Recently, the importance of vocational education is gradually increasing. But the theoretical circumstance around vocational education is not necessarily hopefu l. Discrepancies still exist in that most vocational education scholars and society in general view vocational education as a form of "low-tier " education, constituting repetitive training of simple skills. But as apart of life world, vocation has many aspects, and education in vocation has no reason to be evaluated unfairly. The purpose of this study is to review research tren ds and to check up new perspectives in vocational edu cation. After industrial revolution, industrialist an d government sought to an other system of vocation al education which can substitute mediaeval apprenticeship system. They found the possibility in public school, and from then, vocational education h as been regarded as a preparation to vocation for secondary school leavers. They believed that their p olicy would give more opportunity to get jobs to in dividual student, and eventually it would contribute to national economic power. But, after 1970`s world wide economic crisis, researchers began to raise a question into traditional economic assumption in vocational education. From 1980`s, we can find a shift in research paradigm arou nd vocational education. Although the movement is still small, some researchers have perceived that we should see vocational education as a growth of stu dents` experience. Thus vocational education can be reconceptualized in terms of learner` s growth in vocational activity. I think that we can find many new clues in this movement. But what matters is that they don`t have another viewpoints of education. So, the future task of vocational education, I think, is that the inquiry of new educational theory which can give light on education in vocational activity.