Interactions in vocational education: negotiation of meaning of students and teaching strategies

Figures & data

Table 1. General flowchart of a small group discussion.

Step	Description
1. Before a discussion	Students had to read the vocational core problem first. Then they had to fulfil a paper and pencil assignment, in which they had to answer two questions: (1) ‘What is for you the core of the problem?’ and (2) ‘Which solutions are relevant for you?’ This assignment aimed to stimulate students’ critical thinking.
2. During a discussion	The students discussed how they would perform in a particular situation, what they would do to solve the problem, why they would choose for certain solutions and what the possible consequences might be of their intended solutions. Each student was supposed to fulfil the role of chair once, aiming to regulate, structure and facilitate the discussion. Before each discussion, students received instructions on how to fulfil the role of chair.
3. After a discussion	After a discussion, the students made a short reflection assignment on what they learned and what that means for their practices.

Table 2. General features of the discussions.

Features	ICT^a	SW
Amount of discussions	15	10
Total length	366.15	275.03
Average length	24.41	27.51
Range in length	12.24–34.44	15.29–42.34
Total utterances	3176	3336
Average of utterances	212	334
Range of utterances	112–343	164–264

^aForty discussions in total. Percentages within the groups and number of utterances per level were presented.

Table 3. Teaching strategies.

	Occupation
	ICT	SW
Teaching strategies
Diagnosing	20.3 (138)	15.2 (120)
Checking	37.5 (255)	44.3 (350)*
Intervening	42.2 (287)	40.5 (320)
Total	100.0 (680)	100.0 (790)
Intervention
Procedural	2.2 (15)	4.8 (37)*
Strategic	20.3 (137)	25.7 (200)*
Meta-cognitive	37,0 (250)	41.8 (325)*
Conceptual	40.5 (274)*	27.8 (216)
Total	100.0 (676)	100.0 (778)

*p < .01.

Table

Vocation	Content of the vocational core problem
ICT	Information presented to students: ‘You are an employee of a helpdesk in a large production plant. A customer, who you have helped many times before, has a complaint. Previously, his questions were always related to small disturbances of his server. There was always a quite easy solution for the malfunctions. Now it seems that the problem is more fundamental since the server appears to have large defects. The client is very annoyed because he cannot continue his work. The client is also becoming a bit impatient. At first he could handle it, but now you notice that he really needs an adequate solution from you. After some brief questioning and searching the internet you find out that the server is outdated and that the software is not suitable anymore. That means that the entire system must be replaced. A very costly and time consuming task. However, you know that there is a long term benefit to it. On the other hand, with some minor modifications, the customer can still work with it (but you don’t know for what time)’.
	Vocational core problem: possible dilemma’s between short-term solutions and long-term solutions, including technical aspects, commercial aspects but also professional relationships with customers and own performance. These are common problems in ICT (in the Netherlands) and ways how to perform adequately seem to differ between, for example, regions and organizations. This is often due to differences in (professional) cultures. For example, is making profit a highly explicit value or is satisfying costumers more important?
SW	Information presented to students: ‘You work at a playgroup in a day-care organization. You see that a child (which is a toddler) has developmental problems (for example aggressive behaviour, poor concentration and subversive behaviour). You have the difficult task to confront the parents with this. You prepared this conversation thoroughly. During the conversation you noticed that the parents do not constructively cope with the message and the feedback you gave them concerning the development of their child. In addition, the parents did not recognize and acknowledge the problems. You can imagine that it is confronting to hear such a message, but you are also convinced that denial of the problem is a serious matter. Two weeks after the conversation you have called the parents because you are determined to pick up the problem, especially after the situation got out of hand when the child recently hit another kid while playing). You are motivated to collaborate with the parents to find sustainable solutions for the problems. However, the parents became even more irritated. Contact with parents is now difficult. They even blame you for the situation: they hold you responsible for a lack of intervening when the situation got out of hand’.
	Vocational core problem: possible dilemma’s between the needs of the child, the beliefs of the parents, the responsibility of the organization and own professional performance. Ethical aspects become explicit, since formal procedures do not subscribe how one needs to perform in such an affective situation. Similar to the ICT example, the way how to act adequately with such dilemma’s depends in SW highly on the actual (professional) cultures in regions and organizations. For example, is there a common culture of following procedures or a common culture of pedagogical reasoning?