Integrated vocational education attempts to improve educational and employment opportunities for youth who will be facing the practical world that will be demand high level worker skills. Integration of vocational education to academic programs is triggered by the high dropout and illiteracy rates, along with employers’ criticisms that schools are delivering workers who lack problem-solving abilities, higher-order thinking skills, and communication/employability skills–all crucial for work in a global economy.
Academic educators have suffered criticism for providing curriculum that lacks participatory forms of learning and opportunities for students to connect learning to “real world” events. Thus “Learning by doing” or “applied academics” strategy shall help schools to prepare students for cluster of occupations with varied skill levels and they will become better and efficient professionals.
So, there are some strategies to be adopted in applying integrated vocational education. Firstly, a vocational course should incorporate more academic content in vocational courses. This approach involves vocational teachers in modifying vocational courses to include more academic content. However, this model does not eliminate the segregation of vocational and academic courses, teachers, or students nor does it affect the academic or general tracks.
Combining vocational and academic teachers to enhance academic competencies in vocational programs is also to be applied. Academic teachers can cooperate with vocational teachers in curriculum development and/or teaching to include more academic content in either vocational courses or related applied courses.