Guest editors: Jim Hordern, Monika Nerland and Kevin Orr

Call for papers for a Special Issue of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training (JVET)

Abstract deadline: 08 September 2025

Work practices in many occupations are changing with the introduction of advanced digital technologies and these changes stretch beyond matters of skills and qualifications. As digitalisation initiatives become more profound, many work organisations are aiming for digital transformation in the sense that the very organization of work, its meaning, values and associated aspects of occupational identity are changing (Vial, 2019). Often, these processes also include novel ideas about ways of relating to clients, users or stakeholders. Therefore, these changes in the workplace are often more human than technological. The very ways in which work is organized and enacted are affected, and employees themselves are central to this reorganisation in everyday work settings. Frontline workers are engaged in making sense of changes caused by digitalisation, altering their work practices and (re)distributing tasks and responsibilities within their everyday work (Brandenberger et al., 2023; Klein & Watson-Mannheim, 2021).  

Guest Editor: Stephen Billett

The societal standing of vocational education is often perceived to be low, compared with other education sectors, albeit more so in some countries than others. However, this issue of standing is global and prevalent in countries with both developed and developing economies (UNESCO 2018). The consequences of this low standing can be profound. Issue 72:2

Guest Editors: Philipp Gonon and Thomas Deissinger

Historical approaches are not a major focus of contemporary VET research. When we launched the Call for Papers for this Special Issue on the history of VET, we were not sure how many proposals and what kind of topics or country studies we would receive. Therefore, we were surprised that we got impressive 30 potential contributions with topics that included the history of ideas about vocational education, trajectories of concepts such as competences and skills and studies on social inequality and the role of VET to tackle this problem. Issue 73:2

Guest Editors: Jim Hordern, Yael Shalem, Bill Esmond and Dan Bishop

Perspectives on the nature of vocational knowledge and expertise are influential in shaping Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems and programmes in different societies and for different occupations, and reflect contrasting philosophies of the purpose of VET and its relationship to other forms of education. Debates centre around the role of knowledge derived from academic disciplines, the extent to which situated knowledge and practical understanding is key to the development of expertise, and epistemological questions about the relationship between forms of know-that and know-how. Issue 74:1

Guest Editors: Presha Ramsarup and Simon McGrath

This Special Issue is published online as Issue 2, 2024. Among the series of crises affecting the global, arguably none is more serious and pressing than the climate crisis. This has profound and urgent implications for how we live, work and learn in the immediate future. This clearly is of huge significance for how we think about and do vocational education and training. As the Guest Editors, Simon McGrath and Presha Ramsarup write: “The scale and urgency of the climate emergency means that major transformations across a range of human systems are both necessary and inevitable; although what is inevitable and what is necessary may not always correspond. Necessarily, this has profound implications for worlds of work and, hence, for vocational education and training systems. Yet, the mainstream VET literature has been very slow to respond to such challenges, and only a handful of papers have been written. Issue 76:2

Guest Editors: James Avis, Kevin Orr, Joy Papier and Paul Warmington

In JVET’s Special Issue: TVET race and ethnicity in the global south and north the Guest Editors, James Avis, Kevin Orr, Joy Papier and Paul Warmington bring together a collection of papers that comprise illustrating divergent approaches to examining technical and vocational education and training (TVET), race and ethnicity in the global south and north.

As the Guest Editors’ state: “In a number of respects, this SI follows on from an earlier issue, ‘VET, Race and Ethnicity’ 69(3) published in 2017. While much has changed since 2017, many of the themes and concerns expressed remain current. These have been brought into starker relief by the Black Lives Matter and Rhodes must fall protests, by campaigns to decolonise the curriculum and challenges to white supremacy as well as the crisis of care engendered by Covid-19.” In bringing this Special Issue to life, the Guest Editors’ “concern was – and remains – racialisation rather than ethnicity. By this, we have in mind the process whereby black and minority ethnic groups become racialised and othered, which in turn is reflected in institutional racism and structural relations.” Issue 75:1

Guest Editors: Gavin Moodie, Leesa Wheelahan & Jakob Kost

This special issue explores the role of community colleges, further education colleges, polytechnics, technical and further education institutes, vocational education colleges and similar types of institutions in supporting social, economic, cultural and educational development, and social inclusion in their local communities and regions. Because the social role of colleges is underdeveloped, we left authors to interpret ‘colleges’ and ‘social role’ as they considered most informative and relevant for their study.

Since at least 1961, the roles of universities have been understood to be teaching, research, and service. These roles are understood to be served by both the organisations and by individual academics within them, though universities’ social role emerges from different traditions.

Universities and their roles are institutionalised as sociological constructs: collectively enforced expectations of the behaviour of specified categories of actors or the performance of certain activities. These are distinguished from organisations, such as corporations. But organisations may become institutionalised:

We suggest that organizations come to be regarded as institutions to the extent that their existence and operation become in a specific way publicly guaranteed and privileged, by becoming backed up by societal norms and the enforcement capacities related to them.

In contrast, colleges are ‘categorically demarcated’ from universities and located closer to production to prepare graduates for specific work roles. Unlike universities, colleges are ‘mainly local organizations justified by specific economic and political functions or shaped by particular historical legacies or power struggles’. There is no idea of the college as a sociological institution commonly understood over time and place comparable to the institutionalisation of universities and schools.