Adults between school and working life

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine what it means to be a student in a vocational education and training programme in the municipal adult education system in Sweden and how the interplay between school and working life affects students’ identity formation. To achieve this, 12 students from two different programmes have been interviewed at the end of their education: one group of assistant nurses and one group of floor layers. The results show that learning a vocation and developing a vocational identity is a journey through different practices with whom students both identify and dis-identify themselves. In these processes of identification, students can also undergo personal development in a broader sense or develop an identity as an adult. Understanding adult student identities, in particular how they see themselves as learners, can be beneficial for those working with and in adult learning. Furthermore, what the school teaches may conflict with the expectations and daily demands of working life, creating a divide between practices. Understanding the divide between school and working life, and how students are affected by this divide, can also facilitate the understanding of their vocational identity development process.

Keywords:

• Adult education
• adult learning
• identity
• vocational education
• working life

Introduction

Lifelong learning is critical for adults to create opportunities for employment and equality. Through learning new, or developing existing, skills, adult education can help individuals grow both professionally and personally (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2021). However, how this happens and what influence lifelong learning has on students is not always overtly obvious.

There are many forms of schooling and education that deal with adult education, and, in Sweden, one of the most comprehensive is ‘Komvux’, the municipal adult education (MAE) system that as of 2021 included 413,590 students (SNAE 2022). The purpose of MAE is to, based on students’ different needs and conditions, convey knowledge and support to students so that they can become more active members of society, develop vocational skills and/or become eligible for tertiary education (SNAE 2017). However, students in MAE are a heterogeneous group in terms of age, and socio-economic and ethnic background, having different educational and work experiences, and many drop out before completing their studies.

Despite the scale of MAE, pedagogical research on what happens in vocational education and training (VET) is limited. Regarding research that focuses on specific VET programmes, there seem to be two recurring perspectives, namely education as an individual project for developing skills or a first step towards increased belonging in a vocational community (Lagercrantz All 2017). There is research on the development of professional skills (Kristmansson 2016), such as pedagogical situations, like learning to weld (Asplund and Kilbrink 2018), or the work of VET teachers and supervisors in workplace-based learning (WBL) (Mårtensson 2021). There are also studies that focus on identity formation through VET students’ learning trajectories (Ferm et al. 2019). However, in the case of VET IN MAE, there are few examples of research that specifically follow adult students and their identity development. Here there is a great need for research. Since VET students in MAE interact in both school and working life, there can be tensions between the labour market and educational logic (Hultqvist and Hollertz 2021). Because different practices value different educational outcomes, there is a risk of creating a divide between school and working life (Fjellström 2017), which creates a dilemma for teachers, who can see themselves as either craftsmen or teachers (Nylund and Gudmundson 2017).

This article examines what it means to be a VET student in MAE and how the interplay between school and working life (through WBL) affects students’ identity formation. By focussing on how students at the end of their training describe their upcoming vocation as well as their education, the following questions will be answered:

• How do students describe and value what they have learned through their education?

• How do students describe their identity formation?

Context of the study

MAE has existed since 1968 and has three functions: a compensatory function, a civic and democratic function and a labour-market function. There are no tuition fees and studying at the MAE entitles students to financial support from The Swedish Board of Student Finance (CSN) through grants and loans. The municipalities must offer MAE to anyone over the age of 20 who has not completed compulsory school and to those who want to complete their upper secondary education. MAE is also available to those with previous education who want to study VET and improve their grades to become eligible for higher education (SNAE 2017). For those who want to study VET, MAE offers course packages that correspond to the vocational competence requirements at the national level.

The VET courses in MAE are at an upper secondary level and have the same syllabus as the courses taught in upper secondary school. These syllabi are decided at a national level, although they are enacted at the local level, within the municipalities. The MAE courses can also be organised into different course packages (henceforth called programmes) focussed on specific occupations lasting roughly 6 to 18 months (SNAE 2021). These can be compared to the corresponding VET programmes within the upper secondary school, which normally span three years and include classic school courses, such as languages, maths, social sciences, etc.

The programmes in this study were selected based on gender differences and pedagogical structures, gender differences in the sense that the assistant nursing vocation is dominated by women and the floor layer vocation is dominated by men. Regarding pedagogical structures, the assistant nursing (AN) programme is structured towards school-based activities in classrooms as well as method rooms and excursions, and WBL is distributed evenly during training. The floor layer (FL) programme’s school-based activities are heavily focussed on practising skills in a workshop and gaining access to WBL continuously, as the students acquire skills quickly. Also, of the five most frequently completed courses within MAE, all are included in the programmes with an AN degree (SNAE 2018), and almost all municipalities that conduct MAE in Sweden offer AN training. The FL programme in focus is more unique within the MAE context in that fewer municipalities offer FL training.

