Vocational education and training in Lombardy and Lower Saxony: An exemplary case for international comparative research into regions

In international vocational education and training (VET) research, countries are often the default unit of analysis, but this can overlook regional differences. The contributions in this volume suggest that comparative research cannot do without considering the regional dimension, using Lower Saxony and Lombardy as examples of how institutional settings, history, and local needs impact VET systems, which necessarily also changes the scope of analysis. In these two specific cases, this is particularly true with regard to the dual approach in VET, the organisation of school-based vocational pathways, the provision of higher VET and teachers’s training.