As a teacher, the ability to reflect on one’s own professional development is crucial throughout one’s career as a way of developing teaching and enhancing pupils’ learning. However, previous research has identified reflection as a significant challenge for student teachers, underscoring the importance of addressing it in teacher education. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to knowledge about student teachers’ professional development by addressing the following research question: How can teaching be planned and implemented in order to make it possible for student teachers to develop their ability to reflect on their own professional development? This chapter presents findings from an intervention study involving two learning study cycles, where two teacher educators and one researcher have collaborated systematically in planning, implementing and revising teaching using variation theory as a theoretical framework. The results show that student teachers’ learning, in relation to the ability to reflect on one’s own professional development, was made possible. The key findings consist of three activities implemented by the teacher educators; (1) working in a cyclic, systematic and collaborative process, (2) designing and analysing tasks based on variation theory and (3) creating and using a cyclic model for reflection. Together, these three activities contributed to increasing possibilities for student teachers to develop their ability to reflect on their own professional development within a teacher education programme.

 The aim of this study is to illuminate the way learning across workplace and school is shaped, by focusing on students’ experiences of their teachers’ efforts to work with subject-specific vocational knowledge at school. The study builds on theories of boundary crossing, and in this specific example, the students use a digital multimodal logbook as a boundary object connecting the two learning arenas school and workplace. Four teachers from an upper-secondary vocational programme and their 14 students were interviewed and a multilevel boundary crossing framework was used for the analyses. The results show that, compared to their teachers, the students understood the purpose of the digital logbook differently and did not see its connection to learning outcomes. When confronted with this purpose at the end of the interviews, the students presented their own ideas on developing the logbook. Most disagreements occurred at an interpersonal level, that is, teachers and students did not engage in enough discussion to understand each other’s views. A conclusion drawn from this result is that a more fundamental discussion is needed between teachers and students on the purpose and use of logbooks in order to exploit their full potential.

I Asplund och Kilbrink (2018) och Kilbrink och Asplund (2020b) kombinerades samtalsanalys (eng. Conversation Analysis) och variationsteori (eng. Variation Theory) som analytiska redskap för att analysera vad som händer i en undervisningssituation när en lärare instruerar en elev hur man svetsar. I studierna argumenteras bland annat för hur de två teorierna tillsammans ger större möjlighet att i detalj uttala sig om de lärandeprocesser som sätts i spel i praktisk svetsundervisning, än vad respektive teori kan göra på egen hand. Kombinerandet av de två teorierna har sedan utvecklats till att nu också vara en undervisningsteori kallad CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach) som kan användas som didaktiskt förhållningssätt när lärare planerar, genomför och utvärderar undervisning (se exempelvis Asplund & Kilbrink, 2020; Kilbrink & Asplund, 2020a). CAVTA har således utvecklats utifrån centrala inslag från samtalsanalysen (eng. Conversation Analysis, Sidnell & Stivers, 2013) respektive variationsteorin (eg. Variation Theory, Marton, 2015) där den bärande utgångspunkten i CAVTA är att lärande är något som görs när människor interagerar med varandra kring ett specifikt innehåll. I den här presentationen kommer vi att presentera de teoretiska grunderna för CAVTA som utgjort den vetenskapliga utgångspunkten i två praktiknära forskningsprojekt. Vi avser dessutom att ge empiriska exempel på hur teorin har använts i undervisning som syftat till att öka förutsättningar för elever att lära sig det de förväntas lära i relation till yrkesämnesspecifika undervisningsinnehåll.

Referenser

Asplund, S. B., & Kilbrink, N. (2018). Learning how (and how not) to weld: Vocational learning in technical vocational education. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 62(1), 1-16.

Asplund, S-B., Kilbrink, N. (2020). Lessons from the welding booth: theories in practice in vocational education. Empirical Res Voc Ed Train 12(1). doi: 10.1186/s40461-020-0087-x

Kilbrink, N., & Asplund, S-B. (2020a). Att lägga en TIG-svets: En learning study baserad på CAVTA. Forskning om undervisning och lärande, 8(1), 29-54.

Kilbrink, N., & Asplund, S-B. (2020b). “This angle that we talked about”: learning how to weld in interaction. International journal of technology and design education, 30(1), 83-100.

Marton, F. (2015). Necessary conditions of learning. Routledge.

Sidnell, J., & Stivers, T. (Eds.). (2013). The handbook of conversation analysis. John Wiley & Sons.  

