Vocational Education. Reprint Series.

Overview & Synopsis

This document presents a historical curricular analysis, reviews current curricular research, and offers suggestions for future curricular research in vocational education. It focuses exclusively on the K-12 public school. The first section, a review of research on the development of vocational education as a curricular category, traces each of the major subfields of vocational education as well as the history of vocational education as a whole from their beginnings to about the mid-1970s. The second section, a review of current curricular research in the field, focuses on the period from the mid-1970s to the present. The review shows a considerable increase in attention to vocational education as an integrated instructional system, side by side with the attention given to specific subfields during the 1980s, and a shift in focus to the relationship of vocational education to the rest of the educational system in purposes and curriculum. Both sections show that, although the curricular research is extensive and disciplined, it is in large part still narrowly focused on technical competence, lacking in an overall conceptual framework, and heavily reliant on a single approach to curriculum development. The final section suggests areas for further research, treating each in one or two paragraphs. The areas include: general versus specific education, higher order thinking, basic skills, integration, keeping up to date, articulation, transition from school to work and family life, vocational education's role as change agent, vocational education and at-risk students, and state versus local curriculum content. A list of 325 references is appended. (YLB)