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Integration Between School and Work: Changes and Challenges in the Swedish VET 1970–2011

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Integration of Vocational Education and Training Experiences

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Swedish upper secondary vocational education and training (USVET) and evolving conditions for the integration of education in schools and workplaces, as intended in the goals of three upper secondary school curricular reforms of 1970, 1994, and 2011. These reforms have transformed educational traditions in response to new societal expectations arising from changing working life and educational individualisation. Two occupational areas—healthcare and the textile industry—serve as examples that, over several decades, have been exposed to radical transformations in production and their contributions to the economy. Accordingly, the demands of occupational competencies have changed. The chapter is mainly based on secondary analyses of empirical research. Activity theoretical concepts are used as a lens for analysing changes. The main findings highlight different societal motives for education and the labour market under each of the three reforms, which impacted the objects formulated for USVET and the general organisation of how USVET was to be realised. A notable difference was the emphasis on vocational or general content, which has changed the ways in which integration between school and work has been realised. In both healthcare and the textile industry, VET teachers have been the main mediating agents of integration, albeit with a diminished role, since their contact and engagement with work sites became limited to a few visits. Teachers are now dependent on workplace activities they are not part of, yet have the responsibility to enact the curriculum in ways needed to optimise integration. The point being made here is that teachers’ roles in integration need to be understood in terms of cultural and historical contexts that influence the quality of integration they are able to enact and facilitate.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In total, there are 18 programmes in the Swedish upper secondary school. Since this chapter only relates to VET, the 6 general programmes are not discussed in any depth.

  2. 2.

    Twenty-three hours per week, for a total of 345 h (Skolverket 2015)

  3. 3.

    Students can change to the apprenticeship track even during their education.

  4. 4.

    It should be noted, though, that only a minor part of Swedish youth attended vocational education. These schools were mainly established in cities. According to Nilsson (1983, p. 32), “approximately 9000 young people were educated in different vocational schools, [but] only 700 were full-time” by the end of the 1920s.

  5. 5.

    Underlined in original

  6. 6.

    Each school offering the programme was expected to construct a local orientation based on local and regional needs.

  7. 7.

    Previously unpublished documentation from the Communication and Learning in Sloyd Practices research project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, Project no 2003-4379 (Lindström et al. 2003). Sloyd is a school subject related to the design and production of objects in wood, textile, and metal (see also Merriam-Webster’s dictionary).

  8. 8.

    Besides this programme, there are also ten upper secondary schools in Sweden that offer a local orientation Fashion Design within the Arts programme, one of the general programmes preparing students for higher education in Sweden (Högskolan i Borås 2016). Interestingly, vocational teachers are the ones teaching the subjects within this orientation. However, since there are no workplaces involved in these programmes, there is no issue of integration. This is not surprising, since there is little textile production in Sweden today.

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  1. Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Gun-Britt Wärvik & Viveca Lindberg

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  1. School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Sarojni Choy

  2. School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Gun-Britt Wärvik

  3. Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Viveca Lindberg

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Wärvik, GB., Lindberg, V. (2018). Integration Between School and Work: Changes and Challenges in the Swedish VET 1970–2011. In: Choy, S., Wärvik, GB., Lindberg, V. (eds) Integration of Vocational Education and Training Experiences. Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 29. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8857-5_15

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