International Journal of Vocational Education Studies

History of Vocational Education and Training

Dietmar Frommberger — 2025-09-23

Home Economics Schools for Women

Karmen Trasberg — 2025-09-23

In Estonia, the early 20th century witnessed profound societal transformations that also shaped women’s education. Prior to this period, Estonian women primarily involved in household labor, with limited access to formal education. However, beginning in the 1920s, home economics emerged as a recognized academic discipline, leading to the establishment of several specialized schools throughout the country. This article focuses on the period from 1918 to 1940, a pivotal era for the development of home economics in Estonia. It explores the factors that contributed to its growth, the educational content it encompassed, and its impact on the social status of women. On one hand, the institutionalization of home economics elevated domestic tasks into a formal area of study and professional practice, aligning with broader state development and bringing private life into the public domain. On the other hand, it reinforced traditional gender roles, limiting women’s influence in the public sphere and maintaining their connection to domestic responsibilities.

Change and Persistence

Lisa Maree Maurice-Takerei — 2025-09-23

This paper provides a background to vocational education and training in Aotearoa New Zealand with a focus on the legacies that continue to impact the environment and conditions for a stable and viable VET system. Despite ongoing measures to reform and organise VET through legislative shifts and changes in administration and organisation, the sector continues to be unsettled and in flux. There are several embedded attitudes associated with vocational, trade and technical education that have thwarted efforts to develop a strong vocational and technical education system in Aotearoa, New Zealand over time and these have had an impact on efforts at reform. This paper examines some of the historical conditions that have led to the environment for VET as we now find it – underdeveloped, underfunded and in a constant state of reform.

From ITABs to Jobs and Skills Councils

Erica Smith — 2025-09-23

This paper throws light on the history of skills councils in Australia from their formal introduction in the 1990s to the present day. Skills councils are important elements of the vocational education and training system, providing two key, and linked, inputs into the vocational education and training (VET) system: they develop the competency standards underpinning the qualifications delivered in VET (Training Packages), and they provide information about industry needs for VET training. They are highly political, as stakeholder groups vie for control of the system; hence during the past thirty years there have been several reorganisations of the system. There has been little research on the topic. The paper describes the four main iterations of the skills council systems over time, using key documents, some no longer available publicly, as well as the author’s own experience in and with the system, and her own research, some unpublished, into the topic. To illustrate the political nature of the system, a case study is provided of the interventions over time by one of the three major economy-wide employer peak bodies. The paper ends with suggestions for further research, and an Appendix documents the major reports of the 2000s and 2010s, including brief summaries, to assist future researchers.

Fostering Vocational Identity Development in VET

Christiane Euphemia Thole — 2025-09-23

This paper draws attention to a need for action revealed by empirical evidence indicating that vocational identity development is neglected in German vocational education and training (VET), despite the acknowledged significance of identity for vocational success and well-being. The authors argue that understanding and fostering the psychological processes underlying vocational identity development can enable VET schools and educators to improve connectivity between school and workplace, fulfill the normative objective of Bildung and tackle current challenges in the German VET system. The paper presents an (inter)action-based concept of identity development comprising a vocational ethos that guides daily action and an individualized vocational self-concept giving orientation for personal development. An examplary case study illustrates the need for support and the pedagogical implications. To strengthen subject orientation in VET didactics the authors suggest a simple model using the categories meaning, responsibility, and productivity. Finally, the implications for VET practice are discussed.

Boundary Objects Supporting Students’ Meaning-making During Work Placement in Norwegian Vocational Education

Monika Øgård — 2025-09-23

This study investigates the use of boundary objects in vocational education and training (VET) as an approach to address the challenge of meaning making of VET concepts, often experienced by pupils at school just as ‘definitions’ to be learnt by heart or to be memorized, hence becoming isolated knowledge instead of contextual applicable and meaningful. A problem that is well known in international dual VET education and research. As well it turns the focus on, for instance pupils, to potentially become co-brokers between the boundary of school and workplace, using boundary objects, reified as thematic assignments in and for both learning sites. In the interplay between boundary objects, advisors, students and teachers, affordances can be created helping to construct meaning and motivation in and for the pupils’ VET education.