Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs

How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan. By Kathleen Thelen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 352p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper. The theory of evolution is under attack. In this case, however, the attacker, Kathleen Thelen, comes armed with far more plausible evidence than the proponents of “intelligent design,” and the creatures being analyzed are not plants and animals but key economic institutions, such as vocational training systems, organized labor, and employer organizations.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/AF212BCB0986B52F0DDE627578286C70/S1537592705000496a.pdf/div-class-title-how-institutions-evolve-the-political-economy-of-skills-in-germany-britain-the-united-states-and-japan-div.pdf

How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan

Choice, pathways and transitions post-16: new youth, new economies in the global city

Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform Science, Education, and Making Society by Making the Child

A historical tension between a more general and a more specific focus in post-compulsory education is made visible in some educational systems by the division into more academic and more vocational ...

/pdf/the-vocational-academic-divide-in-neoliberal-upper-secondary-xzgxbrv29m.pdf

The vocational–academic divide in neoliberal upper secondary curricula: the Swedish case

In this study we examine how the academic–vocational divide is manifested today in Finland, Iceland and Sweden in the division between vocationally (VET) and academicallyoriented programmes at the ...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/20004508.2018.1424490

The Academic-Vocational Divide in Three Nordic Countries: Implications for Social Class and Gender.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in six different types of rural area and their schools in different parts of Sweden, this article identifies how rural schools relate to the local place and discusse ...

/pdf/rurality-and-education-relations-metro-centricity-and-local-4v82nrftp8.pdf

Rurality and education relations: Metro-centricity and local values in rural communities and rural schools:

Research material from ethnographic studies of vocational upper secondary educational programmes in Finland and Sweden presented here indicates that the discourse of schoolwork as being either theo ...

Framing and classifying the theoretical and practical divide: how young men’s positions in vocational education are produced and reproduced

A key feature of the Swedish upper secondary school reform of 2011 (GY11) is the new direction it sets out for the organization of vocational education (VET) and the role it plays in youths' transitions from school to work. This study analyses the GY11 reform in terms of its impact on the organization of knowledge in VET and its implications for students' prospects of transitioning from VET to work or higher education, and for their roles as citizens. To understand its likely consequences, GY11 is analysed in the context of practices in a school class for the Vehicle programme steered by the curriculum prior to GY11. The theoretical concepts used are drawn from Basil Bernstein and his distinctions between knowledge organized into horizontal and vertical discourses. The findings of the study suggest that GY11 reinforces an already strong emphasis on horizontally organized knowledge in VET by placing great importance on strongly context-bound, skill-oriented knowledge. This implies a stronger exclusion of VET students, primarily with working-class backgrounds, from vertical discourses and limits the possible transitions of youths taking the VET-route by reducing their access to higher education and their capacity to function as both workers and citizens.

Per-Åke Rosvall

Papers

The vocational–academic divide in neoliberal upper secondary curricula: the Swedish case

The Academic-Vocational Divide in Three Nordic Countries: Implications for Social Class and Gender.

Rurality and education relations: Metro-centricity and local values in rural communities and rural schools:

Framing and classifying the theoretical and practical divide: how young men’s positions in vocational education are produced and reproduced

A curriculum tailored for workers? Knowledge organization and possible transitions in Swedish VET