The discourse on technological literacy: exploring visual representations enabled by the visual cultures of four Swedish vocational education and training programmes
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
In today’s rapidly changing world, technology has profoundly impacted our daily lives, making it increasingly difficult to predict what skills will be necessary for the future. To address this challenge, 21st-century skills have been proposed as a framework for shaping future education, in which one of the skills is technological literacy. How the latter is understood, positioned, and approached is influenced by discourses produced within and among various societal practices, such as the educational system. This article provides a glimpse of the discourse on technological literacy by exploring how “technological literacy” is portrayed within the visual cultures of four Swedish upper secondary VET programs. Our results indicate that the portrayals of becoming technologically literate for VET students vary among the programmes. However, they all emphasise practical and hands-on activities, where students can be seen engaging with various tools, equipment, and objects relevant to each programme’s field of study. Teamwork and peer-to-peer learning are also portrayed as central to these programmes, simultaneously as leadership roles and the distribution of responsibilities among students are commonly featured. While the programmes’ visual portrayals reflect diversity in ethnicity and gender, traditional gender roles are still (re)produced in the pictorials.
期刊介绍:
The main focus of this journal is to provide a platform for original empirical investigations in the field of professional, vocational and technical education, comparing the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of different vocational education systems at the school, company and systemic level. The journal fills a gap in the existing literature focusing on empirically-oriented academic research and stimulating the interest in strengthening the vocational part of the educational system, both at the basic and higher education level.