Factors Influencing Professional Development in Teacher Teams within CBE Contexts

Abstract

Vocational education and training (VET) is increasingly shaped in competence-based ways, meaning that professional core problems form the red thread in curricula and that students develop their competencies by building meaningful relationships between knowledge, skills and attitudes in professional practice. In this way VET tries to connect education more strongly to labour market needs and to enhance students’ motivation to learn. The implementation of competence-based education (CBE) programmes urges VET teachers and trainers to take on their own competence development. That is, teachers are the ones that need to learn how the ideas behind CBE could best be put into practice. Furthermore, since competence-based education is a team effort – that is, its multidisciplinary character requires teachers to integrate their subjects into a curriculum – team learning is essential. This chapter is focused on how team learning can be promoted. Team learning is conceptualised as the ‘various activities team members can undertake in order to acquire, share and combine their knowledge through experience with one another’ (Argote L, Gruengeld D, Naquin C. Group learning in organizations. In: Turner ME (ed) Groups at work: theory and research. Erlbaum, Mahwah, pp 369–412, 2001). This chapter will first discuss which factors, at the individual, team and organisational level, may foster teachers’ engagement in team learning activities. After that, the chapter will elaborate on human resources management (HRM) as an integrative means to stimulate team learning. With HRM, organisations try to influence employees’ ability, motivation and opportunities to perform (Boxall et al. 2003). As such HRM can be viewed as a means to link all influencing factors described in the earlier section.