Introduction

This chapter outlines the approach we take in this book and our key arguments. We consider the return of vocational education and training (VET) to national and international policy debates but suggest that neither the current orthodoxy nor the most prominent counter-narrative are adequate to the task at either theoretical, policy or practical levels. Instead, we introduce our alternative proposal that a new approach to thinking about VET can be built from a combination of the human development approach and critical realism.