Vocational Education Research Trends. Trends and Issues Alert No. 15.

Overview & Synopsis

Vocational education research seeks to answer one form or another of a fundamental question: How can we best prepare youth and adults for today's workplace? Comprehensive national and international research programs typically attempt to ask and answer larger forms of that question. Recurring themes in the United States reflect change--what skills workers need for the changing workplace and what vocational education should provide them. In Europe and Australia, attention is focused more on the impact of research on policy, decision-making, and return on investment. Most other research focuses on the specifics of occupational areas in vocational education, including a focus on attitudes toward agricultural education and teaching strategies in business education. One recurring theme in research across all occupational areas is the call for further research, particularly research in cooperative education. Although quantitative methods still play a major role in research, other research approaches and methods are still being recommended, particularly action research, reflective practice, critical theory and critical research, and a complementary combination of qualitative and quantitative research on the returns to vocational education. Other approaches include Delphi survey, concept mapping, and context-input-process-product, although case studies are the most common. Questions for future vocational education research include exploring the reason for different research emphases and different themes in various countries. (An annotated bibliography contains 27 resources.) (KC)