Industrilärares berättade erfarenheter om undervisning av och möte med elever på svenska yrkesgymnasieskolor står i centrum för denna studie. Studien har berättelseforskning som teoretisk och metodologisk utgångspunkt och undersöker de olika teman som framträder ur lärarnas berättelser om begreppet yrkesdidaktik. Centralt i berättelseforskningen är grundantagandet att berättelser konstrueras tillsammans med och i relation till andra människor. Artikeln visar att ur industrilärarnas berättelser framträder tio teman om yrkesdidaktik. Den gemensamma nämnaren i dessa teman är begreppet yrke. Det är relaterat till anställningsbarhet som industriarbetare och har betydelse för industrilärares yrkesundervisning och yrkeslärande. Yrkesdidaktiken och dess ingående teman diskuteras i relation till verkstadsmiljö (mästar-lärlingstradition) och skolmiljö. Slutsatsen är att yrkesdidaktik kan beskrivas som yrkesundervisning och yrkeslärande med allt vad det innebär av yrkesskickligheter och tillvägagångssätt för att fostra en elev till yrkesutövare inom ett yrke för en arbetsmarknad som kontinuerligt, i takt med teknikutveckling och samhällsförändring, förändras.

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 educationmeans for them, which results in six prominent themes: 1) the developmentof identity formation, 2) the developmentof subject specific and vocational knowledge, 3) the developmentof leadership, 4) the developmentof relationship-building, 5) the developmentof knowledge about policy documents, laws, rules and regulations, 6) the developmentin 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.

Denna artikel fokuserar på ett lärandemål, som en del av en lärarutbildningskurs vid ett svenskt universitet, där lärarstudenter ska kunna diskutera sin egen professionsutveckling och identifiera vidare behov av utveckling. Eftersom både forskning och styrdokument lyfter professionsutveckling som en viktig del av lärarutbildningen är det viktigt att studera professionsutveckling ur lärarstudenters perspektiv. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten är Communities of Practice (CoP), och studien fokuserar på kunskap och lärande inom en social gemenskap. Tio ämneslärarstudenter och sex yrkeslärarstudenter intervjuades om deras beskrivningar av vad den professionella utvecklingen inom lärarutbildningen innebar för dem, vilket resulterade i sex framträdande teman: 1) utveckling av läraridentitet, 2) utvecklingen av ämnesspecifik och yrkesmässig kunskap, 3) utvecklingen av ledarskap, 4) utvecklingen av relationsbyggande, 5) utvecklingen av kunskap om styrdokument, lagar, regler och förordningar, 6) utvecklingen i relation till samhällsförändringar.

 Trots gemensamma nämnare i studenternas beskrivningar av professionell utveckling fanns det också nyansskillnader som kunde förstås genom att positionera aktörer inom (yrkes)lärarutbildningsgemenskapen. Yrkeslärarstudenterna kopplade ofta sin professionella kunskap till industrin och arbetslivet, medan ämneslärarstudenterna ofta kopplade sin ämneskunskap till universitetskurser och forskning. Både yrkeslärarstudenterna och ämneslärarstudenterna i studien berättade att de behövde hålla sig uppdaterade och fortsätta utveckla sin kompetens inom pedagogik. Yrkeslärarstudenterna betonade dock specifikt behovet av pedagogisk kunskap inom skolmiljön, snarare än i arbetslivs- och verkstadssammanhang. Detta skulle kunna bero på att vissa yrkeslärarstudenter är vana vid att utbilda och undervisa praktikanter i dessa miljöer som en del av sin professionella praktik.

Based on industrial teachers’ narrated experiences of teaching and meeting students at Swedish vocational high schools, this study will provide a definition of the concept of vocational didactics. The study is based on two central pillars: 1) the concept of vocational didactics and 2) narrative research. The concept of vocational didactics is elaborated on the basis of previous research, and stories are further described as the theoretical and methodological starting points. The results show that ten themes about vocational didactics (vocational teaching and vocational learning) emerge from the industrial teachers’ stories. The common denominator in the themes is the concept of occupation, which is related to employability as an industrial worker. The vocational didactics and its constituent themes, which are context-bound and change as a result of technological development and societal changes, are processed and discussed in relation to the workshop environment (master-apprentice tradition) and school environment. The conclusion is that vocational didactics comprises teaching and learning professional skills and enabling students to become professional practitioners in a profession and a labour market that change continuously in step with technological development and social change.

In vocational education, the learning content is often considered as concrete and specific, and the vocational learning involves physical work and interactions between participants and artefacts. Furthermore, one teacher has the overall responsibility for several students during classes in the vocational workshop at school, which means that the teacher has limited time for every single student and that the few minutes they meet become very important. However, the documented knowledge about how vocational learning is constituted in the vocational classroom and what learning content is focused on in the interaction between teachers and students is very sparse. In this study, we focus on how the enacted object of learning and its critical aspects are made relevant, when a student and teacher in a plumbing workshop session negotiate the conducting of a task in Swedish vocational education. This will be done by using CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach) to make a close and detailed analysis of video recordings of the interaction between the student and teacher when a task is introduced in the workshop session. The results show a complex process, where the teacher alternates between parts and wholeness, using several semiotic resources at hand when highlighting the learning content.

The Industrial technology program (ITP) in Sweden suffers from a declining interest and industry experience difficulties in recruiting. Although the choice of ITP pays off in the labour market, this education does not seem to attract young people. Based on the fact that fewer applicants also means fewer trained professionals in the industry and given that the industry is dependent on competent personnel, I am in my study interested in examining the attractiveness of ITP. The material collection has taken place through semi-structured interviews with a vocational teacher and three vocational students about their perceptions of what is positive or negative about the industry and ITP. The attractiveness of ITP is in a close relationship with how industrial companies and industrial work are perceived by industrial students and industrial teachers. The result points to a paradoxical picture of the attractiveness of ITP where the status of industrial companies is important and it can vary depending on the type of company. For example, whether it is a local industrial workshop or a world-famous international industrial company. The paradoxical picture also includes whether the industrial company has had a secure or insecure form of employment with layoffs and operations moving to other countries. Even the type of industrial work tasks, for example whether the tasks are hard and arduous industrial work or it is varied and manageable, are included in this paradoxical picture.

The Swedish Ministry of Education and Research shows that interest in the Industrial Technology program, an upper secondary vocational education, is decreasing among young people in Sweden (SOU, 2020:33). Fewer applicants also mean fewer trained professionals in the industry. Since the industry is dependent on competent personnel, I am interested in investigating the attractiveness of the Industrial Technology program in Sweden with a special focus on newly arrived students. The methodological starting point of the study is based on Life course research (Elder et al., 2003; Vogt, 2018), and eight newly arrived students’ narrated life experiences are combined with Bourdieu’s (1985) habitus theory to understand their choice of the Industrial Technology program.  Due to limited space, this paper presents one student’s narrated experiences of life and studies. From his story four categories emerge that are related to his choice of the Industrial Technology program.

This article is about six students’ descriptions of their choice of the Industrial Technology program. I have applied a narrative perspective and analysed the students’ narratives thematically. The research question is about the prominent themes of students’ descriptions of their choice of the program, and the answer is that four themes emerge from the descriptions. Two of the themes point to the advantages and disadvantages of industry jobs and industrial education. The third theme is about students’ choice of industrial education as influenced by other people such as parents, teachers or study counsellors. The fourth theme is about the choice of the program as a way for newly arrived refugees to get industrial work and eventually a permanent residence permit. The conclusion is that students who choose industrial education do not necessarily have the ambition to work as industrial workers. This may affect the industrial skills supply in the future in Sweden as an industrial country. Newly arrived refugees in industrial education are included in this supply of skills, but these young people can also pursue other careers after completing their education. Although the choice of upper secondary education is free in Sweden, this freedom does not apply to these young people who make the choice based on the pressure on them to get a job after completing their education to be able to stay in Sweden.

During their teacher education, students need to learn to transform professional knowledge into their own teaching practice. As a teacher, the ability to reflect on and discuss your professional development is essential throughout your entire professional life as a way to develop teaching and enhance student learning. This ability is also a main learning objective for student teachers during their practical placement in this study. However, when assessing students' tasks, where students are supposed to discuss their professional development, teacher educators have identified that students have difficulties in concretizing their own experiences and using them in order to identify the next step in their professional development. This difficulty is also confirmed by previous research. There is, however a need to study how teaching can be implemented in order to address those difficulties and the aim of this study is to contribute to such knowledge. Therefore, we have conducted an intervention study (a learning study) where researchers and teacher educators have collaborated systematically in one cycle to plan, implement and revise teaching by using variation theory as a theoretical framework. At the core we have the object of learning, which in this study is students’ ability to discuss their own professional development and, by identifying critical aspects of the object of learning, i.e. what students need to learn and what may be difficult to learn, teaching was planned and implemented. In order to see what was made possible to learn, students’ written assignments were analyzed and at the conference we will present preliminary results from this study. This study is part of a larger project and the results can contribute both to a research field where there is a lack of research and to developing teacher education in relation to students’ practical placement.

This study investigates prominent themes about newly arrived immigrant students’ situation in life and at school as reflected in interviews with four teachers in a vocational upper secondary school located in a Swedish city suburb dominated by residents with immigrant background. Foucault’s concept of power and counter-power as well as Riessman’s narrative analysis are used to discuss and analyse the interviewed teachers’ descriptions. The results highlight the power and counter-power mechanisms involved in the discrepancy between well-behaved and ambitious immigrant students and the media representations of the students' housing area as criminal. The study also points to the power and counter-power relations between certain immi-grant student groups with strong solidarity and other non-belonging students. There is also a power and counter-power dynamic between authorities making decisions affecting the immi-grant students' life situation and resistance to these decisions. The study contributes valuable information of the mechanisms involved in the lives of newly arrived immigrant young students in Sweden, with possible relevance to similar contexts in other Nordic and European countries.

This article presents the stories of four teachers teaching newly arrived refugee youths at a vocational uppersecondary school. The youths came to Sweden in 2015 and later, and they live in a so-called vulnerable area.This is a period when many unaccompanied children and adolescent refugees arrived in Sweden.The studyaims to contribute to knowledge about teaching newly arrived refugee youths and the way these youths caninfluence teaching in a vocational school.The methodological and theoretical starting point for the studyis based on a narrative perspective. The stories are analysed thematically and show that these studentshavegreat solidarity with each other,areambitious, and create a good mood in the classroom.In addition, thereis always “someone” who does not believe in democratic values, although most of the students value theSwedish democracy and equality between men and women. The expulsion decision that some studentsreceive affects the teachers’ teaching as well, since it means that theyalso have to deal with teachingsituations where their students’ lives and deaths are involved in the sense that they are refugees threatenedby expulsion.