There is a lack of research studies in the field of technical vocational education exploring teaching and learning processes, especially regarding practice-based research studies focusing practical objects of learning (Carlgren et al., 2015; Kilbrink et al., 2022). Furthermore, studies on vocational education in Sweden have shown that students in vocational education have diverse backgrounds with, for example, a high proportion of immigrants (Andersson, 2019) and students with incomplete or low grades from compulsory school (Korp et al., 2025). The lack of a solid foundation of research on teaching and learning in the field entails teachers not having sufficient access to a research base to plan, carry out and evaluate their teaching. From an equity, diversity and inclusion point of view this is problematic and teaching methods including more aspects than verbal communication need to be elaborated on.    

This paper will focus on students’ embodied and verbalized displays of understanding and skills regarding practical objects of learning in technical vocational education. Transcribed excerpts of video-filmed teaching sessions in welding and building/ construction education will be presented and analyzed in the paper. The results show how the teachers with the support of the pedagogic approach CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach) encourage students to display their embodied understanding and skills in multimodal ways, thus enabling for the teacher to adapt the progression of the teaching according to students’ displayed understanding and skills. Our study has implications for teaching and learning of practical objects of learning in technical vocational education and is a contribution to broaden the base of educational research in the field.

In order for vocational teachers to figure out what their students need to learn about a specific vocational content, students should be given opportunities to experience variation, as well as express their knowledge and understanding of the specific content to be learned. This study examines the teaching and learning processes that are made possible when teachers work systematically with teaching based on educational theories that highlight dialogue and variation in interaction with students. The teaching theory CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach) has been systematically implemented by vocational teachers aiming to increase vocational students’ learning by giving them opportunities to express their understanding of teaching content in interaction. In the teaching session selected for a detailed analysis in this article, the teacher systematically created a teaching situation in which a student worked in different working heights and compared them with each other, aiming to highlight working height as a critical aspect of working in an ergonomically sustainable working position when changing brake pads on a passenger car. The results show that it is possible for the teacher and the student to make visible, concretise, and specify the learning content to be learned in interaction through the simultaneous use of semiotic resources and contrast as teaching tools based on CAVTA. This enables the student to experience variation, something that is highlighted in variation theory as a necessary condition for learning.

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.

Framing

Inom det yrkesämnesdidaktiska forskningsfältet råder en brist på studier som fokuserar undervisning och lärande i relation till ämnesspecifik undervisning (Panican & Paul, 2019). Detta har inte minst resulterat i en situation där skillnaderna mellan de olika yrkesämnenas specifika innehåll har förbisetts. I vår presentation kommer vi att presentera resultat från två större praktiknära yrkesämnesdidaktiska forskningsprojekt som båda finansierats av Skolforskningsinstitutet (dnr 2017:00056 och 2022:00035). Syftet med presentationen är att visa hur lärare och forskare i samverkan kan utveckla undervisning och skapa bättre förutsättningar för elever att lära sig ett yrkesämne. Som grund för den undervisning som bedrivits, och som verktyg för att analysera denna undervisning, har samtalsanalys (Schegloff, 2007) och variationsteori (Marton, 2015) använts, vilka tillsammans resulterat i det teoretiska ramverket CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach) (Asplund & Kilbrink, 2020; Kilbrink & Asplund, 2020).

Methods/Methodology

Båda projekten kan betraktas som aktionsforskningsprojekt baserade på Learning study-metoden (Marton, 2015) med tre undervisningscykler per år. Lärarna i de arbetslag som medverkat i projekten har tillsammans med forskarna planerat den undervisning som sedan har genomförts och videofilmats. Tillsammans har lärarna och forskarna sedan analyserat den inspelade undervisningen för att sedan revidera och planera nya undervisningspass. Det senare forskningsprojektet bygger vidare på resultat och erfarenheter från det tidigare projektet med syfte att mer systematisk, och på bred front, utveckla arbetsmetoder och undervisning som syftar till att synliggöra och utveckla elevers lärande kring ett specifikt yrkesämnesinnehåll i flera olika yrkesämnen.

Results

Våra resultat visar hur man med hjälp av vetenskapliga teorier kan utveckla metoder och arbetssätt för hur elevers lärande kring ett specifikt yrkesämnesinnehåll både kan synliggöras och utvecklas i interaktion mellan lärare och elev. På konferensen kommer vi att ge konkreta exempel från de olika projekten.

References

Asplund, S-B. & Kilbrink, N. (2020). Lessons from the welding booth: Theories in practice in vocational education. Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training, 12(1), 1-23 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40461-020-0087-x

Kilbrink, N., & Asplund, S-B. (2020). Att lägga en TIG-svets: En learning study baserad på CAVTA. Forskning om undervisning och lärande, 8(1), 29-54.

Marton F. (2015). Necessary conditions of learning. Routledge. 

Panican, A., & E. Paul. (2019). Svensk gymnasial yrkesutbildning – en framgångsfaktor för en effektiv övergång från skola till arbetsliv eller kejsarens nya kläder? Svenska EFS-rådet.

Schegloff, E.A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge University Press.

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.