Doctoral Thesis: Education Reforms Have Created Inequality in Vocational Studies
On Friday, October 9, Meril Ümarik from the Tallinn University School of Educational Sciences will defend her thesis, in which she researched the acceptance of the changes that have taken place in vocational studies in Estonia in the past 20 years.
On Friday, October 9, Meril Ümarik from the Tallinn University School of Educational Sciences will defend her thesis, in which she researched the acceptance of the changes that have taken place in vocational studies in Estonia in the past 20 years.
Most analyses on vocational studies reform have looked into the regulatory level of applying the change, or researched the effect of the applied politics to the numbers of drop-outs and the alumni’s success on the market. Meril Ümarik focus on accepting these changes – she looks at how the teachers, school leaders and internship mentors have accepted the changes, what mechanisms have supported this and how have different groups in vocational education influenced applying these politics.
The thesis shows that accepting the change has not been equal and has brought along an inhomogeneity between the vocational education institutions. “The schools and teachers who were incorporated in the Phare project at the end of the 1990s have been in a better position for adapting. In my thesis I find that vocational teachers and institutions have implemented these changes in different ways. For example, when in the case of nurse training the school is the collective instigator of change in the field, in the ICT field it is the corporations that have the power, which means they form the actual content of practical studies and assessment,” explained Ümarik.
One goal of educational reforms throughout Europe has been to better connect the vocational education to the actual needs of the labour market. Internship has been perceived to be the central tool in this. The research brought out many positive examples, but also showed bottlenecks, such as the low quality of internship guidance and the mentors’ low motivation in assessing the students. Fictive grading, another bottleneck, hints toward deeper conflicts within the institutions and the lack of communication between the labour market and the vocational education system. Since the ties between corporations and schools tend to be loose, there are no best practices or standards to share. Ümarik says the earlier participation of all interested parties and supportive study networks should be considered when planning school- or state-wide changes in the education system.
Meril Ümarik’s doctoral thesis “Adopting Reform Policies in Vocational Education and Training: the Case of Post-Soviet Estonia / Kutseharidusreformi poliitikate omaksvõtt postsovietlikus Eestis” was supervised by professor Krista Loogma from Tallinn University and professor Mikko Kari Lagerspetz from Åbo Akademi. Her opponents are professor Marja-Leena Stenström fom Jyväskylä University and senior researcher Simone Ruth Haasler from Bremen University.
The doctoral thesis can be accessed from the Tallinn University Academic Library e-depository ETERA.
The public defence of the thesis will take place on October 9, 2015 at 14:00 at the Tallinn University auditorium M-213, Uus-Sadama st 5.