Previous research

In addition to gaining knowledge and qualifications, adult education can empower students, but it is not a process without its challenges. Completing an education and obtaining a trade certificate can strengthen students’ self-esteem (Tønder and Aspøy 2017). However, adult students have previous experiences with education that influence how they view themselves as learners (Wojecki 2007). Being a diverse group, adult students hold diverse sets of vulnerabilities; both visible, like a lack of skills, as well as hidden, like mental health problems (Toiviainen et al. 2019). Aspects such as social origin, gender and ethnicity are also factors, and there is a lower likelihood that young people with a migrant background (males in particular) transition to fully qualified training (Beicht and Walden 2017). This seems to be the case in Sweden, as Nordlund et al. (2015, p. 543) note ‘that “Sweden-specific” human capital is a key endowment for non-Nordics to improve their position in the labour market’, such as language skills and country-specific social competence.

Organising VET stands between local solutions to labour market challenges and integration, in contrast to nationally decided policy regarding individual needs and personal development (Muhrman and Andersson 2022). Teachers may find themselves in situations where they are drawn between providing the labour market with competent staff and creating an education adapted to the needs of the students (Hultqvist and Hollertz 2021). However, teachers’ educational goals can provide a broader perspective on skills than the more instrumental focus of the industry (Berner 2010). Also, failing to adhere to students’ needs as learners can affect both their confidence and competence, which can, in turn, create tensions between recognising their roles as novices and/or learners (Eklund et al. 2021). Furthermore, failing to recognise students’ diverse sets of interests and purposes risks reducing student participation (Billett and Dymock 2020). This is also noted by Klope (2015) who explains that tensions can build up between students with varying degrees of student and vocational identities, especially when the school’s expectations collide with those of the workplace.

VET students in MAE are expected to learn different practices, at the school and at the workplace. Both are needed in themselves, but they can also complement each other, as a school workshop enables students to make mistakes and ask questions that may be difficult in a workplace (Kilbrink et al. 2018, Mårtensson 2021). Learning can also be an integrated part of workplace activities, as with WBL, although workplace demands sometimes override educational goals (Fjellström and Kristmansson 2016). One of the main benefits of WBL is that learning takes place in an authentic environment that can be difficult to replicate (Vaughan 2018, p. 202). Another benefit is that a supportive and encouraging workplace culture can also challenge students’ otherwise negative learning experiences and the idea of being unable to learn (Ahlgren and Tett 2010).

Learning in different practices is sometimes seen as a divide between the academic and the vocational: school and working life as two, sometimes contradictory, arenas that create different learning outcomes (Fjellström 2017). Some even question the extent to which one can ‘become’ one’s vocation through school-based VET since a school’s educational activities create student identities (Klope 2015). This divide may also affect whether VET teachers view themselves primarily as craftsmen or teachers (Nylund and Gudmundson 2017). In addition, education that is built on the prioritisation of workplace skills and minimisation of conceptual knowledge shapes vocational/worker identities rather than learner identities (Brockmann and Laurie 2016). Furthermore, there also seems to be an academic/vocational divide regarding what is considered vocational knowledge, and how students handle this divide affects how they facilitate their vocational identity (Ferm 2021). According to Ferm (2021), VET students in the industry sector prioritise practical knowledge, and theoretical knowledge is deemed useful when perceived as important in order to become skilled and employable. This does not seem unique to Swedish VET as students in the Netherlands also recognise and contextualise knowledge engaged within school-based and workplace-based learning environments (Baartman et al. 2018).

Analytical framework – competencies in a landscape of practice

This article examines what it means to be a VET student in MAE. Both school and workplace are in focus, and therefore this article draws upon the theory of situated learning by Lave and Wenger (1991) and communities of practice (Wenger 1998). This theory is used in pedagogical research to discuss phenomena such as student pathways, identity formation, learning activities, social interactions, etc. (e.g. Fjellström and Kristmansson 2016, Lagercrantz All 2017, Ferm et al. 2019, Mårtensson 2021).

Within the communities of practice (CoP) framework, learning a vocation is about securing competencies that are valuable for that specific vocational community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991). It is a process that includes more than learning specific skills, acquiring competencies, or adapting certain attitudes or behaviours. As individuals become professionals, they move from legitimate peripheral participation to an increasingly central role in the vocational practice. With experience, and through interaction with others, individuals learn how to act and perform and gradually they develop a vocational identity. Within a CoP, the individual also takes on an increasingly greater responsibility, and tasks become more complicated, but above all, the individual’s sense of vocational identity goes from novice to experienced and master. Additionally, forming a vocational identity is a constant process of learning (Billett 2010), and a VET students’ learning process is an engaging activity that involves different CoPs, like the school and workplace, where thinking and acting are in tandem with different learning activities and social interactions.

