Research on the psychological path to enhance social recognition of vocational education

: In 2021, China established the world's largest vocational education system. There are more than 110,000 vocational schools, with more than 1,300 majors and more than 290 million students. Despite its rapid development and remarkable achievements, vocational education is still a weak link in China's education system and has yet to gain social acceptance. There are even cognitive biases that seriously hinder the healthy development of vocational education. Although the country attaches great importance to vocational education and social development requires skilled talent, parents and students are reluctant to pursue vocational education. There is an urgent need to discuss the social acceptance of vocational education from the perspective of social psychology in order to improve its social adaptability.


Problems in Social Recognition of Vocational Education 1.1 Serious Social Prejudice and Slow Concept Updating
Social cognitive bias is an important reason for the lack of social recognition of vocational education, which is mainly manifested by the over-emphasis on knowledge education and the neglect of skills education.Society generally focuses on intellectual learning and the cultivation of theoretical talent, while relatively ignoring the cultivation of practical skills.This cognitive bias leads to a lack of understanding and recognition of vocational education in society.The emphasis on diplomas and the disdain for skills.Society has placed too much emphasis on academic qualifications and diplomas in assessing talent, while neglecting practical skills, which has also led to a lack of focus on vocational education.Preference for higher education and lack of correct understanding of vocational education.In assessing the effectiveness of education, society is too focused on immediate interests and neglects long-term development needs.Low social status.For a variety of reasons, vocational education has long had a low social status, which has also limited social conceptual shifts and increased recognition.

Unfavorable Social Environment and Fewer Opportunities
Most successful people come from ordinary higher education systems that do not provide a good social environment and opportunities.Low exposure.In the field of public opinion, vocational education has low exposure, which also makes it difficult to raise social recognition.Poor development environment.The general social environment tends to favor intellectual and higher education, which is not conducive to the development of vocational education and makes it difficult to provide good external conditions and atmosphere.Obstacles to subsequent development.Due to low social recognition, vocational education graduates have less scope for subsequent development, which also reduces its attractiveness and makes it difficult to gain the favor and choice of parents and students.The mechanism of integration of industry and education is not perfect.The integration mechanism between vocational education and industrial enterprises is not yet perfect enough to achieve in-depth integration, which also leads to problems such as low social recognition and few opportunities.

Uneven Quality and Insufficient Social Attractiveness
The relatively weak teaching quality and social service capacity of some vocational schools makes it difficult to produce large numbers of highly skilled people and research and development achievements, which weakens their social influence and attractiveness.Inadequate social services.Some vocational schools have relatively weak social service capabilities, making it difficult to achieve close and deep integration with industrial enterprises, which also leads to difficulties in producing the talent that businesses really need, affecting social recognition.The quality of talent training is patchy.The low quality of talent training in some vocational schools makes it difficult to produce large numbers of highly skilled people and research and development achievements, which also weakens their social influence and attractiveness.Insufficient social influence.Some vocational schools have low social influence and reputation, making it difficult to gain a higher position in the educational market and gain the favor of parents, which also results in a weak overall social appeal.

Limited Publicity Platforms and Unsmooth Channels
Social platforms for promoting vocational education concepts, values, and opportunities are relatively narrow, which limits the broad promotion of concepts and social understanding, making it difficult to achieve desirable effects and influence choices.Single publicity channels.At the moment, vocational education promotion relies mainly on a few websites, newspapers and television, and the channels are relatively monolithic.To improve the situation, it is necessary to use new media and other means to open up more channels of publicity and expand the range of communication.The concept of insufficient generalization.The social promotion of vocational education concepts and opportunities is insufficient to penetrate the grassroots and the whole society, which also limits understanding and recognition.The target of the propaganda was narrow.At present, vocational education is mainly promoted to high school students and parents, while there is insufficient promotion to other social groups, which also affects overall perceptions.

Limited Policy Support and Imperfect System Mechanisms
The Chinese government's financial input for vocational education is smaller than that for general higher education, making it difficult for vocational education to significantly increase its size and level, and thus affect its social status.Insufficient policy support.Government policy support for vocational education in areas such as taxation and finance is less than for regular higher education, which also limits its scope for development.Imperfect curriculum and assessment standards.The government's curriculum development, implementation and assessment standards for vocational education are lower than those for general higher education, affecting its teaching quality and social acceptance.Imperfect management and oversight mechanisms.The government's management and quality supervision mechanism for vocational education is less perfect than that for general higher education, which also affects social recognition.
To improve social acceptance of vocational education, reforms must be promoted comprehensively in terms of conceptual transformation, environment creation, quality improvement and policy support.This requires concerted efforts from all sectors of society to expand the investment of more resources, improve related systems, and jointly promote the transformation and upgrading of vocational education in the cognitive structure of society.

