Powerful learning environments in secondary vocational education: towards a shared understanding

ABSTRACT

Stakeholders in vocational education have difficulties communicating and collaborating on the design of education because they often lack a shared understanding of what constitutes effective student learning. The aim of this study is to investigate whether the perspectives of teacher educators, teachers and students on good education in vocational education are aligned with what literature says about Powerful Learning Environments (PLEs) and to what extent the perspectives of different groups of stakeholders are mutually aligned. Results of nine focus group interviews showed that perspectives are mostly similar in the three groups. They strongly favoured authentic and challenging pathways, endorsed the importance of supporting opportunities for developing key competences and, although not univocal by students, adaptive teaching and learning support, within a positive and safe learning community. Differences between preferences of different stakeholders on some of the design characteristics of PLEs underline the importance of developing a shared understanding about learning and teaching among stakeholders.

KEYWORDS:

• Vocational education
• powerful learning environments
• stakeholder perspectives
• shared understanding
• co-design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inge Placklé

Inge Placklé is a teacher educator in the Multidisciplinary Institute of Teacher Education at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and in the Department of Education at PXL-University College in Belgium. She educates aspirant teachers for general subjects in vocational secondary education. She is thehead of the Flemish Association for Teacher Educators. Her research areas are equal learning opportunities, learning environments in vocational education and professional development of teacher educators.

Karen D. Könings

Karen D. Könings is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Development and Research, Faculty of Health, Medicine & Life Sciences at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on student and teacher perspectives on education, and participatory design as an approach to account for different perspectives of stakeholders in the educational design process.

Katrien Struyven

Katrien Struyven is an associate professor at Hasselt University and at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the Educational Sciences Department. Her research focuses on differentiated instruction, student-centered and cooperative teaching methods and new modes of assessment in education.

Arno Libotton

Arno Libotton is an Emeritus Professor in Educational Sciences and Teacher Education at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is promotor and/or coordinator of research and development projects at university, national and international level.

Jeroen J. G. van Merriënboer

Jeroen J. G. van Merriënboer is holding a chair in Learning and Instruction. He is research program director of the Graduate School of Health Professions Education at Maastricht University.

Nadine Engels

Nadine Engels is head of the Multidisciplinary Institute of Teacher Education at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her interests and expertise are mainly teacher learning and teacher development across the professional lifespan, collaborative teacher research and issues of diversity and equity.