Vocational education,transitions,marginalisation and social justice in the Nordic countries

Abstract

The five articles in this special issue present studies focusing on two key aspects of vocational education and transitions in the Nordic countries in relation to social justice: (a) impacts of policies and reforms on transitions and (b) content, practices, curriculum and equality. Collectively, the articles outline important similarities and differences between the countries and contribute, inter alia, to our understanding of the ‘academic–vocational divide’, the impact of neo-liberal steering on vocational education and transitions. They also develop bridges between different empirical contexts and theoretical ‘languages’ that may help efforts to understand and contextualise the current development of vocational education and transitions in the Nordic countries.

In the Nordic welfare states, equality and associated principles strongly influenced the organisational development of social institutions (Holm, 2018; Lappalainen and Lahelma, 2016; Nylund and Rosvall, 2016), including the educational systems. This is manifested, for example, in ambitions to provide programmes that enable transitions to both higher education and working life in upper secondary vocational education and training (VET). However, there are also key differences between Nordic countries, notably in the relationship between school and work within this educational sector. Sweden and Finland have a tradition of mainly school-based education, while Denmark, Iceland and Norway have strong traditions of apprenticeship training. Despite these differences in the dominant form of vocational education provision, upper secondary vocational education in Nordic countries seems to face the same set of problems. These include low throughput, high youth unemployment and frequent social exclusion, which are major concerns in the debate regarding development of youth education (Isopahkala-Bouret et al., 2014; Jørgensen, 2015; Lundahl and Olofsson, 2014). Attempts to tackle these problems have varied among the Nordic countries. For example, Denmark recently moved closer to Sweden in terms of increasing integration between different programmes and the time allocated to general subjects (Persson Thunqvist et al., 2019), while Sweden moved closer to Denmark by increasing the workplace-based learning element (Jørgensen et al., 2019; Nylund and Virolainen, 2019). The common features and problems of Nordic welfare states, together with the marked differences in their organisation of upper secondary vocational education, may facilitate elucidation of the problems and possible approaches to tackle them. Thus, the Nordic countries provide interesting cases for comparative studies in a European context.

Framing the special issue: A research collaboration

The articles in this special issue present results of collaborative efforts of a network (Vocational education, transitions, marginalisation and social justice in the Nordic countries). Participants included researchers involved in a project (NordVET) and Nordic centre of excellence (JustEd), both funded by NordForsk, addressing related themes. The special issue’s guest editors, Mattias Nylund and Per-Åke Rosvall, answered a call for comparative research with colleagues from the NordVET project (led by Christian Helms Jørgensen) and JustEd (led by Gunilla Holm, 2018). The network was formed to combine and compare NordVET’s and JustEd’s previous findings on issues related to marginalisation and social justice in transitions and vocational education. During the initial network meeting, various issues were identified as warranting comparative analysis, based on the participants’ previous work. After some preliminary work on these issues, we decided to arrange a symposium to present and discuss our results at the 45th Congress of Nordic Educational Research Association in Copenhagen, in 2017. The symposium was held under the auspices of the Vocational education, transitions, marginalisation and social justice in the Nordic countries network, which is also the title of this special issue. Five papers were considered at the symposium, with UK-based Professor James Avis as discussant. This special issue is the final step in the collaborative process and includes five comparative studies, covering five countries, together with a paper by Professor Avis placing the Nordic examples in a wider context.

Articles and key themes

Vocational education in all Nordic countries shares some problematic patterns in relation to goals such as equality and inclusion. One, also found in international contexts (Bol et al., 2014; Ho, 2012), is an association between low social class background and VET. The Nordic countries have all tried to tackle these problems in various ways. However, there seems to be no simple solution. For example, in the 1990s Swedish policymakers broadened the content of vocational programmes, making all students who graduated from upper secondary school eligible for higher education. The success of this reform is debated, and critics argue that its outcomes conflicted with its aims, as it left youths socially excluded, without good prospects of either employment or further study (see, for instance, Olofsson and Panican, 2019). In contexts where school-based vocational education dominates, like in Sweden and Finland, apprenticeship is a frequently suggested solution to the problem of social exclusion caused by students not finishing their upper secondary education. This is because apprenticeships supposedly provide a more interesting pedagogic approach combined with employment and income; thus they are expected to decrease rates of drop-out from education. However, apprenticeships may be introduced in the form of much less integrated upper secondary education, leading to the creation of poorly valued routes, and apprentices being poorly prepared for both higher education and citizenship. Thus, in varying ways and degrees their social exclusion and deprivation in terms of further education and employment opportunities may be exacerbated in the long run. In sum, the organisation of upper secondary vocational education affects various (if not all) aspects of societal equality and inclusion, either directly or indirectly. Moreover, different models of organising upper secondary education are accompanied by different problems and challenges, and their outcomes may depend on their societal context. Combination and comparison of the findings of research by NordVET and JustEd allowed more thorough investigation of these issues, and more rigorous definition of aspects requiring further investigation.

