Vocations and Learning最新文献

The present study examines the effects of social interactions' situational characteristics, emotions, and personality on self-perceived learning from social interactions at work based on diary and survey data. The sample comprises 43 German vocational education and training (VET) trainees in various apprenticeship programs. During the diary period of ten working days, the participants were instructed to record five typical social interactions at work every day. Quantitative data of 1,328 social interactions were analyzed by means of multilevel analysis. Regarding social interactions' characteristics, the analysis revealed the baseline level of instrumentality, an interruption of the social interaction, its instrumentality and questions asked by the trainee during the interaction as positive predictors of self-perceived learning. A trainee's higher speech proportion, however, was a negative predictor. Regarding state emotions, the emotional experiences of bored and motivated were identified as significant positive predictors of learning from social interactions at work. Emotions' baseline level as well as personality traits had no significant influence. The results indicate that social interactions' situational characteristics have the biggest influence on self-perceived learning from social interactions.

At some upper secondary schools in Sweden, newly arrived migrant youths can attend vocational courses while studying in the language introduction programme. The teaching practices in relation to language learning for newly arrived migrant students in this kind of school-based VET and how these practices are conditioned are investigated in the article. Eight VET-teachers were interviewed, and the narratives were analyzed using concepts from the theory of practice architectures. Three teaching practices in relation to language learning were identified within the broader project of teaching newly arrived students in VET: i) Swedish language first, ii) second language learning-in-action, and iii) joint VET and second language teaching. These practices were in turn connected to three different approaches to language learning in VET: language learning understood as a) segregated skills instruction, b) as happening 'naturally' while participating in VET-practice, c) integrated in VET but requiring explicit instruction and daily interaction with Swedish-speaking students. A conclusion drawn from the study is that newly arrived migrant students are provided unequal opportunities for development of vocational knowing and language competences in Swedish upper secondary schools depending on local conditions. The results also show how economic resources and support from school-leaders provides conditions for re-shaping teaching practices.

Expertise is featured by continued high performance in a particular domain. Expertise research has primarily focused on absolute expertise in structured domains such as chess and emphasized the significance of deliberate practice for expertise development. We investigated the development of relative expertise in commercial domains as part of ill-structured domains. Due to the ill-structuredness and acknowledging the use of the term expert in organizational practice, we developed a taxonomy to distinguish between four types of experts in the broader sense (relative expert, managerial relative expert, evolved specialist, and native specialist). Eighteen peer-nominated individuals from business-to-business sales departments from four German organizations participated in our interview study. A content analysis was applied using both deductive and inductive categorizations. The interview data clearly corresponds to the concept of progressive problem solving rather than to the concept of deliberate practice. Almost all our respondents referred to either “being thrown in at the deep end” by others (assigned complex tasks) or “jumping in at the deep end” of one’s own accord (self- selected complex tasks). However, the interview partners described features of deliberate practice for novices. In this very early stage of expertise development, more experienced colleagues structure parts of the ill-structured domain and enable deliberate practice while for advanced beginners and later stages expert development rather resembles progressive problem solving. Our results provide implications on how to foster expertise development in ill-structured domains. Possible limitations arise from the small sample, the peer-nomination process, and the retrospective nature of interview data.