15 September 2014

Call for papers: "Innovative Themes and Approaches in Vocational Education and Training (VET)"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Innovation in Education.

The discipline of vocational education and training (VET) is confronted with new challenges and approaches that can be seen in the international discussion of researchers and education practitioners.
The following headlines represent just a small sample of subthemes that can be identified:
  • Problems with diversity in VET (especially dealing with students with learning needs, language problems or migration background)
  • Inclusion in VET
  • Tools for assessment and modelling of formal and informal competences in a life-long learning context (including new technology for assessment)
  • Professionalism of teachers, trainers and pedagogical practitioners for new challenges
  • Transfer problems between different institutions in VET (including transfer between academic and vocational education)
  • Competence-based curricula and learning arrangements
  • The German VET system within the European context as a role model?
  • University didactic as a rising field for researchers in VET
This special issue will explore these complex and multi-faceted challenges. In particular, it is keen to examine various advantages, tensions, dilemmas and contradictions experienced by educators, teachers and students through innovative approaches. Authors are welcome to submit original papers on theoretical development and empirical research, case studies, discussion papers, conference reports, book reviews, commentaries and news dealing with innovative themes and approaches in all working fields of VET.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the Sektionstagung Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik in der DGfE 2014, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • Strategies of innovation in VET (classroom, school, system levels)
  • Case studies of innovation in VET (classroom, school, system levels)
  • Theoretical understanding of the nature of innovation in VET
  • The dilemmas and tensions of innovation in VET
  • Policies associated with innovation in VET
  • Leadership issues in achieving innovation in VET
  • Innovative training and development issues in VET
  • Technologies, techniques and tools for innovation in VET
  • Emergence of new forms of education in VET
  • Diversity in the current and future education landscape of VET
  • The relationship between innovation in VET and other disciplines such as knowledge management, organisational learning and human resource management
  • Innovation in VET through school/university-industry collaboration

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 31 December, 2014
Notification to authors: 28 February, 2015
Final versions due: 31 April, 2015

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