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Policies to promote high participation in Higher Educations (HE) systems aim to deliver social justice and economic development through widening participation of under-represented groups. "Degrees of Success" provides a critical test of this through examination of participation and success of learners progressing to HE with a vocational background. Employing an original conceptual framework that combines the ideas of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu the authors analyse the various transitional frictions experienced by learners with VET backgrounds on their journeys into and through the HE system. The findings indicate that including students with vocational qualifications does lead to widening participation but that their modes of participation may not provide fair access and outcomes. In part this is due to the epistemic incompatibilities between higher and vocational education which remain unresolved despite constant VET qualification reform. This book, therefore, extends the debate about widening participation beyond metaphors of barriers to access to consider the epistemic and pedagogical challenges of increasing student heterogeneity in high participation HE systems. The analysis and policy suggestions therefore have relevance for all seeking to support students' HE learning journeys, and policy makers concerned with how best to utilise HE systems as means of furthering social mobility and justice.

This book examines modularization in the German system of initial vocational education and training. After examining the underlying concept of modularization (providing training through self-contained units that can be combined in different ways), the book presents an overview of modularization as it occurs in Spain, Scotland, France, and the Netherlands before examining in detail the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) framework in England and Wales. The book maintains that the strengths and weaknesses of NVQs (and their functional position within the education and training system) are particularly significant to the strategy of modularization in German initial training that the book proposes. This strategy recommends the evolutionary development of the elements of occupational profiles into self-contained modules and identifies the ways in which these elements have to be transformed in order to fulfill the function of modules in a modularized training system. The book advocates that the restructured system may incorporate modules developed in cooperation with European partners and so link to other national training systems. Eight appendixes provide information about the concept of modularization and examples of how it is being implemented in other countries. The book lists 285 references and contains a glossary of 37 German terms and a list of 59 acronyms. (KC)