Between Paperwork and Performance: Students’ Experiences of Assessment in Industry-Education Integration in Chinese Higher Vocational Education

Abstract

Industry-education integration has become a central strategy for connecting vocational education with occupational practice, yet the assessment of learning across school and workplace settings remains comparatively underexamined. This study investigates how Chinese higher vocational students experience assessment within internships, apprenticeships, enterprise-oriented classes, work-study arrangements, and production-based training. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 15 students from higher vocational institutions across multiple regions and occupational fields, the study adopts an interpretive qualitative design and reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal substantial variation in assessment arrangements. Some students experienced relatively integrated systems combining workplace observation, enterprise ratings, practical tasks, school examinations, reports, attendance, and skills tests. Others encountered assessment dominated by written documentation, weakly consequential supervisor ratings, or standardized forms that students regarded as largely procedural. Across the interviews, students distinguished between school-based indicators of achievement and workplace judgements concerning whether they could actually complete tasks, solve problems, work responsibly, and meet occupational standards. Assessment authenticity therefore depended not simply on whether learning took place in a real enterprise but on whether assessment captured consequential workplace performance and supported learning from that performance. Students also described an asymmetry of evaluative power: schools and enterprises routinely assessed students, whereas students often had limited formal opportunities to evaluate enterprises, supervisors, or placement quality. The study argues that industry-education integration does not necessarily entail assessment integration. Meaningful vocational assessment requires alignment among school requirements, workplace standards, students’ learning processes, and reciprocal opportunities for evaluative participation.