A Study On The Integrated Development Of The EU Vocational Qualifications

With the emerging knowledge economy and accelerative globalization, the enlarged EU stands at a turning point but faces new challenges. Promoting mobility of citizens is considered to be very important in achieving the Lisbon goal of making Europe the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. Great efforts were made in the field of EU vocational education and training (VET) to make the transferring and recognition of EU vocational qualifications (VQs) a reality on the EU level with the member states together. From the perspective of history, there exists an evolution trend of integrated development of EU vocational qualifications. The research, which focuses on the strategies, systems and mechanism of the integrated development of EU VQs, must provide good reference and experience for any other regional organizations and Sovereign States to establish or reform their systems of VET and VQs.The background of the integrated development of EU VQs is analyzed in Chapter I . From the view of economic development, social cohesion, need of cooperation of VET and career development of citizens, the whole environment provides an impetus for transferring and recognizing VQs at EU level.The historical process of the integrated development of EU VQs is presented in Chapter II. The trace of the development of EU VET draws a whole picture of a gradual process of transferring and recognizing of EU VQs, and establishment of its integrated development mechanism. This section outlines three main strategies adopted at Community level to remove this obstacle, which focused on Recognition, Comparability and Transparency of qualifications.Chapter III goes deep into the mechanism of integrated development of EU VQs for interpretation. Starting with the core elements, this section pays great attention to the operation process of the mechanism with European Qualification Framework (EQF) for its development platform. Furthermore, some enabling factors for the mechanism are figured out.Chapter IV makes explicit the viewpoint on contemporary significance and points out potential problems of the integrated development of EU VQs. Based on the pervious study, this chapter then speculates on the possible development trend of EU VQs.