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"Vocational education"
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How Can Collaboration between Schools and Workplaces Contribute to Relevant Vocational Education?
Collaboration between schools and enterprises in vocational education and training (VET) is a challenge in many countries, Norway included. There is a tendency to organise VET in separate theoretical and practical learning arenas that lack mutual coherence. This article presents the findings of a four-year action research study in which 30 vocational teachers, who were taking an in-service master’s degree programme in vocational pedagogy, completed systematic research-based projects on developing partnerships between schools and enterprises in the school-based part of Norwegian VET. The goal was to strengthen the relevance of vocational education by creating stronger links between the content of the education and the content of the vocation. The study was based on a pragmatic, holistic perspective on vocational competence and education where essential, authentic vocational tasks to which theory is related are regarded as the core educational content, both in the enterprises and in schools. The findings are based on an analysis of 30 master’s degree theses documenting each of the teachers’ development projects.
The results show examples of and principles for how collaboration between schools and enterprises can be organised around vocational tasks. Core principles include formal agreements on collaboration between schools and enterprises, regular dialogues between vocational teachers, instructors and students about educational tasks and content, joint planning and follow-up of students’ placements in enterprises, and exchanges of experience and competence between teachers and instructors. The results show that, according to students, instructors and vocational teachers, the application of such principles contributed to vocational relevance and students’ motivation and learning outcomes.
Journal Article
The work of programme managers in state-funded employer-driven Swedish higher VET
Context: Swedish Higher Vocational Education (HVE) is organised as state-funded programmes provisioned by both public and private education providers in close relation to employers. In HVE programme managers have responsibilities like those that often are vested in vocational teachers. They are responsible both for the day-to-day work of provision and the continuous development of the programme and its syllabi. This article presents a study investigating the work of programme managers, focusing on their work with creating and updating syllabi and on their work organising the students' training. Methods: Five programme managers responsible for five diverse HVE programmes have been interviewed and the syllabi of these programmes have been examined. The analysis is based on a Bernsteinian theoretical perspective focusing on recontextualisation of knowledge for pedagogic discourse by different stakeholders as agents who have different basis for their actions. The study first establishes what knowledge make up the programmes to inform the understanding of what training the programme managers are tasked with organising, then examines how the programme managers take part in selecting knowledge for course syllabi, and how they organise the teaching of these syllabi in in their programmes. Findings: The knowledge that has been recontextualised for pedagogic discourse in the studied programmes is most often vocationally specific or context bound in relation to a particular occupational field. The syllabi are related to clearly defined jobs. The findings highlight how practice thus in several ways may be difficult for programme managers without work experience in the relevant occupational field or knowledge in relation to it. Not only in the work of forming and updating curricula, but also as they must be able to navigate the relevant sector of business and industry to engage appropriate employers for collaborations and to hire teaching staff. Conclusion: The findings presented in this article show that local autonomy allows for major differences regarding knowledge in syllabi and the organisation of learning between programmes within the same nationally organised VET system. This is salient even with a small number of programmes having been studied. This strongly support the importance of examining what happens in autonomous local contexts of VET provision and asking who has influence over publicly funded education in this sort of contexts, and on what these stakeholders base their actions.
Journal Article
Impact of organizational culture, occupational commitment and industry-academy cooperation on vocational education in China: Cross-sectional Hierarchical Linear Modeling analysis
At a time when vocational education is seen as critical for national development, concern grows regarding how weak organizational culture and occupational commitment may threaten the production of quality graduates and teachers within the field. The failure of vocational institutions to effectively create human capital likely threatens the connections between Chinese industry and its educational institutions. This study thus explores how these connections are influenced by organizational and occupational factors. A multi-layer linear model is employed on data collected from 406 teachers from 69 Chinese vocational colleges and universities. Results suggest that organizational cultural positively influences industry-university cooperative behavior through the construction of strong occupational commitment and job involvement. This study not only enriches and expands new knowledge and academic perspectives, but also provides feasible policy suggestions to help guide educational administrators toward the improvement of vocational education.
Journal Article
Through the schoolhouse door
Presents a multi-faceted approach to a case study of a secondary school, the London Technial and Commerical High School, one of the first vocational secondary schools. The history of the classroom and curriculum are traced, using a variety of ways to examine the history, the institutional structures, and everyday life in the school. A major theme is the importance of viewing teachers and administrators as mediating agencies between government and the \"outiside world\" on the one hand, and students on the other. Another central theme is gender and class.
Book
Dimensions of Expertise
A detailed philosophical debate on the nature of expertise is long overdue and Dimensions of Expertise opens up that debate. Christopher Winch firstly explores an account of know-how, derived primarily from the pioneering work of Gilbert Ryle, and moves on to relate this epistemological debate to discussions concerning the nature of expertise in vocational and professional education, including attempts to provide a theory of expertise.
eBook