Student teachers who previously have gained academic knowledge or vocational skills often find it challenging to transform content knowledge into teaching activities that contribute to their future secondary students’ learning. Student teachers express a need for pedagogical tools, time to practice, and opportunities for reflection. Previous research has shown that this can be achieved through micro-teaching, which in our interpretation implies that student teachers practice teaching 1) with a limited subject-specific content 2) for a limited amount of time 3) in a low-stakes situation. The aim of this study is to investigate in what ways micro-teaching can support student teachers in designing and conducting subject-specific and pedagogical teaching activities. Our research method is inspired by action research, and conducted in four steps. The first step is to carefully plan how to implement micro-teaching for student teachers in our own teaching. The second step is the implementation. In a third step, we evaluate student teachers’ experiences from conducting micro-teaching through a survey and individual interviews. The fourth step involves analyzing the results, and adjusting our initial plan for implementation of micro-teaching, if needed. Together, these four steps make up the first cycle. We plan to conduct a second cycle before the research questions can be answered. At the time of writing, we are conducting a first cycle in different subjects. Since the study is still in its infancy, there are no results to report, but we expect to find both similarities and differences between the different subjects in how micro-teaching can support student teachers in transforming existing content knowledge into teaching activities.

In dual vocational education, learning takes place in several arenas. Research hasshown that it is often complicated for pupils to integrate learning from these differentarenas, since there is a perceived gap they are supposed to bridge. In previousresearch, we have studied how teachers use digital technology as boundary objectsto bridge the gaps and to facilitate the learning process for the pupils when they areat workplaces. The aim of this study is to gain more knowledge about how pupilsexperience their teachers’ efforts to facilitate their learning across arenas when usingdigital multi-modal logbook as a boundary object between school and workplaces invocational education.Theoretical framework.The study builds on theories of boundary crossing, which is based in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) (Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003). The specific theoretical framework used as a complement to the CHAT framework, is a Multilevel Boundary Crossing framework developed by Akkerman and Bruining (2016). The levels in this framework are intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional respectively.The combined analysis will enable the degree and kind of boundary crossing that facilitate student learning or may cause contradictions. This will give a more nuanced view of pupils’ learning when moving between learning arenas in their vocational education.The results from this study are relevant for understanding how digital technology can contribute to teaching and learning in vocational education which take place in two different learning arenas.

Digital technology has been found useful in bridging the gap between school and work placements. In earlier studies we have interviewed vocational teachers with creative ideas on addressing this issue, but they encountered obstacles and could not always proceed as they wanted. The aim of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of the obstacles encountered by Swedish vocational teachers when using digital technology to bridge the gap between school and work placements. The study is based on a theoretical understanding of teacher agency, and also presents a hierarchical model developed from our research. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted with five purposively selected vocational teachers. The teachers provided detailed examples of a range of problems stemming from structural, cultural and material aspects, and how these problems forced them to take steps backwards when trying to develop their teaching practices.

I yrkesutbildning talas det ofta om klyftor, mellan det lärande som sker på skola/universitetet och det lärande som sker i Arbetsplatsförlagt lärande (APL) eller Verksamhetsförlagd utbildning (VFU). Användandet av digital teknik kan vara ett sätt att överbrygga sådana klyftor. Tidigare studier visar att digital teknik kan öka insynen i elevers eller studenters praktik (Cattaneo & Aprea, 2018; Enochsson m fl. 2020; Kilbrink m fl. 2021; Motta m fl., 2014; Schwendimann m fl., 2015). I föreliggande projekt fokuserar vi på yrkesutbildningen till lärare och att belysa lärarutbildarnas eget lärande och hur deras läraridentitet utvecklas och transformeras när de arbetar med digital teknik för att koppla samman olika lärandearenor.

Under sin VFU i en kurs på en yrkeslärarutbildning har studenterna fört en multimodal digital loggbok kring några på förhand bestämda uppdrag, som hänger samman med aktuella kursmål. I projektet har upprepade intervjuer genomförts med lärarutbildarna om deras erfarenheter av att införa och låta studenterna arbeta med loggböckerna, i syfte att koppla samman lärandet mellan den universitetsförlagda delen av kursen och VFU.

Av resultaten framkommer att loggboken fungerar som en bro mellan universitetet och VFU. Samtidigt som lärarutbildarna får större insyn i vad studenterna gör och lär sig på sin VFU får de också större insikt i den verksamhet de utbildar sina studenter för. För även om många lärarutbildare själva har en lärarutbildning är det ofta ett tag sedan de själva var verksamma i skolan. Resultaten visar också att då lärarutbildarna reflekterar över studenternas lärande och den nya teknikens roll så sker ett lärande även hos dem. 

This study aims to provide insight into the learning processes that take place when vocational student teachers work with multimodal digital logbooks at the campus and between school and placement. The study will highlight vocational student teachers’ experiences of using logbooks between university and practicum as well as between school and pupils’ practicum. It will also highlight how student teachers learn when working with logbooks. The data consist of transcripts from eight interviews with vocational student teachers about their experiences of working with a digital, multimodal course logbook in their placement course and 19 essays about working with digital, and sometimes multimodal, logbooks between secondary school and practicum. A thematic analysis was conducted based on the key concepts in a previously developed model (Kilbrink et.al., 2021) to find out how student teachers experience the use of digital multimodal logbooks and their own learning processes during it. The analyses also show that both kinds of logbooks worked well for the students as a means of both advancing and showing their professional development. There are as many learning examples as there are essays, and the student teachers learn from failure as well as success. When the Identification model is applied to the data, pedagogical aims seem to play a greater role than the choice of digital technology. In addition, how the technology is used becomes a crucial factor for which level of communication is reached. By using the Identification model to analyse vocational student teachers’ experiences of using digital, multimodal logbooks as boundary objects between university and practicum as students and between school and practicum as teachers, as well as their experienced learning processes in relation to the use of the logbooks, the study provides insight into some of the learning processes that take place across learning institutions and practicums.