Expanding learner readiness of young Swedish security officers-to-be in upper secondary school

ABSTRACT

Acquiring the conceptual and contextualised vocational knowing of surveillance law that security officers require may pose difficulties for young students due to their inexperience. This article reports research on the learner readiness of 16- to 20-year-old security officers-to-be in Swedish upper secondary vocational education and training with respect to this law. The following research questions are addressed. What surveillance law is experientially emergent for upper secondary students through vocational instruction to become security officers? How is learner readiness with respect to surveillance law expressed in the students’ feedback-making during instruction to become security officers? The analysis is based on participant observations and focus group interviews with 34 students. The main finding is that the students expand their learner readiness with respect to surveillance law as they develop a novel appreciation of surveillance law as a field of interconnected meanings. Students’ knowing of surveillance law emerges through a constant interplay of four processes: addressing a commonsensical sense of justice, formulating action plans, exercising the freedom to abstain from action, and applying for legal protection. Students expand their learner readiness with respect to surveillance law as awareness of: the need to handle personal empowerment appropriately, occupational boundaries, and laws as grids for particular actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogy
• feedback
• learner readiness
• vocational education & training
• learning theory
• vocational & educational guidance

Learner readiness with respect to surveillance law

This article explores how young (16- to 20-year-old) security officers-to-be experience learning surveillance law (bevakningsjuridik) from a perspective of their learner readiness (Billett 2015a, 2015b) in a Swedish upper secondary school context. Learner readiness is a complex construct with two main elements: ‘an individual’s ability to learn from what they know, can do and value’ (Billett 2015a, 368) and ‘the degree by which [they] are ready to engage in activities and learning, including being ready to be proactive and/or work collaboratively with other students’ (Billett 2015b, 186–187). So, learner readiness essentially encompasses current foundations of knowing and traits that influence its extension in interaction with relevant material and/or others. Drawing on collective, cultural-historical occupational¹ practice, the surveillance law that security officers need to know is a type of occupation-specific knowing that can be seen as ‘dislocated and relocated’ (Breier 2004) from many sources, inter alia formal academic studies of relevant laws and regulations.

The curriculum for the education and training of prospective security officers² is generally informed by the needs and requirements of the security industry, and its efforts to standardise, thereby reinforcing the industry’s credibility and accountability (Bathmaker 2013; BYA 2015; Henrikson 2015). Vocational appreciation of surveillance law has steadily emerged as a foundation for the security officer occupation, which has traditionally low and rudimentary requirements for institutional formalised learning (Valbärj and Nyberg 1997). In Sweden and elsewhere (see inter alia Lippert and O’Connor 2003) originally only personal suitability, e.g., physical strength, was required. The first formal curriculum was introduced in Sweden in 1974, allocating 16 h to surveillance law, rising to 24 h in 2012. Although surveillance law is relatively recent, it constitutes an important part of education and training for occupations in the security industry. Consequently, an intended curriculum (Billett 2006) consisting of an introductory judicial regulatory package on surveillance law has been prepared for Swedish upper secondary students aiming to become security officers. The surveillance law included in this package can be regarded as a kind of knowing that rests with and is based on the interests of stakeholders, offering no opportunities for students to naturally draw on previous experience (Breier 2006) as they have not yet worked in the security industry.

Young students are unfamiliar with these interests and intentions (the intended curriculum) as well as with what is enacted during instruction, that is, the enacted curriculum (Billett 2006). This is assumed here to be one of the reasons that law may be a troublesome element (Vaughan 2017) of their experienced curriculum (Billett 2006). In contrast to technical vocational knowing, e.g., using security officers’ equipment, the law may appear to young students as ‘opaque, hidden or otherwise difficult to access’ (Billett 2018, 205). As a codified, conceptual and symbolic configuration of vocational knowing (Rey and Mitjáns Martínez 2016), the law likely poses difficulties for students. They cannot simply access it either mimetically or through sensory experiences (Billett 2018, 197) in the course of instruction (the enacted curriculum). Hence, learner readiness with respect to the law may have particularly loose foundations and be particularly challenging to bolster for young security officers in the making.

Security officer training in Swedish upper secondary school

There are several ways to obtain qualifications as a security officer in Sweden, predominantly addressing adults who are already employed by security companies or aspire to do so. However, in line with a greater emphasis on employability, since 2011 upper secondary students in Sweden have had the opportunity to get qualifications as security officers (SNAE 2011a). This path is on offer in the Child and Recreation Program, which targets people-centred service occupations, e.g., nursery nurses, personal assistants and gym instructors. Students, choosing this option, participate in a chiefly school-based (Gessler and Moreno Herrera 2015) three-year programme of both general³ and vocation-specific training and education. The latter includes, for example, a course called Fire, surveillance and safety. The occupational training comprises workplace-based education lasting at least 15 weeks, fully integrated with a vocational programme. The security industry collaborates in the provision of the vocational programme, including parts of the Fire, surveillance and safety course. Overall, the programme enables youths to seek employment as security officers upon graduation⁴.

