A Study On Policies Of Vocational Education In European Union

European Union(EU)is a distinctive regional integration organization and supranational economic and political entity, attaches great importance to vocational education and training in order to improving employment and promoting economic development. And EU uses strengthening the vocational education and training as an important means of achieving their economic and political objectives.EU’s vocational education and training policy (hereinafter referred to as the European vocational education policy) have distinct features.This dissertation focuses on the EU’s vocational education policy in order to provide a typical case to China’s vocational education policy research, as well as provide useful strategies to construct the modern vocational education system in our country.The dissertation firstly analyzes the background of the EU’s vocational education policy from EU’s economy, politics, cultural tradition and education basis, these are the soil European vocational education policy gets rooted, and then, the dissertation sorts out the evolution and development process of vocational education policy in the European Union. And then, from the perspective of policy objective, the dissertation categorizes EU’s current vocational education policy into four topics, namely the policies of promoting mobility and integration of the labour market, the policies of improving the attraction of vocational education and training, the policies of quality assurance as well as the policies of funding. This dissertation also takes three EU member countries, Germany, France, and the UK, as examples, to explore the implementation of EU’s vocational education policy. Finally, it analyzes systematically the effect, problems and the trend of EU’s vocational education policy.Policy content an policy implementation are the two focuses of this dissertation. In the policy content part, based on the text analysis of vocational education policy, this study elaborates the content of EU’s vocational education policy according to its policy objectives.,and categorizes EU’s vocational education policy into four aspects, including the policies of promoting mobility and the labour market integration, the policies of improving the attraction of vocational education and training, the policies of quality assurance as well as the policies of funding.In the policy implementation part, this dissertation holds the dynamic view of vocational education policy, and takes the vocational education policy as the unification of the text and the policy implementation, emphasizes both the static policy text analysis and the dynamic process of policy implementation. Three representative member countries in the EU are taken as cases to analyze the policy implementation. The cases demonstrate that the implementation of EU’s vocational education policy is the process of contextualization and adaptation of EU’s vocational education policy towards EU’s policy objectives, as well as the process of reform and perfecting each member country’s vocational education system.This dissertation uses the data of the latest country report to describe this process.The research methods of this dissertation include literature method, history method as well as the method of comparative analysis.The European Union launched its Lisbon strategy in2000.Convinced of the need to modernize education and training systems,as part of the Lisbon strategy, the Copenhagen process began in2002and it’s the most important policy for EU’s vocational education. This dissertation pays much attention to EU’s current vocational education policies, namely, the vocational education policies under the Copenhagen process within the framework and objectives of the Lisbon Strategy.There are two strands, the vertical and horizontal, in this dissertation. The vertical strand means that the longitudinal expansion and the developing logic of the content. It is based on the general thought of comparative education research as well as the policy research, i.e."policy background-policy development-policy goal and the content-policy implementation-policy evaluation".The horizontal expansion means that each chapter of the dissertation put European vocational education policy into the EU’s wide social background.From the perspective of the relationship between education and society, this dissertation takes the vocational education as a sub-system of the whole social system of the European Union, and analyzes how EU’s large social system (politics, economy, culture) influences it’s vocational education policy; and also,the dissertation explores what the EU’s vocational education policy itself contributes to EU’s social integration and economic development. The author presents that EU’s political and economic situation and the process of its integration influence its vocational education policy, and directly affects on the process of policy implementation; at the same time, the vocational education policy has been making important contribution to European economic and political integration as well as improving EU’s international competitiveness.