Introduction: VET Systems Research (original) (raw)

VET systems as historical and cultural entities VET systems cannot be described as "constructions" of a specific reality, mainly triggered by political motivations or economic interests. Instead, in order to understand how they function and how they are "capable" to react to external demands, they have to be looked at as "historical entities". Against this background, it is interesting, e.g., that despite industrialisation as one of the major common features in modern history, differences between the German-speaking world and most other countries in Europe in terms of a specific "apprenticeship culture" (DEIßINGER 2004) or "learning culture" respectively (HARRIS/DEIßINGER 2003) cannot be ignored. Their relevance for the current debate on VET and its modernisation may even be associated with globalisation and various developments on the European policy level which address national VET systems in a specific way (> 2.5). These challenges get a national dimension in so far as solutions appear only possible against the background of what may be called the "system reference" of a given VET system. This includes different notions of what countries perceive as "educational" or "pedagogical" with respect to their VET systems (> 2.2) and also the realisation modes applied to link the idea of training for an occupation or a job to the notion of personality development of individuals (WINCH 2006). In this lies the root of the separation of education from training which applies to most national contexts and represents, besides industrialisation and its impact on VET, the probably most relevant force behind the "character" and value given to VET in a specific national context. VET systems have to be understood "in relation to other societal institutions" including the labour market, the economy, the system of industrial relations and of course the system of government (RAFFE 1998, 391). This also includes the way governments have picked up educational ideas referring to VET (REICHWEIN 1963). A very good example is the internationally unique positioning of an educational institution at the core of the national VET system, which we find in the case of Germany. Here, the corporatist framework established by legal sanction in the late nineteenth century was gradually submitted to governmental interference during the 1920s and 1930s, although the country did not establish a homogeneous training law until 1969. However, much earlier in the development of what is called the "Dual System" (GREINERT 1994), compulsory attendance at the part-time vocational school emerged as the second principle underlying formalised vocational training besides the framework of instutionalised apprenticeships that was deliberately laid into the hands of the chambers (DEIßINGER 1994). Fortbildungsschulen (continuation schools) had been made obligatory as early as 1869 when the German trade law provided for compulsion but left it to local communities to pass by-laws for this purpose. The Trade Act of 1897, in contrast, saw it as part of the newly defined duties of the guilds and chambers to found and maintain continuation schools for craft apprentices and it also stipulated that apprentices had to be released from work to attend such a school (SCHÖFER 1981, 176-178).