Opportunity or Inequality in Vocational Education? A Qualitative Investigation

ABSTRACT

Recent research points to an association between participation in certain kinds of secondary vocational programs and the development of improved attitudes (e.g. toward self, school, work, and others). There is considerable disagreement, however, over the meaning of these findings. Supporters of vocational education suggest they reflect the capacity of vocational programs to enhance the work skills and opportunity of disadvantaged participants; critics, on the other hand, argue they reveal the process by which vocational education actually inhibits the opportunity of such youth by fostering compliant work attitudes and an acceptance on their part of low status employment.

The study here is an attempt to address this debate through ethnographic investigation. It suggests that while most of the students found their programs enjoyable and rewarding, this response was, generally, the product of a complex assemblage of personal, social, economic, family, and educational factors which worked against the goal of increasing the students' ooportunity. Although the vocational education experience was only one part of this network, it did tend to reinforce class-related inequalities.