The article is about the various ways tools can be used in the interactions between teacher and students during workshop sessions in vocational education. Through video observations in classrooms, we investigate how tools are used as objects of learning in four technical vocational programs. The theoretical foundation of the study is the variation theory of learning. In the video-recorded lessons, situations where tools have been foregrounded in the interaction between students and teachers have been categorised in relation to the research question: In what different ways is the use of tools foregrounded as an object of learning in vocational workshop teaching? The result points to four categories about 1) finding any object to solve a task, 2) contributing to the understanding of using a specific tool for a specific task, 3) understanding the complexity of using tools to solve a task and 4) creating and recreating a tool to complete a task. The conclusion is that there are different kinds of learning content and abilities related to tools which can be understood in the enacted vocational workshop teaching. Our study shows that tools are dynamic, created, and shaped in various contexts, and the tools are often spontaneously used as an object of learning, in different teaching situations and in interactions between teachers and students. In the workshop, the vocational students get different opportunities to learn to use tools in different ways in here-and-now situations based on the requirements of the vocational work.

Historically, upwardly mobile working-class men have navigated the binary distinctions between a cerebral middle-class masculinity and a manual working-class masculinity. However, within an increasingly globalised world, the boundaries between the two are increasingly blurred and, therefore, distinctions between the two can often be quite complex. Part of the reason for this is the onset of post-industrialisation and increases in low-skilled service work which require certain facets of working-class masculinity to be readjusted. This conceptual article draws on existing historical and contemporary scholarship to delineate aspects of the borderlands between a working and middle-class manhood. We are interested in the identity work that occurs at the borderlands and what this may mean for upwardly mobile working-class men. The article acknowledges the role of sociological theory but instead foregrounds a social anthropological approach where we consider what the conceptual lens of liminality has to offer in light of historic and contemporary research.

Internationally, boys from working-class backgrounds are often the most likely to disengage from their formal education. Research on the educational experience of working-class boys has focused heavily on their identity barriers, often positioning these young men as either vulnerable or volatile in their formal education. Social theorists have sought to address the historical and cultural embedded (gendered) practices which influence the identity work of working-class boys. This conceptual article contributes to the study of working-class boyhood and education through first synthesizing key themes present in the historic and contemporary literature before adopting a feminist post-structural stance to consider how these themes are informed by our understandings of the discursive production of masculinities. Then, in the second half of the paper, we make visible what has been at the margins in the scholarship - identity versatility - which we define as contextual and agentic adaptation. Attention to versatility, we feel, offers the potential for a nuanced analysis regarding working-class boyhood, learner identities and educational engagement.

This paper explores young people’s narratives about BookTok and volitional reading. The data consist of narrative interviews with eight students (all girls) from two different classes in year 1 and year 2 of a preparatory programme for higher education, that is, students aged 17–18 years old. Using the framework of Wenger’s notion of communities of practice and Bamberg’s theory of narrative positioning, the findings indicate that the volitional reading practices described by the participants are strongly characterised by social, physical, and emotional dimensions that are generated and made possible by the book as an artefact. The findings also show that young people use the digital media platform TikTok and its subcommunity BookTok as a resource in constructing their own volitional reading practices and as a means to strengthen their reader identities. In view of their use of BookTok, this article contributes insights into young people’s volitional reading practices and the construction of reader identities outside of school. The results also contribute to the ongoing discussion about how to support and motivate young people to read literature.

This study explores the interaction between students and teachers in subject-specific

vocational education, specifically focusing on the hair and make-up stylist classroom

within the handicraft programme in Swedish upper secondary school. The aim is to

understand the role and significance of the mirror in enabling teacher-student

interaction and mutual understanding. By integrating Conversation Analysis and

Variation Theory into a unified approach (CAVTA), the study seeks to provide

comprehensive insights into the ‘what’ and ‘how’ aspects of learning. CAVTA enables

the identification of the visible content in teaching and how it manifests in the staged

vocational education setting. The findings reveal the teacher’s strategic use of the mirror

to emphasise critical aspects of the Object of learning, in this study referring to the

application of eye shadow. This utilisation of the mirror serves as a valuable teaching

tool in the interaction between the teacher and student.

This article reports on findings from a reading project about reader identities carried out in collaboration with a teacher in the school subject Swedish in two classes in traditionally male dominated vocational programmes at an upper secondary school in Sweden. The study is based on the narrative research tradition where narratives and narration are important resources in the work of developing teaching, and on ecological literacy theories that emphasize the mutual interaction between the individual, the context, and reading as a social practice. Life story interviews have been conducted with four students in each class where the focus has been on rural boys’ narrated experiences of the reading instruction provided in the context of their vocational education. The study shows that the reading instruction has initiated a process among the boys of reevaluating what reading can be and themselves as readers. Further, some of the boys position themselves against the dominant discourse about boys and their problematic relationship to reading that they have encountered in various contexts. Through these counter-narratives, the boys also construct alternative narratives about themselves and other boys as readers where they are given space to talk about themselves as readers of different types of texts. The study shows that it is possible to set into play a reading instruction with quite limited efforts through which a group of students who are often described as reluctant readers show agency in their storytelling and both reconstruct and reclaim their reader identities.

Transformation av yrkeskunnande till ett undervisningsinnehåll behandlas i denna studie. I fokus är hur svetslärare synliggör ljud och hörselintryck i förhållande till lärandeobjektet ’inställningar av strömkällan i svetsmetoden MIG/MAG’, samt hur elevers förståelse kan uppvisas i undervisningen. Det saknas både praktiknära studier och ämnesdidaktisk forskning i det forskningsfält som behandlar yrkesutbildning. Syftet är därför att bidra med kunskap om vad som händer när svetslärare i en learning study systematiskt transformerar yrkesämneskunskap i undervisning av ett lärandeobjekt i svetsmetoden MIG/MAG.

Empirin består av dokumenterade lärarlagssamtal och filmade undervisningspass. Resultaten påvisar yrkesämnesdidaktikens komplexitet och däri görs kopplingar till ett yrkeskunnandes transformation till ett undervisningsinnehåll.

Transformation of welding teachers’ vocational knowing into subject-specific educational content is focused in this study. The article displays the process of a learning study, in which welding teachers make the sound visible as an aspect of making the correct settings in MIG/MAG welding and give the students’ the opportunity to display their understanding in the interaction. The aim of the study is to contribute with knowledge regarding what happens when welding teachers in a learning study systematically transform subject-specific vocational knowledge to an object of learning in the welding method MIG/MAG. 

The data consists of the welding teacher team’s documented meetings and film material from teaching situations. The complexity of subject-specific education within VET is shown with the use of the transformation concept. 

This study reports findings from a reading project with a focus on the reader, which has been carried out in collaboration with a Swedish teacher at a vocational upper secondary school. Rural vocational boys are often described as reluctant readers, and the study is about how their narrated experiences of reading can provide knowledge about reader identities and local reading practices, and how these can be used as subject content in Swedish education. Based on a narrative research tradition that sees narratives and narration as important resources in the work of developing teaching (Goodson, et al., 2010; Goodson & Gill, 2011, 2014) the study also aims to contribute knowledge about what a reading instruction that takes its starting point in such local reading practices does to vocational students’ narratives about themselves as readers. 

Data consist of topical life story interviews with 19 vocational male upper secondary students. Taking an ecological perspective on literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 1998/2012; Green & Corbett, 2013) which emphasize the interaction between readers, context and reading as a social practice, the results indicate an existing gapbetween reading practices in school and the more informal reading practices the boys engage in outside school (cf. Asplund & Goodson, 2022; Scholes & Asplund, 2021). Our analysis also shows that the boys have strengthened their identities as readers when their own reading practices and stories have formed the starting point for the reading instruction they encountered. The boys’ stories open up for didactic discussions about reading as a generic and subject-specific ability which is to be taught and learned in all subjects. Therefore, knowledge about reading is also expected to be taught and learned in teacher education.