Internationalization of vocational education and training—Advances and developments

Abstract

Internationalization of vocational education and training-Advances and developmentsThe question of the internationalization and transferability of Vocational Education and Training (VET) system approaches and the possibility of VET export play a major role in international VET cooperation (Tran & Dempsey, 2017). Particularly in German-speaking countries with a very distinctive and well-established VET system, this topic is continuously discussed (Li & Pilz, 2021;Valiente & Scandurra, 2017).Internationalization and transferability include the transfer of procedures, measures, strategies and concepts of VET in a broader sense. Approaches from comparative education and other research areas offer insight into methods, findings and consequences that trace the interaction with the nonvocational components of the education system (Pilz & Li, 2020). In addition, the strategies and internal logics of VET institutions, and particularly companies, become clear, for example, as to how they meet their demand for skilled labour at an intermediate skill level in the respective countries (Peters, 2021).While an initial phase of euphoria, especially in the 1970s, was quickly followed by a certain disillusionment with regard to the long-term successes of transferability of VET systems (Stockmann, 2014), recently, a renewed discussion has emerged about how and to what extent the German dual VET system, in particular, could be transferred to other countries (Li & Pilz, 2021). At the same time, the governments of many countries are looking for international VET cooperation as part of their education, growth and development policies. Organizations at the European and global levels are also active in supporting educational transfer (Aring, 2014). A central driver is the economy with its multinational companies, be they global players or increasingly also internationally active small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs;Gessler, 2017;Pilz & Wiemann, 2021;Röhrer et al., 2021).At the same time, the latest research findings regarding feasibility, successes already achieved, challenges to be overcome and long-term feasibility of VET international transfer are very limited. On the one hand, there are approaches that focus on the theoretical foundation of educational transfer, and on the other hand, those that discuss transfer options at a political or administrative level. Concrete empirically validated findings on VET export can only be found to a limited extent and then focus primarily on individual cases (Li & Pilz, 2021;Valiente & Scandurra, 2017).This special issue addresses this shortcoming and aims to bring together findings from different research projects addressing the topic of the internationalization and transferability of VET systems. To this end, the findings from eight of the following contributions are presented and discussed. The first five contributions present the studies that focus on the issues of transfer of the German Dual Model in general, and in different countries such as Mexico in particular. The other three contributio...

Exploration and Reflection on the Development of Internationalized Industry-Education Integration of Vocational Education in the Context of Big Data

“…In recent years, the state attaches great importance to the top-level design and reform of vocational education, and the internationalization of vocational education has become an important direction for the reform and development of vocational education [1][2]. An important support to serve the national strategy of opening up to the outside world, and an important opportunity to enhance the level of vocational colleges [3][4].…”

“…Ming Kong, Yan Kuang and Zhichao Zhang. Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences, 9(1) (2024)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] …”