Study on Institutional Mechanisms for Lifelong Learning in Vocational Education

The concept of lifelong learning and its educational practices have been widely disseminated and accepted in the international community. China has also established the goal of building a lifelong learning education system for all citizens, but its institutional pathways still need to be clarified, and its practical implementation requires further expansion and improvement. Based on the analytical framework of neo-institutional sociology, a comparative analysis of the construction of lifelong education systems in major countries around the world can provide certain insights. Research findings indicate that the construction of lifelong learning education systems in various countries is rooted in their national value traditions and emerges from different institutional domains. Therefore, in building a lifelong learning education system that serves all citizens in China, it is possible to start from China's value traditions and carry out institutional design in terms of institutional pathways and operational mechanisms. The constraints on the formation of China's current vocational skills training system have been analyzed from aspects such as limitations of the education system, insufficient training resources, mismatch between market demand and supply, influence of social concepts, imperfect laws and regulations, low corporate participation, regional disparities, and lack of incentive mechanisms. Finally, the paper looks forward to the mechanism of vocational education lifelong learning system in China, suggesting that to further accelerate the construction of a lifelong learning system for all citizens, the positive role of vocational education should be fully played, the current problems in the construction of the system should be deeply analyzed, and efforts should be made from aspects such as optimization of enrollment, construction of teacher teams, optimization of the education system, and the use of information technology to accelerate the construction of a vocational education service system for lifelong learning for all citizens.