The issue of modularising vocational training systems has been the subject of debate at European level for some twenty years. Unitisation and modularisation of vocational training is also currently being debated hotly in many countries, and is regarded as one facet of a broader strategy to modernise training. Debates acknowledge the need to tackle the current and future challenges that result, for example, from greater differentiation between trainees in terms of prior knowledge or performance, or from the need to operate a flexible training system that is capable of rapid adjustment to technical and organisational change. A key theme in this debate is the form that individualisation and flexibility should take, focusing on the extent to which a building-block or module-based system adequately meets modernisationneeds.

One of the underlying tensions within this debate is how we conceptualise adequately the notion of modularisation, in order to enable coherent empirical analysis to be undertaken. The study on which this seminar is based attempts to do so by building upon theoretical work which postulates different forms of modularisation, from the traditional/moderate to the radical. Against this theoretical backdrop, the seminar will chart the development of modularisation structures within the Initial Vocational Education and Training (IVET) curriculum across fifteen European countries. The session will endeavour to explain the rationale for modularisation, the extent of its provision, and the form it takes within those different countries.

The study has been funded bythe European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training(CEDEFOP) and is run as a joint project by Dr. Roy Canning (University of Stirling) and Prof. Dr. Matthias Pilz (University of Cologne).

Matthias Pilz is Professor of Economics and Business Education at the University of Cologne. He received his PhD from the University of Konstanz in 1999. After finishing his initial teacher training in 2002, he started his teaching career at the Wirtschaftsschule (Business-College) Herrenhausen in Hannover and was simultaneously advisor for European Union education projects at the district government of Hannover. In the years 2002 to 2004 he worked as research associate for the Institute of Business Education and Educational Management at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, before becoming Professor for General Economic Studies in Pre-Vocational Education at the Freiburg University of Education. Since 2009, he has been Director of the German Research Centre for Comparative Vocational Education and Training at the University of Cologne.

Attendance at the seminar is free; please book a place via[email protected].

Richard Arnold
Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES)
Institute of Education
University of London