How education policies travel – and why context matters
With the publication of the The Palgrave Handbook of Policy Transfer in Vocational Education and Beyond, a comprehensive reference work on policy transfer in education is now available. Edited by Antje Barabasch, Sandra Bohlinger and Stefan Wolf, the handbook brings together international research on technical and vocational education and training (TVET), adult education, and professional and higher education.
The volume addresses how education and skills policies are transferred across countries, regions and institutional settings, and why such transfers succeed or fail depending on their political, economic and cultural embedding. The chapters combine established theoretical perspectives with emerging approaches to governance, political economy and policy learning, highlighting the decisive role of context in shaping reform outcomes.
Structured into several thematic parts, the handbook covers EU-level VET governance, cross-national reform processes in Europe and beyond, organisational and contextual drivers of policy transfer, as well as policy borrowing and learning in higher education and related fields.
A chapter authored by Daniel Unterweger and Jörg Markowitsch represents the 3s contribution. In “The EU’s Orchestration of Employer Cooperation: The Pact for Skills and the European Alliance for Apprenticeships”, the authors analyse two flagship EU initiatives aimed at strengthening collective skill formation. They show how the EU applies an “orchestration” strategy, whereby public actors enable and encourage firms and business associations to cooperate in training. Using the Pact for Skills as an example, the chapter illustrates how large-scale skills partnerships can be fostered at European level, including in countries without a strong tradition of employer-led vocational training.
The handbook is aimed at researchers, policy-makers and practitioners seeking a deeper understanding of policy transfer processes in education, particularly in relation to labour market skills, vocational education and training, and higher education reform.
Unterweger, Daniel; Markowitsch, Jörg (2026). The EU’s Orchestration of Employer Cooperation: The Pact for Skills and the European Alliance for Apprenticeships. In: Barabasch, Antje, Bohlinger, Sandra, Wolf, Stefan (Hg.): The Palgrave Handbook of Policy Transfer in Vocational Education and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3‑031–99617-7_4
Contact: Daniel Unterweger