A research field closely connected to vocational education, popularly known as ‘the academic–vocational divide’ or ‘theory–practice divide’, is important in terms of social justice (Nylund et al., 2017). The validity of such separation is debatable, since theory is always integrated in certain practices and vice versa. However, the separation typically appears in practice when youths choose academically or vocationally oriented education tracks, and their choices have profound, ongoing implications for the kinds of encountered and valued knowledge, as well as others’ perceptions of their abilities. For example, VET students are usually expected to have practical rather than theoretical skills, and to engage superficially with ‘theoretical’ tasks (Hjelmér et al., 2010; Rosvall et al., 2017). Another example is that vocational experience is not valued for higher education (Avis and Orr, 2016; Hodgson and Spours, 2010). Hence, different educational tracks give different possibilities, for example for mobility. In terms of social equality, academic knowledge (and hence long academic study) seems to be valued more highly than practical skills in the labour market (Virolainen and Stenström, 2014). The labour market outcomes of education are reflected in people with higher education certificates receiving both higher income and more secure employment than peers who lack such certificates, and who are prone to more frequent and longer spells of unemployment (Niemi and Rosvall, 2013). All the articles in this special issue address these concerns, and collectively contribute to an understanding of the academic–vocational divide’s current expression in the Nordic countries and how this differentiation can be understood in a social justice context. Furthermore, all the articles contribute to an understanding of the increasing international influence of neo-liberal ideas on educational goals and the organisation of education, particularly orientation towards efficiency, new public management and responsiveness to labour market needs (see Angus, 2015; Francia, 2011; Lynch, 2006).

In sum, the articles in this special issue address topics of general relevance to vocational education and transitions in European countries, including the impact of policies and reforms on transitions, and eqality-related aspects of content, practices, curriculum and equality.

The first article (Jørgensen et al., 2019) concerns school-to-work policies in Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The authors synthesise and analyse recent research and critically draw upon Walther’s (2006) classification of transition regimes. This recognises a Nordic universalistic regime of youth transitions characterised by emphasis on collective social responsibility, individual motivation and personal development. Inter alia, they highlight the increasing complexity of youth transitions and argue that transition policies tend to have multiple and conflicting effects. In other words, what works in one domain for a group of individuals might not work, or even have opposite effects, in another domain. For example, comprehensive upper secondary school is associated with high equality of opportunities, but also with weak ties to working life (Jørgensen et al., 2019). The authors also highlight possibilities that decentralisation and marketisation of education may make overall school-to-work transitions more fragmented, non-transparent and (hence) more difficult.

Another theme that Jørgensen et al. touch upon is the difficult balancing act of educating workers and citizens, which is particularly pertinent in VET. This issue is also discussed in the second article (Persson Thunqvist et al., 2019). However, the latter focuses on a period of substantial VET reforms (the 1990s) in Sweden and Norway. The implemented reforms in the two countries were based on quite different structures: two years of school-based preparation followed by a two-year apprenticeship in Norway, and three years of school-based education including 15 weeks of workplace-based learning in Sweden. The authors relate the organisation of VET to issues such as fostering democratic citizens, unemployment and promoting social diversity. They also discuss the reasons for the different developments in Norway and Sweden highlighting, inter alia, the importance of social partners and political priorities in the reform process.

