User:David Guile

From creating and repairing the first artefacts for personal and communal use through to the Internet of Things, the capacity of human beings for transforming the world around them, for better or worse, continues to be shaped by their participation in social practices and learning, collectively and individually. Developing the expertise required to participate in work-related activities engages people in diverse forms of learning in a wide range of spaces throughout their lives. These spaces include workplaces, workshops, classrooms, community and domestic spaces (including forms of transport), the natural environment, and increasingly through interaction with digital technologies including the Internet. For some people, the expertise they deploy for what they term ‘work’ (whether paid or unpaid) may be very different to the expertise they deploy in their leisure time, whilst for others there may be a close connection.

Regardless of what drives an individual or a group of people to develop expertise, they will at some point participate in vocational education and training (VET). This participation will range across a wide spectrum: from programmes providing an initial introduction for school pupils to what is sometimes naively referred to as ‘the world of work’ through to bespoke training organized by or for employers and self-taught activity. In this way, VET embraces programmes using work as their pretext, though treating it as a largely generic or abstract construct, programmes which have a specific occupational focus and which may lead to a ‘licence to practise’, apprenticeships which combine education and training both in and away from the workplace, and work-based learning of various types and duration triggered by changes and innovation in work processes. As a result, the relationship between VET and actual work practice varies considerably. VET is a complex and challenging field of inquiry precisely because it cannot be easily defined.

The above unbounded perspective on VET signals the importance of viewing this field of inquiry through a lens that is wide enough to capture both the ‘systems’ approach to VET and the theories, practices and ideas that lie outside it. The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training offers an in-depth guide to the theories, practices, and policies of VET, based on contributions from a panel of leading international scholars from America, Argentina, Australia, China, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Switzerl and and the United Kingdom, containing 27 authoritative essays from a wide range of disciplines. The contributors present an integrated analysis of the complex and dynamic field of VET.

Drawing on the most recent research, thinking, and practice in the field, the book explores the key debates about the role of VET in the education and training systems of various nations. The Handbook reveals how expertise is developed in an age of considerable transformation in work processes, work organization, and occupational identities. The authors also examine many of the challenges of vocational education and training such as the impact of digital technologies on employment, the demand for (re)training in the context of extended working lives, the emergence of learning regions and skills ecosystems and the professional development of vocational teachers and trainers. This important text: •	Offers an original view of VET’s role in the development of expertise •	Examines the theories and concepts that underpin international perspectives and explores the differences about the purposes of VET •	Presents various models of learning used in VET and how the models reflect VET’s relationship with general education •	Explores how VET is shaped in different ways by the political economy of different countries •	Discusses the challenges for universities offering higher vocational education programs •	Draws on both recent research as well as historical accounts

Written for students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of educational studies, human resource development, social policy, political economy, labor market economics, industrial relations, sociology, The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training offers an international perspective on the topic of VET.

Guile, D. and Unwin, L. (2019) The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.