Author(s)

Wu Feng ¹, Deng Lingzhao ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Foreign Languages and Business, Shenzhen Polytechnic University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518000, China

Corresponding Author

Deng Lingzhao

ABSTRACT

Characteristic industrial colleges represent a pivotal institutional innovation in China's vocational education reform, yet their capacity to empower the five key teaching elements-specialty programs, curricula, textbooks, teaching staff, and practical training-remains theoretically underexplored. Drawing on the multiple institutional logics perspective, this study constructs an analytical framework encompassing governmental, market, educational, and corporate logics to examine how these competing yet complementary logics interact within industrial colleges and shape their empowerment pathways. Through systematic case analysis of 30 characteristic industrial colleges across China, the study identifies four modes of logic interaction-conflict, translation, coupling, and synergy-and delineates five corresponding empowerment pathways. The findings reveal that the core mechanism of empowerment lies in the industrial college's function as a "logic translator," converting corporate and market demands into educationally viable reforms. The paper concludes with a progressive strategy framework-from interest-driven cooperation to institution-locked partnership-for achieving sustainable empowerment of vocational education key elements.

KEYWORDS

Characteristic industrial college; Multiple institutional logics; Vocational education; Key teaching elements; Industry-education integration; Organizational governance

CITE THIS PAPER

Wu Feng, Deng Lingzhao. Research on the Path of Characteristic Industrial Colleges Empowering Key Elements of Vocational Education under Multiple Institutional Logics. Advances in Vocational and Technical Education (2026). Vol. 8, No. 2, 36-44. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/avte.2026.080205.

REFERENCES

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