The concept of identity is important, and participating in practices strongly influences how individuals see themselves and are seen by others (Felstead et al. 2009). In this study, identity is interpreted as what students identify with but also what they want to be identified with. Identity is also seen as a multi-membership (Wenger 1998) in that individuals are full members of some CoPs and more peripheral in others, although all communities contribute to identity formation. Moreover, a VET programme and its corresponding vocation is not viewed as one CoP, nor are they viewed as two separate CoPs. Rather, they are seen as two practices in a landscape of practice (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014). Every practice in a landscape has an inherent power dynamic that defines what competence is in that practice. Although there is some overlap, a claim to competence within one community will not necessarily be seen as competence in another. The practices can influence each other, and some practices can have more or less power in this sense, although no practice can fully claim to represent the whole landscape.

For the students, participating in different practices substantiates identity formation and the possibility to journey between practices though becoming a competent practitioner is more than going from a student identity to a practitioner (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014). Going between practices is also a process of both identification and dis-identification with the practices they interact with. For instance, like the students in this study who learn in and move between school and workplace; in other words, forming both VET-student and practitioner identities. However, going between practices should not be seen as either easy or something relegated to the individual’s decision-making as practices can be everything between welcoming to heavily guarded. The identification process can also be seen as different modes of identification in the different practices: as engagement, imagination or alignment (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014). How students engage, interact and learn in their practice; how they imagine and interpret the practice; and how they align with the practice’s expectations; all affect both their identification with and their perception of the practices in the landscape. Furthermore, vocational identity should also be understood as part of a larger context as students’ different modes of identification scales in a landscape of practice.

Method

This article is based on a qualitative interview study conducted in the spring of 2020 with 12 adult VET students in MAE: 7 from an AN programme (6 women, 1 man) and 5 from a FL programme (all men). The AN programme in focus for this study comprised three semesters of full-time studies where most time was spent in school and in a school-based environment with three distinct periods of work-based learning. The FL programme consisted of two semesters of full-time studies where most time was spent in school within a workshop environment, and the students were continuously sent out to do WBL. This meant that the faster they proved themselves ‘good enough’ in school, the earlier they received the opportunity to go out on WBL; however, only three students had access to a WBL place.

To focus on how the interviewees understand their processes semi-structured interviews was used (Bryman 2012, Brinkmann and Kvale 2015). An interview guide was constructed with 12 relatively open questions (with potential follow up questions) that gave the informants a chance to develop their answers. The questions were ordered in topics focussing on their vocational and personal development and how they view school, their WBL and their vocation. The interviews varied between 20 and 60 min in length and, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, they were conducted in different ways: some via zoom or telephone, some in open public spaces. This was something of a disadvantage in terms of recording quality, which in turn made transcription somewhat difficult. Although single words and phrases could be difficult to distinguish, overall, the quality of the result has not been significantly affected.

The informants received both written and verbal information, and written approval from all the informants was collected. They were informed about the study’s purpose, that all data would be confidential and that they had the right to choose to end their participation in the study at any time without giving an explanation. The students were given a pseudonym as the interviews were anonymised and transferred to a joint storage server, in accordance with institutional guidelines.

The interviews were transcribed in their entirety and then analysed using an inductive, thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006, 2016, Clarke and Braun 2017). Each interview was analysed separately with a focus on how identity is formed between the school and the workplace. Phrases and excerpts were identified from the different interviews, then processed and subsequently categorised into 21 different categories to visualise different phenomena, which in turn were sorted into three themes in line with the purpose and questions of the study. The themes are described in the results and visualised by quotations and compilations. In the discussion, the results are further processed using the analytical framework and previous research.

Results

The purpose of this article is to examine what it means to be a VET student in MAE and how the interplay between school and working life affects students’ identity formation. Therefore, the result is divided into three parts. The first is ‘Being adults in adult education’, which illustrates personal development and what it means to be an adult, within MAE. The second, ‘Deciding the (vocational) golden standard’, explores how students value school and working life in order to understand the role of school and working life for students’ identity formation. The third part, ‘Balancing student and vocational identities’, touches on the tension between a student identity and a vocational identity.

Being a student in adult education

In adult education, all students are (by definition) adults, although what ‘adult’ implies can sometimes be difficult to define. In addition to developing specific vocational skills, it is also possible to view the students’ answers from two other perspectives. One is what it means to be an adult and what it means to develop an identity as an adult, and the other is personal development in general terms.

