Transitions in Individual Vocational Education Pathways: Challenges and Collaborative Solutions

Transitions to Working Life: Securing Professional Competence

“…Rubin (2009) refers to the concept of collaborative leadership as a form of leading the communal learning processes aiming at these kinds of practices. When this idea is applied into guidance provision discussed earlier, guidance personnel takes multi-professional responsibility for students' learning and education with actions promoting the practices, strategies and structures that support students' transition from one educational level to another or to working life (Jäppinen, 2012).…”

Distributed pedagogical leadership in support of student transitions

“…In each school, five separate sections were sent to five different persons representing leadership/management, curriculum work, strategy and development work, working life cooperation , and guidance . These five were chosen according to the previous studies evidencing the areas where the differences in DPL were the greatest (Jäppinen, 2009, in press b). In the case study school, the questionnaire was sent to everyone, and 77 staff members (out of 400) answered the questionnaire, of whom 13 represented the leadership team and 64 the other members (Table 1).…”

“…They are polyphony, interaction, expertise, flexibility, commitment, responsibility, negotiation, decision-making, confidence-based control and evaluation . The attributes were found on the basis of the existing theory and the results of two large-scale preparatory Finnish studies (Reducing Dropout in VET 2006–2007 and Vocational Start 2007–2009), commissioned by the Ministry of Education, about the significance of collaborative actions for reducing dropout and supporting vocational students’ fluent transitions from one school level to another and to working life (Jäppinen, 2009, in press b). These studies concerned collaborative practices used in 50 Finnish VET organizations, representing 30 percent of the total.…”

Implementing VET start programme in Estonian vocational schools – the experience of teachers and support specialists

“…Three aspects are considered essential in the efficiency of transition programmes: developing and supporting the abilities of employees and learners; the context of the programme, meaning the way in which the organisational culture of the school supports the elements of the programme (e.g. the existence of cooperation culture); and the stability of the programme, meaning learners' progress, strategic planning and resources (Jäppinen, 2012).…”

“…Even though VET start was piloted based on the analogous Finnish model, there is no knowledge of how schools have interpreted their previous experiences in implementing it or what the components of the programme aiding transition are. As the professionalism and cooperation of the teacher and support staff are key factors (Fix, Ritzen, Pieters, & Kuiper, 2019;Jäppinen, 2012;Van den Akker, 2007), in the following article we focus on the experiences of such teachers and support specialists in implementing VET start in the framework of a powerful learning environment. In the article, the term 'VET start' is used to describe the Estonian context and 'transition programme' is used to describe the experiences of other countries.…”