Editorial: Assessment in Nordic VET

Abstract

Ten years ago, during a research exchange at Stockholm University, we organised a workshop on assessment in Nordic VET. At that time Viveca Lindberg had recently undertaken a review of Swedish research for Vetenskapsrådet (the Swedish Research council), in the field of assessment (Forsberg & Lindberg, 2010). During the work they also had a side-view to the other Nordic countries and summarised there were hardly any scientific articles on assessment in vocational education and training in a Nordic context. During the workshop we decided to invite Nordic colleagues who we knew were enrolled in projects dealing with different aspects of assessment in VET to contribute to an anthology on assessment. Most of these contributions were related to upper secondary (16+) education, a few also to adult education. 18 abstracts were accepted in 2010. Unfortunately, the original publisher withdraw due to reorganisation at the university and the development process was placed on hold for several years while we tried to find a new publisher in one of the Nordic countries. The fact is that many publishers do not want chapters written in different Scandinavian languages as our invitation to the authors indicated. Finally, in 2018, we were lucky to reach an agreement with this journal (NJVET) to publish a special issue on assessment in Nordic VET. Here there are possibilities for multi-lingual publications (English, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish). On the road, we of course lost some of the contributions. Some published in other journals, some have withdrawn their contributions due to outdated content and contexts. Nevertheless, we are pleased to present eight peer-reviewed research articles and one magazine article.