Being adult students

The students experience themselves, to varying degrees, as ‘adults’ and want to be treated as such, both regarding student-teacher interactions and between students. In addition, the most prominent social contacts among the students are connected to the school, and during their ‘spare time’ the students focus on things like part-time work or family time. For those with fewer social contacts, in the form of family and friends, the school plays an extra important role, which is especially noticeable in times of adversity (like the Covid-19 pandemic). Also, just ‘being an adult’ is something that some students point out as positive. Amanda expressed that it is fun to study with adults as it gives a completely different atmosphere than upper secondary school. Abena also claims that the cooperation between the students in her class works well because they are adults. Alea develops this further:

We are adults and it works great between us. But when we took the emergency care courses there were also it was young people present [from AN in upper secondary school], therefore it was a little difficult from the first day. They are young people, and they are Swedes, they speak great Swedish and so on… not like us. From the beginning it was a bit difficult when we had group work with presentations where we would talk, we got a little bit stressed, a little worried that we might say some words wrong or something, that it will be difficult for us. But it worked out great in the end.

Alea has an identity as both an ‘adult’ and an ‘experienced student’ since she has studied at MAE and has vocationally relevant work experience in addition to her WBL. However, she still experiences nervousness and stress when meeting upper secondary school students, and her perceived lack of language skills undermines her identity as an ‘experienced student’. The role of ‘an experienced student’ can therefore be quite fragile, especially in meeting with people outside the usual study group.

Some students also grow as adults, which reportedly can affect several parts of one’s life. For example, Faazel explained that he gained experience in how things work within adult contexts through studying at MAE. Among the FL students, becoming an ‘adult’ is connected to becoming a ‘worker’, although these identities may differ from how one otherwise views oneself as a person. Filip explains that there are not necessarily any difficulties in becoming part of a group but that it takes some effort:

When I've been with some older… Guys? then it can be a little difficult, like 'Yeah, so, what to talk about now?' when you eat lunch or go to the construction site. But it settles down after one or two days and you understand that 'yes, ok, so this person likes food!' and then I can talk about food, and if he likes sports that works for me.

Here, Filip’s primary focus is on the generational gap, not necessarily that he is a newcomer. He further explains that he believes that he must become more assertive when on construction sites and that you must help yourself in social situations, which is something that he otherwise struggles with.

VET in MAE as personal development

At the end of their education, the students reflect on what significance their education has had for their vocational and personal development. The school primarily constitutes a knowledge foundation for students when they interact with their vocational practice, like WBL or working life. However, from the student’s perspective, it also appears that the outcome of learning and developing vocational skills also involves personal development in general and the development of an identity as an adult more specifically.

Personal development in general is more noticeable among the AN students than the FL students. They emphasise personal development through completing courses that focus on them learning about interpersonal relations, ethics and ensuring good life quality for the elderly. The FL students, on the other hand, emphasise the process of becoming a worker within a production-oriented field rather than personal development, although some draw attention to the process of becoming an adult. One important aspect of these types of developments is the WBL, which, according to students from both groups, mostly revolves around the exercise of the vocation. This involves carrying out everyday tasks, although they also encounter different types of social challenges that can be difficult to overcome in the development of a vocational identity. For example, being ‘the new one’ at a workplace during WBL can prove a difficult situation, especially if there is a hierarchical divide between the newcomers and the experienced. Ajda notes:

Those who work, who have more experience, I know that they walk over substitutes. It’s always been so, unfortunately… but I'm told, those who have an education they have that, power, you know? Because they know all the rules, the substitute doesn’t have the same opportunities as, a real assistant nurse. I would recommend that everyone take the training. It’s great, then you kind of have the power over yourself. It’s great to have knowledge and knowledge is the key to everything.

Ajda says here that both experience and form of employment are factors of power. Even though education and vocational knowledge have the power to affect the inclusion process, the students still face challenges. As Anna explains, the older colleagues ‘walk over newer ones with the attitude that workplace experience trumps everything else’, even if the new ones have the ‘right/updated’ knowledge from their training. Amanda also notes that ‘I think when you don’t know anyone, you don’t know how it works, it’s hard at first, but then you get into it’. This indicates that being part of the workplace, socially fitting in and finding your place in the hierarchy within your vocational role, is a long-term process.

In addition, the AN students experience that the educational demands are high and that they are short on time. In Anna’s opinion, many students dropped out because ‘they felt it was too much to study’. Similarly, Amir is disappointed by the school’s lack of sympathy for his situation as he points out an extensive conflict (with a teacher) that, according to him, came out of a clash between his part-time job and studies. Regarding this, Ajda points out that she must study so much that she has no leisure time and compares her 1.5-year long programme with the corresponding programme within upper secondary school, which is 3 years long. She says that she would love to have more time because everything goes so fast in MAE.

