This research project focus on vocational education and training at tertiary level. In Sweden, Higher Vocational Education (the HVE) allow adult students to further or change their careers through an educational type where programmes only are given if there is an explicit demand from employers pledging their needs and involvement. This means that there is a close, albeit compulsory, relation between education and employers giving the HVE and its' programmes a distinctive character, setting it apart from other educational types in the Swedish public school system.
With a theoretical approach stemming from curriculum theory and research questions rooted in the didactic basic questions; What, why, how and who? the aim of this research project is to explore educational policy and curriculum in the HVE. The inquiries will be considered in a study combining analyses of national policy- and instructional documents with case studies of HVE-programmes and their management. This methodological approach enables considering the trajectory of curricula through several diverse dimensions of transformation and realisation where different stakeholders, acting on the basis of different interests, knowledge, traditions and power, produce practice.
Funding: Linköping University
What is the function of Swedish higher vocational education? How, and by who is it shaped? Whose knowledge counts and what values shape the educational communication?
