Models of Vocational Development Revisited: reflecting on concerns

Abstract

This paper supports the notion of incorporating developmental, concerns‐based models and reflective models together, to provide a suitable framework for vocational preparation. However, it emphasises the importance of the learning group as the milieu in which reflection may be most powerfully enabled (or repressed) and the need to assist people in some reframing of their concerns, through critical reflection, before these can be adequately addressed. Data from an action research study, with mature‐age, male tradespeople in an internship system of training as Technology Studies teachers in secondary schools, are drawn upon to illustrate these points. This study indicates that people become reflective when: current actions are recognised as inappropriate; conditions are created in which stress may be openly acknowledged and addressed through group support, and thinking is challenged. A reflective, developmental model for adult learners is presented, relevant to learning situations in which changes of identity are required.