This book is the result of a two year research project undertaken by six educational institutions from five countries which co-operated together under the auspices of the European Union Leonardo Survey and Analysis Programme. The purpose of the project was to examine vocational education in the five countries involved with a view to finding ways of improving its status and attractiveness. This purpose gave the project its name - Promoting the Attractiveness of Vocational Education (PAVE). Underlying PAVE were three main hypotheses. Firstly, vocational education in general has low prestige because it is perceived to lack the qualities traditionally associated with liberal education. Secondly, liberal education at its best has a vocational dimension and vocational education at its best has a liberal dimension; hence it makes good sense to integrate the two. Thirdly, examples of such integration already exist but they need to be examined critically and articulated more clearly. The methodology of PAVE had three principal dimensions - philosophical, historical/hermeneutical and ethnographic. The philosophical dimension examined the meaning of liberal education in a modem context; in other words it attempted to restate the liberal ideal in a vocational mode. The historical/hermeneutical dimension facilitated the analysis, comparison and synthesis of documentary evidence. In this manner, key texts in the development of vocational education were identified, analysed and compared in each of the five countries involved. The ethnographic dimension examined examples of good practice in the integration of the liberal and vocational traditions through selected case studies in each of the five countries.