The current vocational education and training (VET) system in Portugal is the result of a 2007 large-scale reform, which reorganised VET into a single system (Sistema Nacional de Qualificações, SNQ). The main objectives of the SNQ are to ensure that VET qualifications better match labour market needs, promoting the competitiveness of enterprises,…

The William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) program makes several types of federal student loans available to individuals to assist them with financing postsecondary education expenses. It represents the single largest source of federal financial assistance to support students' postsecondary educational pursuits. The U.S. Department of…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought on an employment crisis alongside falling college enrollment rates, which reached historic lows at two-year institutions. Would these twin crises provide the motivation and opportunity that states, education institutions, and employers needed to make meaningful progress toward a more flexible and integrated learning…

Cambridge Technicals are vocational qualifications offered by OCR at Levels 2 and 3, for students aged 16 and above. They are designed with the workplace in mind and provide an alternative to A levels. The successful completion of a Cambridge Technical can provide opportunities to progress into employment, onto professional development programmes…

What should children and students read? This volume explores challenging picturebooks as learning materials in early childhood education, primary and secondary school, and even universities. It addresses a wide range of thematic, cognitive, and aesthetic challenges and educational affordances of picturebooks in various languages and from different…

Constraints of the pandemic and rolling lockdowns eliminated opportunities to gather in person. Yet, for the learning cities movement, this period of coronavirus curtail was also a time of increased networking and creative collaboration. Where once human energies expended in "process work" left little retrievable trace, now artifacts…

Background/Context: Well-documented achievement gaps persist between members of disadvantaged social groups and their more advantaged peers (Domina et al., 2018; Harackiewicz et al., 2014; Musu-Gillette et al., 2017; Stoet & Geary, 2013). Certainly, systemic and structural factors explain most of these gaps; yet, there is another contributor…

This correlational study examined factors that defined the experiences of high school students who navigated the postsecondary pipeline in pursuit of a postsecondary education. Data for this study were obtained from the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The factors explored were related to…

From its inception in the early 1900s, vocational education in American high schools was designed to prepare students for jobs that did not require any formal postsecondary education. In the last decades of the 20th century, growing concern about how separating students into "college" and "non-college" tracks often perpetuated…

In the United States, college attrition is a problem affecting the outcomes of our educational and labor market pipelines. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education reported that only 65% of students who enrolled in post-secondary institutions from the graduating class of 2009 persisted or attained a diploma within six years of initial enrollment…

Career and technical education (CTE) has long endured public scrutiny and bias, but unfortunately, the extent to which varying opinions have permeated secondary schools remains elusive. Therefore, this study examined secondary administrator, counselor, and subject-specific teacher opinions in three areas: (a) student secondary and postsecondary…

Contextual studies (CS), "theory", "visual culture" or "art history" (amongst other labels) refer to a regular and often compulsory feature in art and design education. However, this takes many forms and can sit in a variety of relationships with the practical elements of such courses. This article is based on mixed…

Although key stakeholders in blended tertiary environments (BTEs) fulfil an extraordinary role in higher education, significant gaps in knowledge about their identities may be impeding the provision of stakeholder support, limiting their ability to promote effective learning and teaching. As online growth intensifies, it is critical that tertiary…

Those interested in positioning research to be used by policymakers or funded by foundations often wonder how best to do so. Foundation and policy interests can intersect, as philanthropy and policy both aim to provide solutions to big societal problems. This article explores themes from federal financial aid policy, in particular, suggesting that…

Increasing the number of tertiary graduates has been a priority on the political agenda of the EU for some years. The focus has mainly been on academic courses though, with less emphasis on the role of vocational education and training. International educational statistics indeed show a clear increase in the number of persons completing tertiary…