Vocational Teacher Education in Practice: Learning at the Heart of the Workplace

Introduction. Training, professional development and evaluation of professional competence of vocational education teachers is considered to be the basis of providing any national economy with qualified workers and specialists. It has been increasingly recognized that more attention needs to be paid to this area. The vocational training systems are currently undergoing significant changes worldwide and require new strategies for administrative decisions. The purpose of this article is to analyze and systematize the international experience of training, professional development and competence assessment of vocational education teachers with a focus on Germany, Finland, and China in order to take it into account in modern Russian education. Materials and Methods. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research includes theories of vocational training and vocational teacher education, theories focusing on the content of vocational and teacher education and professional development of teaching staff. The authors used the following research methods: reviewing and comparative analysis of scholarly literature, reports of state institutions, regulations, and websites of educational settings in Germany, Finland and China. Results. The authors have identified trends in the convergence of qualifications and positions of teachers of professional disciplines and industrial instructors. Significant differences in the qualifications and skills of teachers and instructors in the workplace have been identified. Among the forms of professional development for vocational teachers, the authors have highlighted in-service training and activities focused in teaching methods and curriculum development. It is emphasized that the development of teachers' competence is gradual and level-based, the set of skills being determined by vocational education positions, duties and responsibilities In the countries analyzed, internships and professional self-assessment play a particularly important role in the professional development of vocational school teachers. Conclusions. A comparative international analysis of training, professional development and competence assessment of vocational teachers has enabled the authors to determine the main vectors for updating the system of professional training and vocational teacher education in Russia.

This chapter explores how vocational teachers in upper secondary schools perceive their role as mentors for vocational teacher students during their pedagogical practice. Our research question is: How do mentors in upper secondary schools understand and perform their role as vocational teacher educators? The study is based on qualitative data from students and mentors in the health and social care (HO) program and the hairdressing, floral design, interior design, and visual merchandising (FBIE) program. The theoretical framework is based on identity and role theories. The results show that vocational teachers experience a loyalty conflict between their role as vocational teachers and their role as teacher educators. Practice teachers seem to identify more with the role of vocational teacher than with the role of Teacher Education in School (LUSY). Unclear role understanding and weak identification with the role of teacher educator may lead to varying practices and expectations regarding follow-up and guidance during the practicum period. The study highlights the need for closer cooperation between the practice field and teacher education at universities to strengthen the quality of vocational teacher education.

This article focuses on a learning objective, as part of a teacher education course at a Swedish university, where student teachers should be able to discuss their own professional development and identify further development needs. Since both research and policy documents highlight professional development as an important part of teacher education, it is important to study professional development from the perspective of student teachers. The theoretical starting point is Communities of Practice (CoP), and the study focuses on knowledge and learning within a social community. Ten subject teacher students and six vocational teacher students are interviewed about their descriptions of what the professional development for teachers in teacher education means for them, which results in six prominent themes: 1) the developmentof identity formation, 2) the development of subject specific and vocational knowledge, 3) the development of leadership, 4) the development of relationship-building, 5) the development of knowledge about policy documents, laws, rules and regulations, 6) the development in relation to changes in the society. Despite common denominators in the students’ descriptions of professional development, there are also nuanced differences that can be understood by positioning actors about the (vocational) teacher education community. The vocational teacher students frequently connect their professional knowledge to industry and working life, whereas the subject teacher students often connect their subject knowledge to university courses and research. Both the vocational teacher students and the subject teacher students in the study describe that they need to stay up-to-date and continue developing their competence in pedagogy. However, the vocational teacher students specifically highlight the need for pedagogical knowledge within the school environment, rather than in the context of working life and workshop settings. This may be because some vocational teacher students are accustomed to training and teaching interns in these environments as part of their professional practice.

Context: The context of the study is vocational teacher education and the participants are vocational student teachers. They are studying in a blended learning setting as part time students. They represent several disciplines of vocational education and training. The vocational teacher studies take one year and are 60 credits. The study relates to the discussion of vocational education and training (VET) and teachers’ competencies that they are transferring to their VET students by sharing the knowledge of their subject area and working practices. This study is an exploration of one of these working practices: making competence visible in a digital format.Approach: Student teachers’ descriptions of their practices and recommendations of supportive methods for composing an ePortfolio are reviewed and their motivation to compose an ePortfolio is studied as a part of the personal learning environment (PLE) philosophy.Findings: The data revealed some typical practices, such as composing an ePortfolio (the most popular ways of doing this were recording reflections in a learning diary and using digital tools to document artefacts) and making vocational teachers’ competence visible through an ePortfolio (understanding the difference between workspace and showcase portfolios and what kinds of competence to document). The recommendations mentioned by participants were supportive methods of composing an ePortfolio (collaborative learning processes with peers, lecturers’ feedback and assessment and clear instructions) as well as methods of making vocational teachers’ competence visible (e.g. orientation to ePortfolio work using learning objectives and assessment criteria for ePortfolios). Participating student teachers are/were motivated to work with ePortfolios in various ways and expressed an intrinsic motivation to pursue personal growth and become a vocational teacher.Conclusions: The study revealed vocational student teachers’ various perceptions of scaffolding and motivational orientations to make their competence visible through ePortfolios. These can be used to design scaffolding processes to support students’ ePortfolio activities. ePortfolios are used as a study method to promote student teachers’ career development and personal growth and to help them acquire teacher competencies. The study concludes with a review of the learning objectives and the assessment criteria for the ePortfolio process in a vocational teacher education program.

To provide high-quality education, teachers in vocational education are expected to keep their knowledge up to date. Vocational teachers’ knowledge includes both teaching knowledge and knowledge about the vocational practice teachers educate their students for. Research on teachers’ knowledge predominantly focuses on classroom practices in the context of primary and secondary education. There is significantly less research on vocational teachers’ knowledge and to the full extent of their teaching vocation within and beyond classroom practices. A study with repeated measures was conducted to explore what characterises vocational teachers’ knowledge. Over 3 years, 22 experienced vocational teachers annually constructed concept maps to articulate their knowledge. The content and nature of these concept maps were analysed using a framework developed in previous research. Results show that the nature of vocational teachers’ knowledge can be characterised as concrete, specific, and complex. The content of vocational teachers’ knowledge comprises knowledge about the process of teaching and coaching students, students’ vocational practice, organisational knowledge both inside and outside school boundaries, and knowledge about navigating between stakeholders and contexts. These results may inform professional development programmes and teacher education and stimulate an ongoing dialogue on professional standards in vocational education.

The concept of Reflective Practice has become one of the most influential professional development theories within teacher education over the last 30 years. However, the concept has been seen to be contested and problematical within the literature. The debate surrounding the value of such an individualised approach to professional development provides the context and focus for this article. In particular, it is argued that reflective thought cannot in itself provide a coherent conceptual basis for professional development and certainly is unable to do so within the initial years of vocational teacher education. The study is based upon a purposeful sample of 60 student teachers taken from five cohorts of teachers on a full‐time pre‐service vocational teacher education course for Further Education lecturers in Scotland. The research was qualitative in nature and primarily aimed at identifying critical incidents from the students' learning experience at college. The findings from the research indicate that there is no need to privilege reflective thought as a learning strategy in teacher education and that other more collective and discursive forms of professional practice are equally important in supporting novice teachers.

The Problem and Countermeasure of Team Construction of Double-certificate Teachers in Vocational Colleges

This paper describes the main gains resulting from student teachers' first contact with the teaching profession. The Inventory of Experiences and Perceptions at Teaching Practice (IEPTP) was used to assess the range of experiences of a sample of 224 student teachers on five dimensions of teaching practice: (1) learning and professional development; (2) professional and institutional socialisation; (3) socio‐emotional aspects; (4) support/resources/supervision; and (5) vocational development. The results describe the main changes occurring in the student teachers' perceptions between the beginning and the end of teaching practice. They also suggest more significant changes in the areas of vocational development, professional and institutional socialisation, and learning and professional development. Strategies to promote student teachers' learning process and to decrease the difficulties emerging during this period are suggested. Supervisors' role in fostering and supporting the new candidates' professional and personal growth is also addressed.

In Denmark new and experienced teachers at vocational schools are obliged to attend teacher training at university colleges. There are many stakeholders involved in these teacher training courses, with different and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the implementation. The aim of the chapter is to examine how teacher educators can balance the different perspectives and support a sense of coherence among the participating teachers from vocational schools. The design of the research is sequential, building on data from a range of qualitative studies, examining stakeholder perspectives on how teacher educators can support a coherent education for vocational teachers. One study includes policy-analyses covering the period from 2014 and 2018. The findings show extensive political interests in how teacher trainers ought to practice to ensure the usefulness of the training at the vocational schools. There are, however, tensions when comparing the findings from the policy-analyses with the intended learning outcomes and competence description of a teacher training course at level 6 at the European Qualification Framework. These tensions accentuate the complex systemic context the teacher educators operate in. In other studies (2014–2017) the different expectations from the participating vocational teachers and the managers from their institutions have been examined. The methodology includes multiple qualitative methods with individual interviews, focus-group interviews and observations. Finally, a new (2019–2021) comparative study including stakeholders from three different vocational schools contributes with a deeper insight into the different expectations from the different groups of stakeholders. The findings are presented under the headings of three main assertions. First of all, there appears to be an extended interest from policy level in the so-called programme-fieldwork coherence. This interest is framing the teacher educators’ practice and influencing the space for action. Secondly, conflicts of interests between the vocational teachers and their managers are discussed. Since the vocational schools are paying for the teacher training, there is a kind of marketisation and the managers’ satisfaction with the teacher training course can create tensions for teacher educators. The third and final assertion addresses tensions related to the very different kinds of Research and Development projects teacher educators are involved in.KeywordsVET teacher educatorsDenmarkTeacher educationStakeholder perspectives

Workplace learning is defined variously and plays a pivotal role in the enhancement of vocational education teachers' practices. Based on a comprehensive desk-based review of the related literature, this article defines and discusses the concept of workplace learning and its contribution to vocational education teachers' continuous professional development. The article demonstrates explicitly that the existing theoretical frameworks guiding workplace learning are mainly drawn from different learning theories. Among these, Illeris's (2011) learning model is found to be theoretically sound and to provide a foundation to be extended to hypothesise about the relationships of various key concepts discussed in association with the workplace learning of vocational education teachers. Three lines of arguments have been identified for providing support to Illeris' model: (1) the significance of workplace learning practices, (2) individual and social aspects of learning situations, and (3) individual and social levels of workplace learning. In addition, based on Illeris's model and related literature on teacher professional development, the article proposes a workplace learning model for vocational education teachers and evaluates its implications for vocational education teachers' professional development, work identities, and transfer of knowledge into practice in the working situation in vocational education and training.

Background: In the Australian state of Queensland, many Department of Education Policies include behavioural directives for school teachers, whereby ‘the teacher must …’ behave in a certain manner. The introduction of an education policy, such as the mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse by teachers, has significant and wide-ranging implications for the lives of children. However, little is known, and little literature has been found, about student teachers' knowledge and understanding of these new behavioural directives for teachers. Purpose: This study audits Bachelor of Education (Primary School) student teachers who are about to become qualified teachers, on their knowledge, and their confidence in that knowledge, of the Department of Education behavioural directives on child sexual abuse mandatory reporting policy, which they will soon have to implement when they are employed in professional teaching positions in primary schools. Sample: A fourth-year, final-semester volunteer cohort of 52 Bachelor of Education (Primary School) student teachers at a major university in Queensland, Australia, provided this sample of 42 females and 10 males, whose ages ranged from 21 to 45 years. Design and methods: The audit's five-page, anonymous and confidential questionnaire included a series of valid statements, and one invalid statement, about the behavioural directives for teachers contained in the Queensland Department of Education policy on the mandatory reporting of suspected child sexual abuse. Participants self-evaluated their knowledge of the policy on a quantitative three-point scale, and their confidence in that knowledge on a four-point scale, and then responded to an open-ended qualitative query about their understanding of the policy, during their tutorial classes. The quantitative responses were analysed and displayed as histograms, and the qualitative responses were clustered into three categories. Results: Analysis of the data shows that while the majority of these student teachers claim satisfactory levels of knowledge and confidence concerning their Department's behavioural directives, such results seem disappointing given a necessarily high standard of competence, and significant numbers indicating uncertainty of knowledge and/or lack of confidence regarding their roles as mandatory reporters of suspected child abuse. Conclusions: It is expected that all new teachers be properly equipped and prepared in pre-service training, with appropriate knowledge and understanding of these important directives, to report the cases of suspected child abuse they will encounter in their schools. Current pre-service education of primary school teachers at this Queensland university, and very likely throughout the state, does not reach a standard that engenders educators' satisfaction and confidence in student teachers' understanding of their Department's behavioural and legal requirements upon qualification. This conclusion is consistent with national and international research, showing that teachers and student teachers lack confidence and are inadequately prepared to fulfil their role as mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse.

:As China transitions from teacher education to teacher training, its vocational teacher development system should focus on vocational and technical teacher education institutions with the participation of other higher education institutions. The advantages and unique functions of vocational and technical teacher education institutions should be fully used and recognized in order to adapt to the transition and build an open development system for vocational teachers.

This chapter thematises participation and leadership in development work in an upper secondary school. According to the core curriculum, all school staff have a responsibility for developing their practice. Through the LUSY project (‘Teacher Education Schools in Vocational Teacher Education’), leaders and teachers in upper secondary schools have collaborated systematically with teacher educators from the Department of Vocational Teacher Education at Oslo Metropolitan University on organisational learning and school development. A collaborative process with a high degree of participation resulted in a bottom-up development effort within a school-based continued education in the academic year of 2022–2023. The process is documented in meeting minutes, input from dialogue conferences, plans, feedback from teachers, course evaluations, student assignments and the first author’s own notes. The chapter poses the following research question: Which qualities of leadership and participation can be a driving force in action research-based development work in school? Through a thematic analysis of the material, we labelled four qualities of leadership and participation that seemed to drive this action research-based development work: clearing the room, hierarchical liberation, professional curiosity and polyphony. The chapter illustrates the importance of broad participation and recognition of teachers’ professional knowledge in school development and shows how opportunities for development can be created with transformative, distributed leadership practices and dialogue across power and knowledge hierarchies.

Through a survey to former vocational teacher students at two universities in Sweden, we explore their perceptions of admission, practicum internship during vocational teacher education, and employment as a vocational teacher after education, since teacher education reform in 2011. The questionnaire used in the survey was answered by 140 former teacher students and the result contributes with knowledge about which vocational subjects were applied for, and which subjects the students later were admitted to, how long the former students’ professional experience was when they applied for the education. The result shows that measures should be taken to support the application process. The study also illustrates how students perceive their practicum at schools and to what extent they were taught in their vocational subjects, and how they value the supervision during the practicum at schools. Here, we can draw conclusions from the questionnaire about differences between different vocational programmes regarding the supervision. Finally, we examined what happened after the vocational teacher education and we see that a large majority of former students have employment as vocational teachers, but that the possibilities of competence development and the broadening of the competencies for more vocational subjects vary.

Teaching is a complex process, which, in addition to an exceptional knowledge of the teaching process by the teacher, requires and implies a number of correlative relationships and factors that affect student achievement. The subject of this paper is the analysis of a broader network of potential contextual factors of action on student achievement in mathematics. Accordingly, the aim of the paper is focus on insight of resources of the educational system and the particular circumstances that influence the quality of achievement of students in mathematics. Three sections are considered by theoretical analysis: the impact of mathematics teachers 'professional education on the quality of student achievement, teachers and teaching strategies as a basis for building mathematical anxiety or student resilience, and the role of the school context and analysis of students' specific difficulties in mathematics. Vocational teacher education is one of the initial segments of developing quality in a teacher's vocation, while later professional development is an opportunity to influence not only teacher competences but also the outcomes of student learning. There is a tendency that the education of mathematics teachers and the education of teachers, also future teachers of mathematics, does not give sufficient support to all competencies required for practical work. Significant focuses are on construction and knowledge, while there is less focus on developing teaching competencies. For these reasons, a number of recommendations emerge to include the development of teaching skills in the initial education and training of mathematics teachers, with the aim of improving mathematics in practice and improving student outcomes. Teachers and teaching strategies are the factors that underpin mathematical resilience or anxiety in students, and thus represent variables with a direct impact on mathematics achievement. Mathematical failure can have a strong negative effect on the later life and work of individuals, while the teacher can influence the onset of mathematical anxiety, or through good programs and thoughtful activities can build mathematical resilience and enhance students' achievement in mathematics. The school context and the specific difficulties of the students in mathematics are part of the factors on which the success of the students in this subject depends, because an effectively organized school system causes the development of the maximum potential of students. The paper confirms the opinions of numerous authors that it is necessary to identify and correct specific difficulties in the school environment. Qualitative analyzes partially open the implications for school practice, which indicate the existence of students who are more difficult to master mathematics, but also the fact that the extra work of teachers with them significantly influences the elimination of existing difficulties. By considering the aforementioned aspects of classroom practice and their impact on students' achievement in mathematics, further research was opened that would more specifically address the contexts and modes of mathematics instruction, with particular attention to the existence of students with specific difficulties in mathematics and the key role of teachers in their recognition.