Equity and Access to High Skills through Higher Vocational Education

This book explores new and distinctive forms of higher vocational education across the globe, and asks how the sector is changing in response to the demands of the 21st century. These new forms of education respond to two key policy concerns: an emphasis on high skills as a means to achieve economic competitiveness, and the promise of open access for adults hitherto excluded from higher education. Examining a range of geographic contexts, the editors and contributors aim to address these contexts and highlight various similarities and differences in developments. They locate their analyses within the various political and socio-economic contexts, which can make particular reforms possible and achievable in one context and almost unthinkable in another. Ultimately, the book promotes a critical understanding of evolving provisions of higher vocational education, refusing assumptions that policy borrowing from apparently ‘successful’ countries offers a straightforward model for others to adopt. Elizabeth Knight is a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Research on Education Systems within Victoria University, Australia. Ann-Marie Bathmaker is Professor of Vocational and Higher Education at the University of Birmingham, UK. Gavin Moodie is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education in the University of Toronto, Canada. Kevin Orr is Professor of Work and Learning and Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Susan Webb is Professor of Education at Monash University, Australia and was previously Professor of Continuing Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. Leesa Wheelahan is the William G. Davis Chair of Community College Leadership at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto