Vocational didactics – paving the way for students’ learning in vocational education in schools

Summary

Within the Swedish school system, upper secondary vocational education serves important functions at both the individual and societal levels. It offers young people and adults an education focused on application, practice, and working life. Thereby, it contributes to meeting labour market needs but also to fostering active and inclusive citizenship.

Vocational teachers play a key role in fulfilling the purposes of vocational education. Although they teach a wide range of vocational subjects, they share a common responsibility to build their teaching around research-based methods and procedures.

Research in vocational didactics reflects the considerable diversity in the character and content of vocational subjects, which can make it difficult to gain an overall picture of what this body of research says and how it can contribute to the development of teaching. This systematic review synthesises 24 studies examining teaching and learning in different vocational subjects. The studies share a common focus on what takes place in the interaction between vocational teachers and students within the school-based part of vocational education.

Aim and research questions

The aim of this review is to provide vocational teachers with inspiration, support, and guidance in making well-informed didactic decisions. By bringing together research from a range of vocational subjects and relating subject-specific examples to more general principles, the review is relevant to vocational teachers regardless of the subjects they teach. The following research questions are addressed:

1. What forms of vocational knowing are expressed as content in the teaching studied?
2. How does the teaching unfold though interactions between vocational teachers, students, and content?

Results

The results chapter is divided into two sections, each addressing one of the research questions. Together, the findings illuminate both what students are given opportunities to learn and how vocational teachers support this learning through their teaching. To some extent the sections overlap as they occasionally shed light on different aspects of the same phenomenon.

Vocational knowing as content

The studies show how different forms of vocational knowing are expressed as teaching content. Teachers’ own experiences from their original occupations appear to be crucial in shaping the vocational knowing that is made available to students.

One important aspect concerns the development of a professional gaze, that is, the ability to discern and evaluate processes and products according to the quality standards of the occupation. Students get to learn how something should feel, sound, taste, smell, or look in accordance with occupational norms. The teaching also concerns vocational knowing as professional action: students learn bodily skills, the handling of tools and technical equipment, and the use of occupation-specific language. Another important form of vocational knowing is the introduction of students to the norms and ways of being associated with a profession. Through teaching, students are given opportunities to learn what it means to be part of a professional community, how school and workplace settings relate to one another, and how they can act to promote a long and sustainable working life.

Vocational subject teaching in interaction

The second section of the results explores how teaching unfolds through interactions between teachers, students, and content. The included studies provide examples of multimodal teaching that involves speech, bodily actions, and material resources. In this section, we initially describe teachers’ instructional actions in terms of seven different didactic action types:

• Sequencing
• Modelling
• Verbalising
• Contrasting
• Distributing
• Temporalising
• Fading

These action types illustrate how vocational teachers can structure their teaching and make visible the vocational knowing that the teaching aims to promote. A thoughtful sequencing can help students gradually develop their competence. Through modelling and verbalising, teachers can make visible both what should be done and why. Contrasting can be used to highlight differences between more and less appropriate ways of carrying out a task. Distributing allows teaching to be spread across different times and places, while temporalising can help create coherence and continuity in students’ learning. Finally, fading can be used to gradually increase students’ independence by progressively reducing support in line with students’ growing experience.

The findings also provide examples of how teaching is shaped and developed through students’ questions, responses, and participation in processes that have both movement and direction. Meaningful aspects that are highlighted in these processes are feedback, claims of understanding, questioning, and handling of errors. The review highlights, among other things, how students’ questions and objections can be used in the teaching and how errors and mistakes can serve as valuable learning opportunities.

Conclusions

This review shows how vocational knowing can involve discerning and evaluating relevant aspects, acting professionally, and becoming part of a professional community. It also shows how these forms of knowing can be taught in different ways through the interplay of speech, bodily action, tools, and other material resources. Taken together, the review contributes to an enhanced understanding of both what vocational knowing can be and how it can be taught.

Applying the results

In this review, we offer concepts and principles that can support reflection on and the development of vocational subject teaching. The findings are not intended as ready-made manuals to be followed but rather as tools for analysing, discussing, and developing vocational subject teaching. The practical relevance of the findings should be assessed in relation to the specific vocational subject, students’ experiences and needs, and the local teaching context. The questions at the end of each results section can support this work.

Selection of research

The review is based on a systematic selection of 24 qualitative studies identified through extensive searches of international and national databases. The studies examine vocational subject teaching across a wide range of vocational fields. They were conducted in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Switzerland and drew on observations of vocational teachers and students within the school-based part of vocational education.

The project group

The project team consists of external researchers (specialists in the field) and staff at the Swedish Institute for Educational Research.