A new political order is transforming the nature of work in advanced industrialised countries. What does this mean for the nexus of education and work? How does it affect the idea of vocation, the reality of lifelong learning, the concept of employability, and the future of vocational education and training? This volume analyses the foundations of this transformation featuring globalisation and individualisation. It offers an analysis of the shifting terrain of governance and policy and their impact on the field of vocational education. With contributions from scholars located in Europe as well as in Australia and the USA, it provides an understanding of a number of important educational policy topics, including changing social and cultural conditions of labour, migration, an aging populace and the spread of cross-national discourses. Additional chapters tackle the concepts of «employability», «gender», «earning» and «lifelong learning» and examine their relation to policies, practices, theory and research in vocational education.

This book discusses whether certain approaches to (vocational) education have become mythicized and branded, and the reasons for and consequences of this commodification. Additionally, the book also investigates how researchers are contributing to mythicizing and branding in education. Although transnational and comparative studies are increasingly taking into account historical and cultural ideas, is this a result of the exploitation of historical and cultural research for industrial purposes and education export? Educational brands should attract global customers and advertise countries as smart environments for global investments.

This book discusses what constitutes vocational education as well as its key purposes, objects, formation and practices. In short, it seeks to outline and elaborate the nature of the project of vocational education. It addresses a significant gap in the available literature by providing a single text that elaborates the scope and diversity of the sector, its key objectives (i.e. vocations and occupations), its formation and development as an education sector, and the scope of its purposes and considerations in the curriculum. The volume achieves these objectives by discussing and defining the concept of vocational education as being that form of education that seeks to advise individuals about, prepare them for, and further develop their capacities to perform the kinds of occupations that societies require and individuals need to participate in—and through which they often come to define themselves. In particular, it discusses the distinctions between occupations as a largely social fact and vocations as being a socially shaped outcome assented to by individuals. As people identify closely with the kinds of occupations they engage in, the standing of, and the effectiveness of vocational education is central to individuals’ well-being, competence and progress. Ultimately, this book argues that the provision of vocational education needs to realise important personal and social goals.