Search

Vocational education aims at preparing students for their future as professionals; thus, students are often required to undergo a form of on-the-job learning. Assessment of professional performance during on-the-job learning is not based on single observations, but on prolonged participation at the workplace culminating in judgement by a workplace educator. However, little is known about "how" educators reach a judgement. This paper, therefore, aims at exploring how educators inform their judgements about students' professional performance. We consider the workplace to be a participatory learning environment, which entails that judgement about professional performance should be made in relation to the community students participated in and that the educator from that community has a central role. Our study takes an explorative approach based on interviews and uses template analysis to generate insight. Findings revealed that educators use multiple strategies to gather and process information about students to inform their judgement. Findings also showed that assessment starts at the first meeting, when the educator forms a first impression of the student and judges whether or not the student is suitable for the job. Educators at the workplace also showed that they are aware of the context in which they form their judgement.

In vocational education, students learn in different school-based and workplace-based learning environments and engage with different types of knowledge in these environments. Students are expected to integrate these experiences and make meaning of them in relation to their own professional knowledge base. This study focuses both on "what" types of knowledge students learn in these environments and "how" they integrate these different types of knowledge. Individual and group interviews were conducted with students, teachers and workplace supervisors in a vocational programme in the Netherlands. Results show that students recognise the importance of vocational knowledge learned in school-based learning environments while they are in the workplace and vice versa, and continuously contextualise knowledge to make it applicable for new circumstances. Also, students learn differently at school due to their experiences in the workplace.

Students in competence-based senior secondary vocational education are expected to actively construct personal knowledge during school-based learning and workplace learning. This study introduces the construct "personal professional theory" (PPT) to monitor and analyse students' personal knowledge development. It aims to investigate the development of the content and nature of students' PPTs and their perceptions of learning processes in vocational education during school-based learning and workplace learning. One group of students (n=20) in the domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is followed during one course of 40 weeks in which they alternately participate in school-based learning and workplace learning. A longitudinal design (t=4) including semi-structured concept maps is used to reveal the content and nature of students' PPTs (n=240). Semi-structured interviews (n=10) and log files (n=39) are used to explore students' perceptions of their learning process. No significant differences are found between the four measurements concerning the content and nature of students' PPTs. However, the actual content of students' PPTs shows a relatively unsteady and changeable pattern. Additionally, students perceive workplace learning as an essential process for the development of their PPT. It is concluded that the development of students' PPTs involves knowledge compilation as well as thematic turbulence. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

The assessment of workplace learning by educators at the workplace is a complex and inherently social process, as the workplace is a participatory learning environment. We therefore propose seeing assessment as a process of judgment embedded in a community of practice and to this purpose use the philosophy of inferentialism to unravel the judgment process of workplace educators by seeing it as an interrelated system of judgments, actions and reasons. Focussing on the unfolding of a process, we applied a longitudinal holistic case study design. Results show that educators are engaged in a constant judgment process during which they use multiple and adaptive frames of reference when forming their judgment about students. They construct an overarching image of students that develops throughout the placement, and their judgments about students go hand in hand with their actions relating to fostering independent practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocational education aims at preparing students for their future as professionals; thus, students are often required to undergo a form of on-the-job learning. Assessment of professional performance during on-the-job learning is not based on single observations, but on prolonged participation at the workplace culminating in judgement by a workplace educator. However, little is known about how educators reach a judgement. This paper, therefore, aims at exploring how educators inform their judgements about students' professional performance. We consider the workplace to be a participatory learning environment, which entails that judgement about professional performance should be made in relation to the community students participated in and that the educator from that community has a central role. Our study takes an explorative approach based on interviews and uses template analysis to generate insight. Findings revealed that educators use multiple strategies to gather and process information about students to inform their judgement. Findings also showed that assessment starts at the first meeting, when the educator forms a first impression of the student and judges whether or not the student is suitable for the job. Educators at the workplace also showed that they are aware of the context in which they form their judgement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vocational education, students learn in different school-based and workplace-based learning environments and engage with different types of knowledge in these environments. Students are expected to integrate these experiences and make meaning of them in relation to their own professional knowledge base. This study focuses both on what types of knowledge students learn in these environments and how they integrate these different types of knowledge. Individual and group interviews were conducted with students, teachers and workplace supervisors in a vocational programme in the Netherlands. Results show that students recognise the importance of vocational knowledge learned in school-based learning environments while they are in the workplace and vice versa, and continuously contextualise knowledge to make it applicable for new circumstances. Also, students learn differently at school due to their experiences in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in competence-based senior secondary vocational education are expected to actively construct personal knowledge during school-based learning and workplace learning. This study introduces the construct 'personal professional theory' (PPT) to monitor and analyse students' personal knowledge development. It aims to investigate the development of the content and nature of students' PPTs and their perceptions of learning processes in vocational education during school-based learning and workplace learning. One group of students (n=20) in the domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is followed during one course of 40 weeks in which they alternately participate in school-based learning and workplace learning. A longitudinal design (t=4) including semi-structured concept maps is used to reveal the content and nature of students' PPTs (n=240). Semi-structured interviews (n=10) and log files (n=39) are used to explore students' perceptions of their learning process. No significant differences are found between the four measurements concerning the content and nature of students' PPTs. However, the actual content of students' PPTs shows a relatively unsteady and changeable pattern. Additionally, students perceive workplace learning as an essential process for the development of their PPT. It is concluded that the development of students' PPTs involves knowledge compilation as well as thematic turbulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]