The third article of this special issue (Nylund and Virolainen, 2019) also focuses on developments that began in the 1990s. Drawing upon Bernstein’s (2000) concept of ‘pedagogic code’, it presents a comparative analysis of the evolving role of general subjects in the upper secondary VET curricula in Finland and Sweden during the 1990s and 2010s. It illuminates principles that guided curriculum development during these periods, and the relation of curriculum construction to issues of social distribution of knowledge and transitions. A key conclusion is that ‘market relevance’ has played a major role in the organisation of VET since 1990, but varying interpretations of the concept guided VET in the two countries in different directions, including the role of general subjects within the curricula. On a general level, both countries emphasised ‘flexibility’ and a broadening of VET in the 1990s. In the 2010s, the promotion of flexibility and universal access to higher education was superseded by a stronger focus on employability and entrepreneurship in addition to students’ command of more specific vocational tasks.

All the articles in this special issue touch on issues of educational equality, but this is the primary focus of the fourth article. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s (1997, 2008) theorisation of different forms of injustice, Lappalainen et al. (2019) analyse how the conceptualisation of equality fluctuated in Finnish and Swedish upper secondary education policy and curricula from the 1970s to the 2010s. They also consider changes in the economic and political climate that drove associated shifts in policy. Their analysis illustrates quite dramatic shifts in the conceptualisation of equality during this period, inter alia from a focus on economic inequalities to discriminatory practices linked to sexuality and ethnicity. They also identify a shift from ambitions to tackle economic inequality to aims to promote employability, which is particularly visible in vocational upper secondary education curricula. A further conclusion is that the VET curriculum seems much more prone to change than its academically oriented counterpart in both countries.

The fifth article (Eíriksdóttir and Rosvall, 2019) reports an investigation of how VET policy plays out in practice. More specifically, the authors use classroom observations and interviews to examine how VET teachers address the dual goals of boosting students’ employability and civic engagement, while simultaneously teaching a highly diverse group of students. From classroom observations in VET programmes in both Iceland and Sweden they conclude that most of the students’ tasks were individualised, especially in the male-dominated programmes, and the teachers justified this by the need to cater for students with wide ranges of ability, motivation, age (especially in Iceland) and attitudes. However, Eíriksdóttir and Rosvall (2019) argue that the observed individualisation seemed to favour teaching skills at the expense of possibilities for addressing social order, and advocate a better balance between the two. They conclude that the observed imbalance promotes reproduction of social classes, since reflection, discussion and structural and systematic thinking not only enable participation in societal conversations, but are also powerful tools for exploring alternatives and generating innovation for social change.

The last article, by Professor James Avis, Huddersfield University, offers a reflection on the five articles in this special issue. He stresses the importance of placing questions of VET, transitions and social justice within the broader context of capitalist relations and developments in contemporary capitalism. This, he argues, is essential if the deeper issues facing VET, such as the reproduction of class relations, are to be understood and rigorously tackled.

Challenges for comparative research on transitions and vocational education in Europe and the Nordic countries

The joint work presented in this special issue indicates both identifiable trends and differences between the Nordic countries. Taken together, the articles highlight the importance of intensive scrutiny of processes and practices in settings with apparently similar structures to reveal nuances. Otherwise, there is a risk of educational policy, curricula and practices being ineffective, or even promoting opposite effects to stated goals. However, the Nordic countries are more different than they are often assumed to be, especially by non-Nordic readers and researchers, and the joint work also highlights a difficulty in comparative studies of practices and outcomes in different countries. The educational structures, registers, other contextual features and research interests are not identical, so it is impossible to attribute detected differences to any specific factor.

Investigations of VET, school-to-work transitions and transition policies tend to rest on somewhat different theoretical foundations, and one aim of this special issue is to provide possibilities to develop bridges between different empirical contexts and theoretical ‘languages’ to improve understanding and contextualisation of recent developments in VET and transitions in the Nordic countries. In each article, this is done through the use of European and internationally cited studies or theorisations such as those by Bernstein (2000), Fraser (1997, 2008), Thelen (2004) and Walther (2006).

By publishing this special issue, the formal collaborations of the Vocational education, transitions, marginalisation and social justice in the Nordic countries network will come to an end. However, the work done by the network shows that funding networks is important as it enables collaborations that otherwise would not exist. Thus, we want to express our gratitude to our funder, NordForsk, for facilitating this collaborative research and resulting special issue. However, we also want to point out that the issue does not cover some important aspects of social justice, VET and transitions, such as gender, ethnicity and place. In our experience, the possibilities for establishing small-scale networks are declining, and we hope that funders will consider supporting new networks in the future to cover less frequently addressed areas. As this special issue illustrates, cross-national analysis can provide insights that may be difficult to acquire in national or lower-level studies.