended the art and science of midwifery to produce competent and committed professionals.