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.

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.

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.

Many countries, including Sweden, teach gifted students in mixed-ability classrooms and teachers often need to differentiate their teaching. Gifted students have specific needs and for the subject technology these needs are described in terms of complexity, autonomy, support and authenticity (CASA-framework, Brink, submitted). How the subject technology can meet these needs is described using the CASA-framework, however, there is a lack of knowledge to what extend the subject actually offers CASA to gifted students. 

Therefore, we conducted a content analysis on the three existing educational textbooks for lower secondary school (age 13-15) in Sweden. Krathwohl’s framework (2002) was used to capture the knowledge type and the cognitive processes involved in the text, tasks and other content in the textbook.  

Our preliminary results show that complexity is offered to some extent. Autonomy is addressed occasionally through home-assignments. Support is not made explicit and authenticity is apparent throughout all textbooks. However, tasks result in a school-related product and rarely impact the wider society outside school. At the conference, we will present an overview of our findings and show examples of where and how the textbooks meet gifted students´ needs. 

Som kursledare och lärare på korta lärarutbildningen vid Karlstads universitet har vi under tre terminer arbetat med att systematiskt utveckla och förbättra undervisningen, kopplat  till ett  specifikt lärandemål i en av våra kurser. Det aktuella lärandemålet har sedan länge varit en utmaning för våra lärarstudenter, och vi insåg att vi som lärare behövde fördjupa vår kunskap om hur studenterna uppfattar och förstår lärandemålet för att därigenom kunna planera för en mer ändamålsenlig undervisning. Genom att använda en s.k. learning study som metod kunde vi på ett systematiskt sätt analysera vad studenterna hade svårt för i relation till det fokuserade lärandemålet. Med dessa svårigheter som utgångspunkt designade vi undervisning, vilken kom att bestå av filmer med tillhörande övningar i syfte att i högre grad kunna möta studenternas utmaningar. Resultatet visar att inspelad undervisning i form av filmer med övningar, skapade med stöd av variationsteori,   förstärkte undervisningen   och   möjliggjorde studenternas lärande i relation till det aktuella lärandemålet. Det cykliska och systematiska arbetet som innefattas i en learning study har också bidragit till viktiga lärdomar om hur man som lärare ellerkursledare kan ta sig an ett kollegialt förbättringsarbete i en kurs.

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. 

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.