UPCOMING JVET EVENTS…

  • Celebrate with JVET - 250th Edition Event

    Friday 22 May 2026 - 10:30 - 17:00; In person, UCL, London & online;

    JVET and the LLAKES Institute invite you to a celebration of 250 editions of critical VET research in JVET.

    To celebrate the 250th edition of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training, we invite you to participate in a debate on two key theoretical traditions influential in vocational education and training research, followed by the launch of two new books.

    Each debate will start with members of the JVET board debating each of the two identified theoretical traditions, after which the debate will be open to participants. We hope, in the process, to clarify the value of each theoretical approach for research in our field. Please join us for this stimulating event.

    Programme and Debate Abstracts

    10:30 - 11:00 - Arrival
    11:00 - 11:30 - Opening and welcome:JVET: Stephanie Allais, Jim Hordern and Simon McGrath & LLAKES: Prof. Andy Green, Prof. Germ Janmaat and Dr Natasha Kersh
    11:30 - 13:00 - Debate one: The Capabilities Approach, chaired bySimon McGrath with Leesa Wheelahan and Stephanie Allais
    13:00 - 14:00 - Lunch
    14:00 - 15:00 - Debate Two: Institutional Theory, chaired by Moses Oketch with Markus Maurer and Bill Esmond
    15:30 - 17:00 - Book launch with refreshments and informal discussion
    17:00 - Close

    Places are limited:
    Book for in-person attendance by 8th May 2026.
    Book for online attendance by 15th May 2026.

    Book here

  • JVET Early Career Researcher Day Conference 2026 - Call for Abstracts

    Monday 5 October  2026; 09:00 - 17:00; University of Glasgow

    Join us in 2026 for JVET Early Career Researcher (ECR) Day—a chill in-person meetup to share ideas and network!

    We are pleased to invite submissions for the JVET Early Career Researcher (ECR) Day Conference 2026, hosted by Journal of Vocational Education and Training and the School of Education, University of Glasgow. The event is also supported by the Skills and Livelihoods for Better Futures Interdisciplinary Research Network.

    We welcome contributions that examine VET across diverse contexts, with particular attention to comparative perspectives, learner experiences, and the relationship between education, work, and society. We also encourage work that engages with developments in VET as it strives to meet the challenges of technological change, climate transitions, and political uncertainty.

    Participation and Application Process
    Due to the limited number of participants, attendance at the conference will be determined by an application process. Interested individuals are encouraged to submit their applications for consideration. Successful applicants will be notified and invited to participate in the event. The participants could select in-person oral presentations or posters to present their research.

    Abstract Submission Guidelines
    Deadline: 30 June 2026
    Submission: Abstracts of up to 400 words

    Bursaries: A limited number of full bursaries are available for presenters. Please indicate in your submission if you wish to be considered. (Please note we cannot provide bursaries for poster only participants.)

    Join us for this opportunity to engage with a vibrant ECR community, connect with international scholars and practitioners, and contribute to debates shaping the future of VET research.

    We look forward to your submissions! Submit here

  • JVET Conference 2027

    15 - 17 JULY 2027

    Following the success of our last conference the team is busy planning the next Conference due to take place on 15 - 17 July 2027, in Oxford.

    Please hold the date - we will provide more details later this Spring! 

Meet the 250th Edition event panel

Leesa Wheelahan

Stephanie Allais

Simon McGrath

Debate one: The Capabilities Approach, chaired by Simon McGrath

Leesa Wheelahan

The human development and capability approach provides a normative framework for evaluating vocational education policies and practices, and for considering alternatives. It calls attention to human flourishing rather than instrumental concerns about investment in human capital. The capabilities approach cannot be applied in the absence of theorising about social relations of power and domination, but it can provide a framework for positing alternative aims of vocational education that focus on human flourishing. In particular, the capabilities approach provides the grounds for considering whose interests are served by vocational education, the extent to which it meets students’ interests, and the resources that are needed to ensure these interests are met.