Among FL students, the idea of personal development as something developed in education is in general downplayed and the learning of vocational skills is instead highlighted. In essence, the students generally focus on the idea that you will be socially accepted if you can perform work-related tasks, which in their perspective has little to do with their personal development. The FL students also note that the VET programmes in MAE are short on time, there is little room for catch-up if you fail something and there is limited time to develop relevant skills. As Farid explain, he failed a test but did not know when he could repeat the test, and at the time of the interview, there was barely a month left of training. Besides developing skills, another aspect of the limited time is that there is little room available for more advanced work. Florim explains that:

There was nothing wrong with the training, but it was like, what do you say? [The teacher] didn’t get a chance to give us ‘that’, there were so many uninterested people in the group so he didn’t get a fair chance to focus on certain things that you might need when start working.

Florim further believes that the basics in floor laying are easy to learn but that ‘extra things that are useful’ are lost if there are too many uninterested students. Practicing only the basics of the vocation provides limited possibilities to develop an interest in the craftsmanship, which is deemed important for becoming an FL.

Deciding the (vocational) golden standard

Overall, the students describe that they are ready to exercise their vocations as they highly value their education. On the other hand, there is a certain discrepancy between how they perceive the knowledge expected of the teachers and the knowledge expected in the workplace. It also appears that there is a division between training and working life where the school environment is mentioned in connection with words such as ‘theory’ and the workplace in terms of ‘practice’ or ‘for real’. Abena says that:

In school, we write notes and the teacher talks, but at the WBL, we see the reality, the things that happen in the patient’s body. We see how it really is at the work place, but in school, just theory, you know what I mean?

The WBL acts as an important part of school-based learning, and the AN students view the WBL as a way to test what they learned in school. They also view WBL as an opportunity to develop knowledge that the school environment cannot teach them, such as their day-to-day interaction with the elderly. Furthermore, based on the students’ statements, the knowledge that the school conveys is valued in relation to its usefulness in working life. The AN students explain that the school places higher demands on them than the workplace does, such as requirements regarding the level of medical knowledge or what are ‘the right kind of work routines’. Abena describes differences in the requirements:

The school requires more than what is done at the WBL. In training, we study close to being a nurse. But always, when we write or document, the teachers say 'you should think like an assistant nurse, but you shouldn’t cross that line’.

Abena thus perceives that the educational requirements for AN are in line with what nurses should be able to do and that the difference between AN and nurses lies in that they perform different tasks within the workplace. This discrepancy, between the perceived educational requirements and vocational expectations, also divides the AN students. Most of them believe that it is good to know about what other vocational groups can do and that more knowledge serves a wider vocational purpose. Others are more sceptical about this; like Amir who thinks that knowledge that fail to relate to any direct vocational tasks are unnecessary and should therefore be removed from their training.

Another example is in relation to the area of ‘basic hygiene routines’ which, according to all AN students, is important according to both the school and the workplace. However, students believe that the school expects more than the WBL does and that the school-based routine demands more protective equipment, materials, more elaborate methods, etc. In this, the ‘perfect’ workplace routines can come into conflict with time pressure and material shortages as well as the staff’s ‘level of education’ or beliefs. Anna says:

we are supposed to do what we are taught in school because that is like, what is updated. But at the same time, many older people work in healthcare, and they stand firm in what they have learned so there is a lot of we ‘do wrong because we are new’ and they are right because they have done it for so long.

For AN students, the school-based content functions as a form of guideline concerning what is right and wrong, even if local rules or work routines in the WBL say otherwise. The students believe that if the workplace does something other than what they learned in school, the workplace is doing wrong. On the other hand, even if the school’s requirements are perceived as ‘the right way’, the students still adapt to the workplace’s routines during training.

The discrepancy between educational requirements and vocational expectations is also perceived by FL students, but the relationship is different. When FL students encounter differences between workplace and school, it is instead WBL content that functions as a form of guideline concerning what is right and wrong. However, even if the workplace’s knowledge is more valued, it is not necessarily the case that students are missing something from their education. Filip explains that:

The school should update the tools and the way they work because it differed quite a lot, it gets a little strange when you learn things in a certain way in school and then comes out on an internship and they just 'No, you can’t do it like that, you have to do it like this’. So, you have to double learn, you know? And it works, but then again, it would have been better to learn it the right way from the beginning.