Analysis of reasons for low social recognition of vocational education
The low social recognition of vocational education leads to problems such as difficult improvement in development quality, fewer educational opportunities, imbalance in talent training, difficulties in employment, weak integration of industry and education, limited policy support and small social influence, making it difficult to meet the needs of economic and social development.It is necessary to analyze the reasons in detail in order to provide ideas for proposing solutions.

Social concept
China has long advocated the traditional concept of "emphasis on literature and neglect of skills".Knowledge education has been over-praised, while skills education has been relatively neglected.This has prevented vocational education from getting the social attention it deserves for its important role.People prefer and choose the path of intellectual education, which is the root cause of influencing recognition.To solve this problem, we must transform social values and reshape the social positioning and image of vocational education.

Institutional mechanisms
At present, vocational education policies and investment are still relatively inadequate.For example, vocational qualifications and skills standards are not uniform, and higher vocational education degrees have low recognition and mobility.This makes it difficult for society to accurately judge the quality and effectiveness of vocational education, which is detrimental to the choice of parents and students, and recognition is difficult to improve.To solve the problem, we need to further improve policies and systems, increase capital investment, and promote standard unification and degree reform.

Employment environment
Businesses are not providing enough opportunities to absorb highly skilled people.The relatively weak attractiveness and competitiveness of vocational education compared to the employment market for colleges, universities and public institutions is also a significant reason for the low recognition.To solve this problem, enterprises need to further expand the size of their recruitment of highly skilled talent and provide vocational education students with a wider range of options for career development.

Market promotion
Many high-quality resources do not receive the dissemination and attention they deserve, and their social impact is small, which is one reason for the low recognition.To solve this problem, we need to increase the marketing and promotion of vocational education and expand its popularity and influence in society.

Self-development
The level of development of vocational education in different regions and schools in China varies widely.Overall, the level of development remains uneven, which makes social assessment of vocational education very uneven and difficult to form a high level of recognition.To solve the problem, we need to promote cooperative development, improve the quality and balance of development, and modernize education.

Social misunderstandings
There are misunderstandings in society that vocational education is "only suitable for poor students" and "only for the poor", which causes certain prejudices and is also the reason for low recognition.To solve the problem, we need to properly guide public opinion, dispel misconceptions and promote rational judgment and choice among the masses.
To improve social recognition of vocational education, we must transform social perceptions, improve related systems, improve the employment environment, increase market promotion, improve the quality of self-development and eliminate social misunderstandings.This requires the joint efforts of all sectors of society and is a long-term systematic project.The government, schools, enterprises and society must work together to create favorable conditions, continuously improve social perceptions, promote relevant reforms and improve the development environment for vocational education to enhance its attractiveness and influence.

Methods for improving social recognition of vocational education
We need to create a social culture atmosphere conducive to the development of vocational education, advocate the concept of equality between vocational education and ordinary education, change the stereotyped impression and cognition of vocational education in society, eliminate the negative social psychological effects, strengthen the social role of vocational education, and improve the social recognition of vocational education.

Create a strong cultural climate for vocational education
We will actively create a culture of good vocational education, hold skills competitions, strengthen propaganda, build campus culture and spread the culture of excellent vocational education.Once a virtuous vocational education culture is formed, the dominant values of society towards vocational education will be completely transformed, and the positive "social image" of vocational education will be officially established.
Competitions were held for vocational skills.Skills competitions can promote the healthy development of vocational education and improve the stability of staff teams.Governments at all levels are actively building platforms for skilled people to showcase their skills and compete with each other.Encourage them to integrate theory with practice, promote learning through competition and improve skills through competition, further optimize China's talent training structure, and continue to train more highly skilled vocational talents for the construction of a socialist modernized society.
Increase vocational publicity.Vocational education has a strong supporting role in economic and social development, and the whole society needs to promote the formation of fashions that glorify labor.We will make full use of the news media to promote advanced deeds, build models of technical and skilled talents, and increase the popularity of vocational education; We will carry out various commendation activities, increase the skill level requirement in the recruitment of enterprises and public institutions, treat technical and skilled people fairly, and form a four-in-one advocacy community of government, society, enterprises and schools.
Build a good vocational culture on campus.Offer good vocational theory courses to give students a solid foundation in vocational theory; Make good use of public basic courses to develop good vocational qualities in students; Skills culture and arts festivals such as the Luban Workshop Culture Festival are held regularly to provide a stage for students to display their professional skills; Planning for the cultural development of the campus, showing the typical cases of excellent alumni and skilled masters, giving full play to implicit education, and promoting the comprehensive development of student quality.

