Degree Apprenticeships, Foundation Degrees and Workforce Development in the United Kingdom: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda

Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has received considerable attention in recent decades as successive governments in the United Kingdom (UK) have sought to encourage more cost-effective training and minimize perceived skills shortages. Since the turn of the millennium, two degree-level TVET qualifications have arisen in the UK to support workforce development and instil those higher level cognitive and technical skills that are required by industry: foundation degrees and degree apprenticeships. This bibliometric review analyses the current state of research that has examined such TVET programmes, focusing more particularly on issues linked to workforce development and business-related TVET subjects in the UK. Through quantitative bibliometric analysis, a nascent dataset of 34 peer-review research articles focusing on this topic area was generated from the Elsevier Scopus database. Bibliographic data were then analysed to identify key authors, current foci of existing research and long-term publication patterns to provide a framework to map current knowledge structures and patterns within this area. The paper contributes to TVET literature by positioning the study within existing scholarly discourse and objectively identifying those areas where research is lacking, as a guide for future studies. Given the relatively nascent state of existing publications, five potential avenues for future research were identified, with particular scope to expand future research agendas in business-related TVET areas from human resource development and workforce development perspectives.