Accelerated substantial progress regarding many fields of production and services imposes pressure upon the labor market. Employers are desperately looking for skilled workers in nearly all technological fields. All over the world this pressure reaches the national systems of vocational education and training. Along with the output orientation turn new standards are imposed, forcing firms and schools to make every endeavor to improve and remodel their programs as well as their practices to reach more and more ambitious goals. To be successful they need the results of scientific research from which they demand reliable information on methods to diagnose the state and learning progress of students and on means to foster and promote competencies of heterogeneous groups of leaners. The book offers 22state-of-the-art articles covering the central fields of vocational education and training and reporting on new and adequate ways to deal with these challenges.

Foreword; Chapter I: Basic Research Concepts in VET Defining a Learning Theory Linked to Instructional Theory: A Fusion of German and American Approaches; Universities as a Place of Self-Regulated Vocational Education and Training; Trainability, Vocational Skills and Employability: Different Stories Relating to Basic Skills and Work Virtues?; Chapter II: Content, Objectives and Outcomes of VET Professional Role Requirements and Universal Morals; Situationism in Business Education Are Situations the Smallest Didactical Units?; Basic Competencies as Determinants of Success in Commercial Apprenticeships; Assessing the Value of Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Motivation and Emotion from a Pedagogical and an Economic Perspective; Chapter III: Methods of Instruction in VET What Can Research on Technology for Learning in Vocational Educational Training Teach Media Didactics?; Constructivist Teaching and Learning; Social Media: Potentials and Challenges for Vocational Education; The Inferential Construction of Knowledge in the Domain of Business and Economics; Work-Study Programs for the Formation of Professional Skills; Improving the Professional Competence of Low-Achieving Apprentices: How to Use Diagnostics for Successful Training; Chapter IV: Diagnostics and Assessment in VET Structuring and Detecting Competence; Non-Cognitive Facets of Competence: Theoretical Foundations and Implications for Measurement; Adaption of the TSRQ for Financial Behavior; Diagnostic Competence of (Prospective) Teachers in Vocational Education: An Analysis of Error Identification in Accounting Lessons; Standardizing Oral Examinations in Vocational Education and Training: Potentials and Limits; Chapter V: Structural Developments Evaluation Reform Advancement? The Example of the Swiss New Business Education; Assessing Research on School Leadership in Germany from an International Perspective; Teachers Evidence-Based Actions: A Comparison of Different School Types; Is the GermanQualifications Framework an Instrument that Contributes to Permeability and Progression Within the VET System? An International Perspective.