Establishing the concept of equality among employees
We will actively create a culture of good vocational education, hold skills competitions, strengthen propaganda, build campus culture and spread the culture of excellent vocational education.Once a virtuous vocational education culture is formed, the dominant values of society towards vocational education will be completely transformed, and the positive "social image" of vocational education will be officially established [1] .
Competitions for vocational skills are conducted.Holding skills competitions can promote the healthy development of vocational education and improve the stability of staff teams.Governments at all levels are actively building platforms for skilled people to showcase their skills and compete with each other.Encourage them to integrate theory with practice, promote learning through competition and improve skills through competition, further optimize China's talent training structure, and continue to train more highly skilled vocational talents for the construction of a socialist modernized society [2] .
Increase vocational publicity.Vocational education plays a strong supporting role in economic and social development, and society as a whole needs to promote the formation of fashions that glorify labor.We will make full use of the news media to promote advanced deeds, build models of technical and skilled talents, and increase the popularity of vocational education; We will carry out various commendation activities, increase the skill level requirement in the recruitment of enterprises and public institutions, treat technical and skilled people fairly, and form a four-in-one advocacy community of government, society, enterprises and schools.Build a good career culture on campus.Offer good vocational theory courses to give students a solid foundation in vocational theory; Make good use of public basic courses to develop good vocational qualities in students; Skills culture and arts festivals such as the Luban Workshop Culture Festival are held regularly to provide a stage for students to display their professional skills; Planning for the cultural development of the campus, showing the typical cases of excellent alumni and skilled masters, giving full play to implicit education, and promoting the comprehensive development of student quality.

Building a Social Psychological Support System for Vocational Education
Not only create a good social atmosphere and advocate the concept of equality between vocational education and ordinary education, but also integrate vocational education with social psychology to build a social psychological support system for vocational education, change social attitudes, break the vicious cycle of mutual obstruction between social psychology and vocational education, and promote the spirit of labor and vocational spirit to penetrate into social life.
Eliminate the negative effects of social psychology.Under the negative influence of social psychology such as conformity and comparison, people are more likely to choose ordinary education rather than vocational education, and few people still choose vocational education after comprehensively considering various factors [3] .Those who master key technologies and core knowledge are more easily respected by society, and this respect is naturally generated [4] .Therefore, vocational education must rely on the east wind of the law to guide the recognition, recognition and approval of vocational education as an important way of training talent.
We will strengthen the role of vocational education.The process of reshaping the social role of vocational education is both a process of improving its adaptability and a process of reshaping its social psychology.The process was long and difficult.Just as the broadcast of documentaries such as "The Craftsman of a Great Power" and "The Heavy Equipment of a Great Power" gave people a close-up look at the shock and greatness of the craftsman's spirit, these cases will strongly promote vocational education to be recognized and loved by society.

Conclusion
The achievements in the development of vocational education have increasingly strengthened people's ideas and confidence in vocational education.Traditional psychology has begun to come under fire and attack.The perception of vocational education has started to change.Under the intersection and integration of vocational education and social psychology, we will build a social psychological support system for vocational education, eliminate the negative effects of inherent concepts, optimize the role positioning and social service functions of vocational education, and actively rectify vocational education.Although this ideological change and psychological identity are difficult, we need to purposefully guide social psychology so that people can correctly view vocational education, solve people's confusion about vocational education, make vocational education more dignified and respected [5] .Promoting the modernization of vocational education is a long and arduous task.We should take Huang Yanpei and other predecessors as examples, pursue the vocational goal of "making the unemployed employed and making the employed happy", and actively spread the ideas and voice of vocational education.In the future, when the culture of vocational education is integrated into people's daily lives, vocational education will officially receive social support and recognition.