Filip believes that, although both tools and working methods differ between school and workplace, it is the workplace’s requirements that is ‘the right’ way, and he adapts accordingly. Florim also points out the differences between school and WBL:

Well, it’s like day and night, it’s quite a big difference/…/everything is like, completely different when it comes down to you working in a workplace like there is a very big difference in ‘an apartment’, and the booths we did at school

Although the content of the school and the workplace differ, Florim also believes that he is still satisfied with the education because he believes that the teacher’ is ‘very experienced, so he knows what he is talking about’.

Balancing student and vocational identities

A recurring aspect of students’ training is how much they have developed during their WBL. When the students experience WBL they utilise both an identity as a VET student and an identity as a full-time employee. Both groups describe that they can feel like they have a strong vocational identity when they independently perform tasks, without a supervisor instructing them. However, the difference between the groups is in how they exercise and balance their identities as ‘VET students on WBL’ and ‘a full-time employee’.

Among AN students, there is a certain duality in the identity that is thrust upon them during their WBL; they have a student identity while also identifying as full-time employees. The student identity within WBL is described in positive terms, that you are allowed to follow supervisors who demonstrate what to do and answer questions. You can also move around between different departments to learn different things (in a way that a full-time employee cannot). At the same time, the students point out the need to be viewed as a full-time employee, i.e. that they are not doing anything wrong and are able to be independent in practicing their vocation without anyone having to tell them what to do. Alea explains:

After the first WBL, I worked a summer in a nursing home and I felt like an assistant nurse, I felt it when I was going to give medicine to a resident, walk with another, then I felt that I had responsibility, myself! I know what to do, I'm going to do it myself, it’s not my supervisor who’s going to tell me to do it.

In this quote, Alea highlights a situation where she is independently responsible for her, as well as the care recipient’s, situation, which forms a sharp line between a student identity and a vocational identity. The feeling of moving from being a student into a vocational role also has a material aspect, such as putting on work clothes, as Ajda explains:

Well, when you put them on then you have your vocational role ‘now I'm an assistant nurse, I put on my work clothes and behave in a professional way’ and then I start working, and then I think it all comes automatically, my work, my role in it.

When the FL students experience WBL, the school and the student identity are something that they (who have had WBL) try to distance themselves from. Instead, they focus on exercising a vocational identity: acting and behaving as much like a fully paid floor layer as possible. They want to be viewed as skilful and useful as possible since their WBL company is a potential future employer. However, the feeling of being a floor layer is situational, and that feeling is influenced by the situation and surroundings. Filip describes when he feels like a floor layer:

When I get my job and I'm in a room by myself, then I can sometimes feel like a floor layer… But if I get a job and my supervisor is in the same room, then I don’t feel like a floor layer, then I feel more like an intern. That he is, like, present in the room and shows how you can do, if you get instructions or if you work side by side… But then again, when you ride your bike home and you wear your work clothes, then you feel like a floor layer because then no one else knows about anything.

Among FL students, the school-based part of their training is highlighted as a place where you have several chances to learn what is right and wrong, while in working life you only get one chance. The school fulfils the role of a place where you can develop your skills, make mistakes, fail, and learn, which is important because once the students meet the companies, they should be able to do the job correctly. Filip notes:

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes! I think that now, when you go to school, you have every opportunity to make mistakes. It gets more serious when you start working. Then it is more important to do what’s right, so dare to try and dare to make mistakes.

He thus believes that ‘daring to make mistakes’ is an opportunity to learn and that mistakes in school reduce the risk of making them during their WBL, or later in working life. However, since WBL is viewed as such an important step that not receiving a WBL placement can be cause for concern. During the spring semester 2020, the corona pandemic hit, and this was pointed out as one of the reasons why only three students were out on WBL. However, as Faazel was informed by the teacher, there was an underlying social obstacle that was difficult to circumvent. Faazel explains:

At the beginning of the semester, we asked him if we will get a job after our training? He said, ‘I can’t see you getting a job because of your background, because you’re not Swedish.’ I said ‘what do you mean?’ and he said 'yeah, sorry, it is what it is’.

Faazel also explains that he feels a certain abandonment towards the FL vocation. Despite this, he claims that he is still ‘half satisfied’ with his training, and his teacher thought that the school should have done more to fix the WBL situation for him and his fellow students. As their training time is short and the students describe major differences between the school’s content and the requirements of the WBL, students who have not received a WBL have noticeably greater obstacles when forming a vocational identity.

Discussion

The purpose of the article is to examine what it means to be a VET student in MAE and the interplay between school and working life. Here the results will be analysed and discussed under two headings related to the questions in the introduction. First relates to how students describe their identity formation. The results show that this includes how the students’ different identities are balanced in MAE. The students describe this process as part of their personal development, including how they are perceived as adults. This is discussed under the heading ‘personal development and learning how to be an adult’. Regarding how students describe and value what they have learned through their education the results show that there is a difference in how students value what they learned in relation to school and/or WBL. In this, learning and doing are also perceived differently in the different practices and how the vocational golden standard is defined affects their identity formation. This is discussed under the heading ‘learning and/or doing in different practices’.

