Vocational learning comprises more than factual knowledge and procedures; the development of a vocational identity is a key aspect and outcome of vocational education provisions and assumed to play an integral role in how students learn and perform. Despite the salience of vocational identity however, the processes that contribute to its formation are far from fully understood. It is unclear whether and which elements of vocational education and training provision shape this process and if and to what degree forms of identity really support the actual vocational performance of a vocational learner. This study seeks to provide deeper understanding of the circumstances that enable different forms of identity to develop and how they direct learning and workplace effort. Using structural equation modeling with data from 504 vocational learners and correlation analysis with data from 187 industrial apprentices, this article proposes a model to account for key influences and the impacts of vocational identity formation for the commercial sector. The results indicate that vocational identity mediates and is closely aligned to the development of vocational engagement and competence. A free career choice and the provision of maximal functional integration into operating processes at the workplace are key factors underlying identity formation.

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This article discusses the development of vocational competence through economic vocational educational training (VET) from a theoretical and psychometric perspective. Most assessment and competence models tend to adopt a state perspective toward assessments of competence and carve out different structures of competence for diverse vocational domains. However, the order and at what stages of development these identified structures actually occur remains uncertain. This study therefore moves beyond a static perspective to denote changes in competence over the duration of vocational training, using item response theory-based scaling and a cross-sectional database of 877 economic apprentices. The resulting four-stage psychometric model represents a systematization of the development of vocational competence, characterized by the degree of occupational specificity and different forms of cognitive processing. This proposed psychometric model can be used to inform educational researchers and practitioners about the different stages of competence development, such that they can both assess and teach economic competence more effectively.

Background: Both fostering and measuring action competence remain central targets of vocational education and training research; adequate measurement approaches clearly are prerequisites for international, large-scale assessments. For the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, competence assessments of industrial managers rely mainly on final examinations that attempt to measure not just knowledge but also action competence. To evaluate this test instrument, this article considers two questions: (1) Can the test assess action competence with validity, and (2) how reliable are the corresponding assessment results? Methods: The study relied on statistical procedures (e.g., IRT scaling), applied empirically to a sample of 1,768 final examinations.Results: As a result the current examination appears neither adequate nor accurate as an instrument to capture action competence. Conclusions:We conclude that several improving steps have to be undertaken to improve the economic assessment.

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