What is scholarly about vocational education?

his symposium aims to explore what is scholarly about vocational education. Participating in post-graduate study, research and scholarly activity has enabled us to step back and consider both our own vocational practice, and that which we observe in the further education (FE) sector, from a different perspective. This new view has been influential, causing us to re-evaluate the practice we observe and to theorise the complexity and skill present in vocational education. Using the work of Bernstein (2000), Young (2008, 2010) and Boyer (1990), we consider vocational knowledge as ourselves and our colleagues experience it. The complexity involved in the mastery of skill, we argue, is akin to the theoretical knowledge that Wheelahan (2007) suggests is missing in some competence-based models of qualifications used in FE. Whilst acknowledging some of the systemic practices which limit knowledge in the sector, we point to the characteristics that we would tentatively describe as scholarship (Boyer, 1990). Analysing vocational knowledge from within the sector, whilst uncommon, may have significant benefits, if, as Broad (2016) suggests, this knowledge is temporal, tacit, largely un-codified, or semi-codified and held within networks. We consider these networks and the impact of language, on the way we think, talk about and teach vocational education. Whilst we acknowledge that scholarship is a term more commonly associated with higher education, through our reflections on practice we have begun to explore what is scholarly about FE. We welcome contributions to challenge and inform debate in this area. Bernstein, B. B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity: Theory, research, critique: Rowman & Littlefield. Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate: ERIC. Broad, J. H. (2016). 'Vocational knowledge in motion: rethinking vocational knowledge through vocational teachers’ professional development'. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 68 (2), 143-160. Wheelahan, L. (2007). 'How competency‐based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge: a modified Bernsteinian analysis'. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28 (5), 637-651. Young, M. (2008). 'From constructivism to realism in the sociology of the curriculum'. Review of research in education, 32 (1), 1-28. Young, M. (2010). 'Why educators must differentiate knowledge from experience'. Journal of the Pacific Circle Consortium for Education, 22 (1), 9-20.