Personal development and learning how to be an adult

The results show that students see school as important. They are given the opportunity to develop vocation-specific skills and knowledge, but they also develop on a personal level. In this study, personal development is viewed from two perspectives: partly in a broad sense (developing new approaches, communication, etc.) but also specifically in the form of developing the role of an adult.

MAE is defined by the fact that its members are adults, but acting like an adult can be a fragile role to play. This is partially because ‘being an adult’ can come with educational expectations for the students that can be difficult for them to live up to (Klope 2015). Moreover, students can possess different kinds of vulnerabilities, which can both hinder them directly and be difficult for teachers to notice (Toiviainen et al. 2019), such as how a perceived lack of 'Sweden-specific’ human capital, like language skills, (Nordlund et al. 2015) affects the social milieu. With that in mind, the results show that MAE can make a huge impact regarding personal development for some yet less for others. Even if MAE is supposed to be based on students’ different needs and conditions (SNAE 2017), it can be a difficult commitment for those who work in MAE, as individual adaptation and employability are two requirements that are difficult to reconcile (Hultqvist and Hollertz 2021). Albeit simultaneously tasked with solving integration and local labour market problems (Muhrman and Andersson 2022), MAE can help students become more active members of society. As the results show, access to practices (like a work place) are seen as adult milieus where students develop adult identities, similar to how they develop vocational identities in (the same) vocational practices (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014).

Personal development in a broad sense is perhaps more evident among the AN students’ accounts. They take courses that develop their social skills (e.g. how to communicate, understanding special needs/aging etc.), and since navigating the landscapes of practice is a social venture (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014), it would seem that they are broadly prepared for working life in general. For them, learning the trade also involves a personal development process. They attribute the school a major role in this, especially when school principles are at odds with the priorities of working life, which shows that education can have a broader perspective on skills than workplaces (compare to Berner 2010).

The FL students did not discuss much conceptual knowledge, which suggests that they are shaped into workers rather than learners (Brockmann and Laurie 2016). Given the uncertainty surrounding the FL students without WBL, and their perceived lack of support, the needs of the labour market seem to govern their educational possibilities more than their needs as students, especially considering what they heard about racism within the vocational community. However, FL students’ experiences can be divided into two groups: those with and those without WBL. All adults have previous educational experiences that affect their self-image as learners (Wojecki 2007), although workplace culture can challenge students’ previous self-perceptions (Ahlgren and Tett 2010). This is in line with the results presented here in that those with WBL experience demonstrate an understanding of the social challenges that working life poses and learn (and need to learn) many new things through WBL. Furthermore, they also show a varied degree of developing an identity as an adult through interaction. Nevertheless, recognising students’ interests and purposes can help certain aspects, such as building self-esteem and bolstering student participation (Billett and Dymock 2020). However, without a WBL it can be near impossible to gain access to a post-MAE apprenticeship. From the perspective of the students without WBL experiences, not being born in Sweden with a Swedish-sounding name has negatively affected their chances of gaining access to a WBL. In essence, social origin affects transitions (Beicht and Walden 2017), and in this case, the FL students are supposed to embark on a journey between student and vocational identity, but some of them stand still, unable to interact in the vocational practice. Without participation they risk lacking the experiences that constitute their vocational identity (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014).

Learning and/or doing in different practices

Based on what the students recount, they are in a transition from education to working life with one foot in each practice. They report having been shaped by their education, but since they are at the end of it, they feel that they should also be ready to work as fully paid professionals. It seems to be that they talk about different practices, the school being one and the workplace another. This divide between practices, between school and working life, affects both students and teachers (Nylund and Gudmundson 2017, Ferm 2021, Hultqvist and Hollertz 2021). The school-based part of the education primarily helps students to develop a VET-student identity (Klope 2015), which helps in creating and developing images of the vocational practice (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014). For the students, WBL therefore holds a special function: to some extent WBL is understood as an extension of their education, a pedagogical activity where they are able to learn new skills and gain ‘real’ experience. However, it is also highlighted as a ‘critical situation’ where you do things for real and must show what you are made of in order to secure future employment, which does not involve pedagogical activity. In this the students experience differences, which can be anything from concrete to abstract, or small to large (Mårtensson 2021). Furthermore, when engaging in WBL, the students’ image of their potential future vocation is challenged, and they can sometimes feel forced to align with school or vocational practice.

