Participation in Continuing Vocational Education and Training: Results from the case studies and qualitative investigations

The main objective of the PARTICIPA project is the investigation of factors influencingthe continuous vocational education, training and learning (CVETL) activities in the sixpartner countries Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, United Kingdom and Germany. Roughly,the project can be divided into two periods, in which the objectives were approached withdifferent methods and research designs, namely, quantitative and qualitative methods,which were expected to complement each other.In the previous research phase the PARTICIPA project partners have investigated theparticipation in CVETL of skilled technical workers by means of quantitative researchmethods. The theoretical framework of these quantitative investigations was the ISSTAL1model of social participation developed by D. H. Smith (Smith & Macauly, 1980). Thismodel was the frame of the partners’ studies, which are presented in detail in the secondreport. Subject of the studies were two...