Stephanie Allais

The capabilities approach makes an important, although difficult to implement, contribution to economic debates, by drawing attention firstly to economic outcomes beyond growth, and secondly to individual differences in what is valued most. But the current widespread application of it in education research is problematic. The term ‘capabilities’ lends itself to thinking about attributes of individuals, instead of societies. In education, this is aggravated by the fact that education systems are set up to cultivate and develop attributes in individuals. Much work in this tradition then focuses on the attributes that individuals need, as opposed to how societies should change. It is frequently juxtaposed with the human capital approach, but it has more in common with it than difference: both position VET as an independent variable that will lead to hoped for changes in individuals, and these will, it is hoped, enable them to gain productive employment and earn well (HCT) or to ‘flourish’ (capabilities). The capabilities approach could lead to ever greater burdens placed on weak VET systems that already are expected to produce miracles; now, not only should they produce work-ready individuals, but also individuals who can flourish in ways of their choosing. This may, paradoxically, reinforce victim-blaming both of individuals and education institutions.

Debate Two: Institutional Theory, chaired by Moses Oketch

Books launch

David Guile presents Beyond Skills: A Capability Conception of Vocational Education, by Leesa Wheelahan and Gavin Moodie, published by Brill/SENSE.

This book argues that a new ‘social settlement’ is needed in vocational education, one which is based on a broader understanding of occupations and preparation for work. It argues for more expansive understandings of the purposes of vocational education which includes support for human flourishing, social justice, social inclusion, and sustainability.

Emancipation and vocational education: Skills, Bildung and the subject, by Bill Esmond, Johannes Schmees, and Volker Wedekind, published by Routledge. Speaker to be confirmed.

This book challenges the economistic neoliberal rationale for vocational education, drawing critically on neglected bodies of theory, especially from Germany but also the global South, to explore the possibilities for critical thinking and emancipatory practice within vocational space.

Markus Maurer

An institutionalist theory approach is productive for researching vocational education and training (VET) because it treats skills systems not just as education arrangements, but as embedded in labour markets, firms, states, and production regimes. Within this broad family of approaches, historical institutionalism has become particularly influential in comparative VET research, as it highlights how skills systems are shaped by historically developed institutional configurations rather than by policy design alone. Yet, historical institutionalism foregrounds not only path dependency and critical junctures, but also processes of gradual institutional change. Such a perspective can enable researchers to understand VET systems as outcomes of negotiated settlements and evolving institutional paths, and to develop more realistic reform perspectives that engage with incentives, coalitions, and institutional change rather than assuming that improved policy design alone can fix the system.

Bill Esmond

Institutional theories have attracted interest in our field because of their recognition that skill formation systems in each country possess their own rationalities and ecologies: they appear to offer possibilities to resist the convergence of VET on neoliberal lines. Yet in discarding established understandings of social structures such as class, gender and ‘race’, these mid-level theories neglect the active engagement in national skills policies of powerful social forces whose aims centre on maintaining social hierarchy and deepening accelerating inequalities. They overlook the significance of educational practices that support social justice within VET and their need to connect to broader social forces that can support the world's youth towards meaningful work and a sustainable humanity.

Markus Maurer

Bill Esmond

Moses Oketch

Open call for papers:

“International perspectives on academisation, tertiarisation and hybridisation of vocational education: Between problem-solving, imitation and/or unintended consequences”

Guest Editors: 

Junmin Li, TU Dortmund University; Germany
Johannes K. Schmees, University of Derby, United Kingdom
Ann-Marie Bathmaker, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Cooperative universities in Germany, higher and degree apprenticeships in the United Kingdom, Associate Degrees in the Netherlands and vocational universities in China. These developments manifest a significant trend of academisation, tertiarisation and hybridisation of vocational education and, in consequence, reshape traditional boundaries between vocational and higher education.

This proposed special issue will offer a comprehensive critical examination of the evolving landscape of academisation, tertiarisation and hybridisation of vocational education. Building on Criblez (2010), we define the tertiarisation of vocational education as a process whereby vocational qualifications are developed at tertiary level without acquiring academic status. Tertiarisation aims to elevate the status of vocational education, enhance the attractiveness of vocational pathways, and increase the social and economic benefits associated with them (Deißinger & Ott, 2016).  Click below to read the full call.

Deadline for 500 word abstracts - 29 May 2026

Read more & submit abstract
Read more & submit abstract