Excellence is at the heart of developing the quality and image of vocational education and training. In the context of TVET, excellence is understood in a variety of ways. A tangible VET excellence model which helps to unfold the complexity of the concept is needed to support practitioners and policymakers, as well as to facilitate the meaningful dissemination of good practices.
Based on previous research and our consultancy work within the Finnish TVET ecosystem, and as a technical partner to the European Training Foundation, we have developed a model for analyzing excellence. Our model includes horizontal layers (infrastructure, human resources, pedagogical landscape, systems and processes and stakeholder collaboration) laced with vertical “megatrend” dimensions of excellence: innovation, greening and digitalization. While horizontal layers can typically be developed on a stand-alone basis, the verticals tend to impact all the horizontal layers.