Since VET should prepare students for a vocation and help them develop a vocational identity, there is a seemingly obvious focus on vocational identity development and the skills needed for the workplace. On the other hand, if the school focus too strongly on workplace skills in favour of conceptual knowledge could hinder students developing a learning identity, which in turn can affect both confidence and competence (Brockmann and Laurie 2016, Eklund et al. 2021). Both school- and work practice make claims of aspirational competencies within the vocational landscape, and although some claims may correspond between them, others differ (like the AN teachers’ high demands or the older FL tools). In addition, differences between practices can cause boundaries (Mårtensson 2021), and the boundaries between practices can in turn cause ‘potential misunderstanding and confusion arising from different regimes of competence, commitments, values, repertoires, and perspectives’ (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014, p. 18). In other words, exactly where the boundaries between school and work lie can be difficult to pinpoint. This is partially because the WBL is decided by the school practice (teachers, curriculum, etc.) but carried out in a workplace practice (with supervisors, workplace routines, etc.). Being on WBL is also a process of constant thinking and acting (Billett 2010) where students’ past school-based experiences interact with the workplace’s daily work as well as the students’ potential future full entry into vocational practice. Hence, it is difficult for the school and vocational practices to be seen as non-overlapping fields.

Participation in a landscape of practice forms the basis for experiencing identity, and learning is a process of becoming a person that inhabits the landscape (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014). Because the students are negotiating their identity at the peripheries of, and boundaries between, practices, the WBL can therefore be seen as a boundary process for identification and dis-identification between the student and vocational identity. As Fjellström (2017) notes, different practices enable different learning outcomes, and for FL students, the school’s goal seems to be to ‘get ready for work’ while for AN students’ training is more integrated with WBL. Nevertheless, the AN students report that their educational demands are set higher than the vocational practice, which is a result of teachers’ educational goals providing a broader perspective on skills than the industry (Berner 2010). However, this does not seem to be the case with FL students in that they describe their education with a distinct production focus, where they learn about laying floors and spend most of their time in the school workshop. That the workplace demands more educational space is not unusual (Fjellström and Kristmansson 2016), and although it potentially increases possibilities for vocational identity formation, it may also risk missing out on both developing learner identities (Brockmann and Laurie 2016) and adapting the pedagogy to the students’ needs (Hultqvist and Hollertz 2021). This corresponds with the FL students describing a greater distance to their student identity than the AN students, as there is a greater focus on WBL as a ‘critical situation’ rather than as an opportunity for learning (even though they learn what the vocation entitles them). Moreover, that it must be accomplished within a relatively short time also seems to be something that the students highlight as a somewhat aggravating circumstance.

Even if school-based activities in a workshop aspire to create an authentic environment for learning, it is difficult to replicate an actual workplace (Vaughan 2018, Mårtensson 2021), and as the results show, the FL students draw attention to differences between the workshop and the WBL. Furthermore, it is questionable to what extent one can develop a vocational identity through school-based activities (Klope 2015), so missing out on WBL is missing out on an important part of VET. The students in this study who have not had WBL do not show any distancing towards their student identity; instead, they show a somewhat hesitant stance towards their vocation. Also, the knowledge that is perceived as useful in the vocational practice is highly valued (Ferm 2021), but an important aspect of this is that students are able to meet different practices, which helps them formalise skills and contextualise knowledge (Tønder and Aspøy 2017, Baartman et al. 2018). Also, both groups were clear in pointing out that one of the major aspects of the school practice was that they were able to learn the basics of their vocation and had the possibility to make mistakes and learn from them, something also noted by Kilbrink et al. (2018). However, they need sufficient time to do this, and they have concerns about an excessive workload, which eliminates leisure time, and uncertainties about being allowed to retake exams.

Conclusion – bridging the divide

Learning a vocation is a journey through a landscape of practice where students identify and dis-identify with different practices (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014). VET in MAE can also be a journey of personal development and, for some, a process that is both a legitimate step into adulthood and a dis-identification with their youth. VET students in MAE expect to be treated like adults, but such treatment may involve expectations that can be difficult for everyone to live up to (Klope 2015, Toiviainen et al. 2019).

This study shows that even if the activities of working life differ from the school’s teachings, or if the school’s working methods are outdated, the school can still be highly valued. Also, both school and working life (through WBL) are crucial to helping students’ form a vocational identity. School is a place to learn, make mistakes and get better; the workplace is where you get to test your skills ‘for real’. Understanding adult learners’ identities can help pedagogical activities (Wojecki 2007), and an understanding of the divide between school and work life could help those working with adult education to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of both practices. This, in turn, will make it possible to provide more nuanced support for students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).