Ideal Types of Vocational Education and Training Programmes

Typology brings order to complexity

Typology is a popular social science method that allows researchers to organise diverse research entities. However, few approaches actually suggest how to develop transparent typologies based on strong theoretical foundations. Ladina Rageth and Ursula Renold have therefore come up with an approach that facilitates the systematic and theory-based development of typologies and have applied this approach to vocational education and training programmes. They argue that every typology also has an explanatory value. It is their aim to go beyond the mere development of VET categories and use the typologies to contribute to our understanding of an interesting phenomenon – in this case, the successful integration of young people into the labour market.

Typologies are developed on the basis of at least one dimension that serves to compare the various research entities. For the typology of VET programmes, the authors identified a dimension that helps us understand why the various types of VET programmes result in various degrees of preparation for the labour market.

Significance of linking the education and employment systems

One of the mainstays of the typology developed by Rageth and Renold is a strong theoretical and conceptual foundation. Sociological system theory provides the explanation why linking the actors in the education and employment systems is an important prerequisite for successful VET programmes. The intensity of the linkage determines whether VET programmes meet the needs of both the education and the employment system. VET courses should provide students with the qualifications necessary to directly enter the labour market and, at the same time, give them access to further education careers. This double requirement is the key aspect that distinguishes VET programmes from exclusive in-work training, such as the courses offered under labour market integration programmes.

The linking of actors in the education and employment systems thus forms the comparative dimension of the authors’ typology. To identify empirical real types, Rageth and Renold broke the dimension down even further to the level of concrete situations in the education process where cooperation between the two types of actors can be observed (see articles on the KOF Education-Employment Linkage Index in KOF Bulletin No. 100 of Oct. 2016 and in ‘Die Volkswirtschaft’ 12/2016). In Switzerland, for instance, VET is based on a strong link between the two types of actors at all stages of the VAT process, i.e. from definition to implementation and curriculum updates.

Three ideal types of VET programmes

In the methodological approach, the development of empirical real types is preceded by the derivation of ideal types. The latter can be found at the outermost extremes of the comparative dimension and do not occur in real life. Rageth’s and Renold’s first ideal type consists of VET programmes where both types of actors are involved in all stages of the training process. In the case of the second and third ideal type in the opposite extreme scenario, either the education system or the employment system holds the sole authority. While VET courses controlled entirely by the education system fail to prepare the students for the labour market, courses that are solely managed by the employment system fail to offer students access to further careers in the education system.

The ideal types will be used as benchmarks for the empirical real types, facilitating suggestions at which points of the VET process stronger linkage may contribute to higher youth employment.