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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 upper-secondary school level. The paper is based on a critical re-analysis of results from previous studies; in it we investigate the implications of this divide for class and gender inequalities. The theoretical lens used for the synthesis is based on Bernstein´s theory of pedagogic codes. In the re-analysis we draw on previous studies of policy, curriculum and educational praxis as well as official statistics. The main conclusions are that contemporary policy and curriculum trends in all three countries are dominated by a neo-liberal discourse stressing principles such as "market relevance" and employability. This trend strengthens the academic-vocational divide, mainly through an organisation of knowledge in VET that separates it from more general and theoretical elements. This trend also seems to affect VET students' transitions in terms of reduced access to higher education, particularly in male-dominated programmes. We also identify low expectations for VET students, manifested through choice of textbooks and tasks, organisation of teacher teams and the advice of career counsellors.

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Rurality and education relations:Metro-centricity and local values inrural 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 theoretical or practical is firmly fixed. However, the students on the researched programmes were aware of recent changes in the labour market that raise a need for generalisation, or at least knowledge of both practical and theoretical aspects of their programme-specific subjects. They referred to the changes with notions suggesting that a practical and theoretical divide was neither meaningful nor helpful for their education. We discuss how a stereotyped idea of what was thought of as 'man's work' made it difficult for students who wanted to accomplish tasks considered as theoretical and how the teachers' framing of pedagogic practice intensified or ameliorated this difficulty. We also address the dichotomy between theoretical and practical by contemplating students' positions within different pedagogical practices. We suggest that some kinds of practices might diminish the dichotomy and could improve the students' possibilities for fully engaging in their studies. IntroductionThis article explores vocational students' conceptions of work and the labour market in relation to the discourse of work as being either theoretical or practical (cf. Halliday 2000;Young 2008). The data analysed were produced in ethnographic studies of selected Vehicle programmes in Sweden and Metalwork and machinery programmes in Finland 1 . Both contexts are traditionally dominated by young men of working class background. These young men have often been portrayed as being opposed to school, rejecting education and attracted to vocational programmes with practical rather than theoretical content (Epstein 1998;Francis and Skelton 2005;Frosh, Phoenix, and Pattman 2002;Willis 1977). However, recent research has highlighted variations within this group, which is actually very heterogeneous, and found that quite a large proportion of the boys consider their academic learning to be important (Abraham 2008;Hallam and Ireson 2006). The subject of our text is this recent finding, and how the young men attending the researched programmes

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Educational equality has been a central tenet framing educational policy in Nordic welfare states and stimulating school reforms in the 1960s and 1970s. However, the conceptualisation of equality has fluctuated, reflecting the changing economic and political climate within which policy statements have been made. In this article, we analyse policy and curriculum documents relating to upper secondary education from the 1970s to the 2010s in two Nordic countries. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s theorisation of different forms of injustice, we focus on the aims and goals that are attached to the concept of educational equality, analysing how ideas about society and educational equality have changed over these decades. Our analysis suggests that over this period there have been quite dramatic shifts in how equality is conceptualised, inter alia shifting from a focus on economic inequalities to questions of sexuality and ethnicity. Furthermore, ambitions about tackling economic inequality have largely been replaced with ambitions about promoting employability, which is particularly visible in the curriculum of vocational upper secondary education. The Finnish general upper secondary education (GUS) curriculum has gone against the tide. In the 1970s the GUS curriculum had the most conservative tone in terms of equality, whereas the current curriculum requires an agentic stance against discrimination and a critical stance towards marketisation.