Thesis (EdD)--Open University.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Economics, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct. 5, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-02, Section: A, page: 0646. Advisers: William Becker; Jeffrey Smith.

This study examines how political-economic and socio-cultural influences had impacted the institutional development of HVE in China by investigating the historical development process of HVE between 1980 and 2007, when the country was undergoing tremendous political, economic, and social transitions toward building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. With the research method of document content analysis, the study reveals causes, effects, and trends of HVE development through comparisons between HVE-related policy contents concerning major HVE institutional realities including contexts, missions, structures, access, tuition, curricula, teaching staff, graduate employment, funding and governance, and social status. Within a theoretical framework utilizing vocationalism, Confucianism, and neoinstitutionalism, analysis and discussion resulted in a number of findings. First, the development of HVE in China embodied a trend of vocationalism, which has led and is leading to higher education expansion, higher education restructuring, and a positive change of Chinese peoples views on careers. Second, in addition to its discrimination against skills/skilled workers, the mechanism of upward mobility entailed in Confucianism was another major reason causing resistance to HVE. Third, given the increasingly competitive Civil Service Examination, Chinese peoples views on careers were not synchronized to the mass higher education system that was underway in China. Fourth, while supporting HVE, vocationalism itself created problems for HVE. A new vocationalist view was needed for future HVE development. Confucianism may contribute to such a new vocationalist view drawing on humanities education and the mechanism of upward mobility, though its notion of scholar-officials was critiqued for impeding the development of HVE. Fifth, HVE students had been treated unequally in the whole process of studying in HVE from admission to participation to graduation. Sixth, from a neoinstitutionalist perspective, the development of HVE represented the process of its instutionalization, in which HVE needed to obtain legitimacy. Absence of legitimacy was the major reason causing various challenges facing the development of HVE. Seventh, the development of HVE indicated institutional isomorphic changes in Chinese higher education. Eighth, biased policy causing stratification of Chinese higher education was another major factor leading to various challenges facing HVE. / Adult Education

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I detta examensarbete undersöks yrkeshögskolans struktur genom en intervjustudie. I fokus ligger olika intressenters roll och påverkansmöjligheter i yrkeshögskolan, samt yrkeshögskolans koppling till näringslivet. Arbetet har för avsikt att besvara på vilket sätt ledningsgrupperna inom tekniska yrkeshögskoleutbildningar har möjlighet att påverka innehållet samt hur förutsättningarna för lärande ser ut inom utbildningarna.För att besvara detta har respondenter från en teknisk yrkeshögskoleutbildning intervjuats och dessa intervjuer har sedan analyserats med en tematisk analys. Diskussionen utgår från teori kring områdena intressentmodellen, organisationsidentitet, kunskap och kompetens, yrkesdidaktik och yrkesläraridentitet samt skolutveckling och skolledare.Det har framkommit i arbetet att arbetslivsrepresentanterna i ledningsgruppen har möjligheter att påverka utbildningarna eftersom de är en stark intressent till utbildningen. Denna möjlighet till påverkan på utbildningen påverkas i sin tur av närvaron på ledningsgruppsmötena. Angående förutsättningar för lärande har det visat sig att LIA-praktiken (lärande i arbete) är en viktig del av utbildningen samt att den pedagogiska kompetensen hos undervisande lärare ibland brister. / This master thesis explores the structure of the Swedish higher vocational education, by a study of interviews. The focus of this essay is the impact potential of the stakeholders in the higher vocational education, and the connection between the higher vocational education and the enterprise. This study intends to answer questions about the steering committees’ possibilities to affect the content of technical educations. It also intends to investigate the prerequisites for learning.To answer these questions respondents from a technical program of the higher vocational education have been interviewed. These interviews have then been analysed by a thematic analysis. The discussion starting from theories about stakeholder theory, organizational identity, knowledge and competence, vocational pedagogy and vocational teachers’ identity and school development and principals.It has appeared that the industry representatives in the steering committees have opportunities to affect the educations, due to that they are a strong stakeholder. This opportunity is affected by the presence during the meetings with the steering committee. Concerning the prerequisites for learning, it has been found that the ‘LIA-practice’ is an important part of the education and that the pedagogical competences of the teachers sometimes is insufficient.

The Swedish software industry is fast-growing and in needof competent personnel, the education system is on the frontline of producing qualified graduates to meet the job marketdemand. Reports and studies show there exists a gapbetween industry needs and what is taught in highereducation, and that there is an undefined skills shortageleading to recruitment failures. This study explored theindustry-education gap with a focus on higher vocationaleducation (HVE) through the use of natural languageprocessing (NLP) to ascertain the demands of the industryand what is taught in HVE. Using the authors' custom-madetool Vocational Education and Labour Market Analyser(VELMA), job ads and HVE curricula were collected fromthe Internet. Then analysed through the topic modellingprocess latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to classify lowerlevel keywords into cohesive categories for documentfrequency analysis. Findings show that a large number ofHVE programmes collaborate with the industry via indirectfinancing and that job ads written in Swedish consist, inlarger part, of inconsequential words compared to adswritten in English. Moreover, An industry demand withincloud and embedded technologies, security engineers andsoftware architects can be observed. Whereas, the findingsfrom HVE curricula point to a focus on educating webdevelopers and general object-oriented programminglanguages. While there are limitations in the topic modellingprocess, the authors conclude that there is a mismatchbetween what is taught in HVE programmes and industrydemand. The skills identified to be lacking in HVE wereassociated with cloud-, embedded-, and security-relatedtechnologies together with architectural disciplines. Theauthors recommend future work with a focus on improvingthe topic modelling process and including curricula fromgeneral higher education.