Explicating Students' Personal Professional Theories in Vocational Education through Multi-method Triangulation

Abstract

Students in competence-based vocational education are expected to actively construct a personal professional theory, in which they integrate different types of knowledge and beliefs. Students' personal professional theories are seen as an important learning outcome of competence-based vocational education. However, it is unknown how personal professional theories can be measured. This study focused on measuring the content and nature of students' personal professional theories using a multi-method triangulation approach, in which 16 students in the domain of Social Work constructed a concept map, an interview and a self-report. The results show that the relatively structured methods (i.e., interviews and concept maps) reveal more insight into students' personal professional theories than less structured methods (i.e., self-reports). It is concluded that both structure as well as adequate prompts are important in the process of explicating personal professional theories.

Keywords:

• content and nature of personal professional theories
• vocational education
• multi-method triangulation

Notes

¹International Standard Classification of Education, a department of UNESCO.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

H. Schaap

Harmen Schaap, Deparment of Social Sciences, Utrecht University; Marieke Van der Schaaf, Utrecht University; Liesbeth Baartman, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven; Paul Kirschner, Open university of the Netherlands; Elly De Bruijn, Utrecht University.