How do experienced skilled workers develop into professional vocational teachers? This project explores vocational teacher students’ learning and professional development.
Work4Teaching explores how vocational teacher students’ prior occupational experience is challenged and further developed through diverse learning experiences across working life, schools, and university studies.
Vocational teacher students in technology-related fields – building and construction; electrical engineering and computer technology; technological and industrial production; and information technology and media production – often enter vocational teacher education with extensive occupational experience. However, some of their practical and theoretical knowledge may be tacit and embodied.
During the three-year bachelor’s programme, students alternate between campus-based or online learning, vocational practice in workplaces, and supervised teaching practice in schools.
Drawing on different research approaches, Work4Teaching focuses on students’ activities and learning processes across these arenas, including supervised teaching practice, vocational practice aimed at developing both breadth and depth of vocational competence, and lectures in vocational and professional subjects.
The project has several phases:
- Students’ experiences of vocational breadth practice – A questionnaire survey with open-ended questions.
- Deep learning and professional identity – An interview study with recently qualified vocational teachers.
- Mentor teachers and vocational teacher students in upper secondary schools – A longitudinal study covering three teaching-practice periods, involving observations and interviews with mentor teachers and vocational teacher students during school-based teaching practice.
- The workplace as a learning environment – how do companies contribute to the relevance of vocational teacher education? – An interview study with workplace representatives, combined with observations where feasible.
- Integrated vocational teacher education – organisation and the role of the university – A questionnaire and interview study involving vocational teacher educators and programme leaders at the higher education institution.
