Ida Marie Nyland Jensen defends her PhD thesis
Ida Marie Nyland Jensen defends her PhD thesis “The Governance of Green Skills in Vocational Education and Training: Adapting Skills to the Green Transition in Polycentric and Collective Systems”.
The defense is public, all are welcome. The defense will last no longer than three hours and it will be in English.
There will be a reception after the defense.
Assesment Committee
PhD Assesment Commitee:
- Chairperson: Professor Eva Sørensen, ISE, Roskilde University
- Professor Lukas Graf, Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training, Switzerland
- Professor Mark Lubell, UC Davis, USA
PhD Supervisor:
- Main supervisor: Professor Martin Bæk Carstensen, ISE, Roskilde University
- Co-supervisor: Associate Professor Lena Brogaard, ISE, Roskilde University
Leader of the defense:
- Professor Jon Kvist, ISE, Roskilde Universitet
Abstract
Policy actors across society face the challenging task of developing policies to support the green transition and adapting existing policy areas to changing environmental, technological, and economic conditions. These processes are particularly demanding in complex governance arrangements, where authority is distributed across multiple organizations and institutions, and where policymaking is embedded in and constrained by broader institutional and political-economic relationships. Policy actors must learn about changing circumstances, select among policy options under conditions of uncertainty, and negotiate and coordinate with actors with different policy interests.
A central question for research is how governance systems can support policy actors in adapting to the green transition despite these challenges. Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems provide a useful case for studying these political dynamics, as they prepare the future workforce for changing skill demands associated with the green transition and can equip workers with the abilities, knowledge, values, and attitudes required to make the world of work greener.
This dissertation examines how key policy actors in Denmark adapt VET to the green transition, and how governance structures, actor interactions, and resources drive or inhibit the integration of green skills. Drawing on perspectives from polycentric governance and the political economy of skill formation, the dissertation examines a vital governance unit in the VET system: trade committees, in which trade unions and employers’ organizations cooperate on key governance functions.
Methodologically, the dissertation adopts a multimethod approach across its four articles, drawing on qualitative interviews with policy actors as well as quantitative analyses of survey data, administrative data, and training content in regulatory documents.
The dissertation provides a first theorization of the collective skill formation system of Danish VET as a polycentric governance system. These polycentric features are found to enable a range of processes that support the adaptation of VET to the green transition, including joint knowledge work and informal conflict mediation. The state also plays an important role by delegating resources that support action among autonomous trade committees.
Results furthermore suggest that trade committees lacking resources within their own forum can use network connections in the polycentric system to access important resources elsewhere in the system, thereby supporting their ability to adapt.
The dissertation also provides unique in-sights into how the green transformation of VET has evolved, through the development of a novel measure for detecting green skills in program content over time, and through survey data on how trade committees themselves interpret the substance of green skills and the policy processes behind their formation.
Together, the dissertation contributes with new methodological and empirical insights into the governance of green skills, as well as theoretical perspectives on the adaptive capacity of polycentric governance systems.