School-based vocational education and training (VET) systems are undergoing important changes with a view to strengthening their work-based learning component and, overall, their relationships with the local production environment. This paper looks at the introduction of dual VET in the Basque Country within the Spanish and European contexts.…

This paper examines the adoption of dual VET in Spain as a process of educational policy transfer. Using Phillips and Ochs' (2003, 2004) policy transfer spectrum and decision-making classification and Perry and Tor's (2008) model of transfer forms, the study relies on semi-structured interviews with key decision-makers in the Spanish central…

This article locates training and development in Spain within the country's socio-economic context. It maps the major changes which have been introduced into the training and development system since the briefing by Escardíbul and Llinas-Audet published in this journal in 2010. It relates those changes to the ongoing economic crisis which began in…

Many studies of teacher motivation have been conducted in different contexts over time. However, until fairly recently there has not been a reliable measure available to allow comparisons across samples and settings. This has resulted in an abundance of findings which cannot be directly compared or synthesised. The FIT-Choice instrument offers the…

Spain is currently experiencing a difficult economic situation, and in recent years a significant change has been observed in the behavior of the demand for educational programs as a result of this situation. Recent studies reveal a change in student demand that does not have the same effect on all academic institutions. Bearing this behavior in…

A strong VET system is increasingly seen as essential to overcoming the current economic crisis in Europe. VET is seen as a powerful tool to assist in balancing labour market inefficiencies, increasing youth employment possibilities, and reducing skills mismatch. Its inherent flexibility and closeness to the labour market place VET in a good…

One area where the financial crisis has shown the limitation of neo-liberal thinking is the area of educational reform. By studying the different ranges of national responses and by understanding the differing contexts for educational change in historical periods, we can begin to think differently about educational restructuring. In this paper I…

The focus of this article is the development of adult education. As Kjell Rubenson maintains, adult education has gone through three eras of development: the humanistic, the strong economic period and a softer version of the economic period. Based on this model, we examine whether the development of adult education has similarities across…