The security industry in this study is represented by the Swedish Security Industry and Working Environment Committee (Bevakningsbranschens yrkes-och arbetsmiljönämnd, henceforth BYA). This committee provides and delivers the syllabus, instruction and accreditation of the qualifications required for employment in the industry, including supervised workplace-based training⁵. In the training package provided by BYA, surveillance law is curricularised and geared towards a prescriptive content set out by official regulations, recommendations and ordinances of the authority charged with overseeing the security industry in Sweden (the National Police Board 2012). Hence, in accordance with the intended curriculum set by the industry, the goal of the training is to equip security officers-to-be with relevant ‘judicial knowledge’, which they are ‘to apply’, e.g., by ‘reporting judicial considerations in writing’ (the National Police Board 2012). Similarly, according to the Fire, surveillance and safety syllabus, prospective security officers in upper secondary school shall develop ‘an ability to plan and carry out work based on laws and other rules and regulations’ (SNAE 2011b).

Making sense of surveillance law

The point of departure here is an acknowledgement that young prospective security officers heavily rely on guiding interaction with teachers and instructors. Thus, in classroom interaction, students need to make sense of their engagement in a constant flow of giving and receiving feedback as ‘information’ (Shute 2008), e.g., verbal response. This collective meaning-making process, hence a relational issue of classroom interaction, is called here feedback-making. Accordingly, the article focuses on feedback exchanges, or feedback-making, that emerge through such interaction and which may extend students’ current level of learner readiness. It is acknowledged that such feedback-making may define a certain social situation of learning, e.g., part of instruction, as potentially developmental and leading to a transformation when refracted by a prism of subjective experience (Veresov 2016). To capture this notion of experience in a dialectic relationship with the social situation of development (Vygotskij 2001) I use the Russian concept of periezhivanie (переживание)⁶ (Vygotskij 2001), often defined in English as ‘a lived through experience’ (Dafermos 2018; Rey and Mitjáns Martínez 2016).

From an interaction perspective (Novotný and Brücknerová 2014; Karlsen 2016), feedback-making is an instance of interaction mediating students’ ‘understanding’ (Miller 2011) of the law as a formation of a ‘matter without thought’ (Miller 2011, 375). Such a matter is taken here to refer to students’ grasp of the law as a platform taken for granted, and guiding what they imagine to be feasible actions for prospective security officers. It is assumed here that students’ prior understanding is based on everyday, commonsensical knowing of the law as ubiquitous rules that must be followed and regulations constraining people’s behaviour. This understanding may or may not facilitate their readiness to learn the law vocationally, as security officers-to-be.

The aim of this article is to illuminate young students’ ways of engaging with the law through feedback-making, influencing and/or interplaying with their learner readiness. The following research questions are specifically addressed. What surveillance law is experientially emergent for upper secondary students through vocational instruction to become security officers? How is learner readiness with respect to surveillance law expressed in the students’ feedback-making during instruction to become security officers?

The following sections briefly summarise learner readiness research and theoretical understanding of the experiential nature of learner readiness. The methods used to gather and analyse data are then described and findings are discussed. Finally, implications of the findings for vocational pedagogy are presented in the concluding section.

Studies on learner readiness

A literature survey⁷ revealed that vocational students’ learner readiness has been scantily researched. Learner readiness is generally framed in literature in terms of the lack of preparedness required to participate fully in educational processes (Knowles 1980). Originally introduced by Knowles (1980) as readiness to learn, this lack of preparedness, which is either self-discovered or identified in the course of instruction (often in early stages), hinders possible progress towards the acquisition of required knowledge. The concept has spawned studies of learner readiness as an entry value predicting educational success or failure, for instance in transitions between educational levels (Byrd and Macdonald 2005). It has also been explored in various educational contexts and forms, e.g., students’ self-efficacy and self-regulated learning (de Groot et al. 2017), competence, inclination and motivation (see for instance Mehran et al. 2017). Billett’s (2015b) interactive take on learner readiness emphasises the interdependence between cultural activities with others and the individual’s alignment with these social activities. His interactional definition of learner readiness is helpful for expanding the one-sidedness of this notion beyond the initial and solitary input of the individual. His view opens a new line of inquiry (which this article aims to extend) into learner readiness as a matter of cultural development in social situations of learning. Significantly, Billett’s conceptualisation of learner readiness is framed in terms of interaction and negotiation between two bounded entities: the student’s experiences and the environment (social suggestions). However, Billett also conceptualises learner readiness in terms of an apparent gap or lack. For example, he lists several examples of manifestations in students of ‘a lack [emphasis added] of readiness to participate effectively’. These include: inability to cope with uncertainty or reconcile conflicting demands, appearance of being overwhelmed by novelty and unfamiliarity, and/or retention of inadequate (naïve) occupational ideals (Billett 2015b, 188).

Noble et al. (2017) identified an interdependence between feedback and learner readiness in the form of a gradual increase in junior doctors’ prescription readiness, which they often lack when entering workplaces. They found that this readiness heavily relies on verbal instruction, guidance and (non-threatening) comments by pharmacists who constantly review, monitor for errors, and generally provide feedback on junior doctors’ progression in prescription performance. In vocational education and training workplace contexts, the allocation of responsibility has been identified as an important aspect of learner readiness (Ferm et al. 2018). Students are not simply given responsibility for tasks during their workplace-based learning but also assume such responsibility, and their capacity to claim responsibility varies (Reegård 2015). Moreover, students’ willingness to claim responsibility for work tasks affects their engagement in work-related learning and in feedback exchanges with others generated through such involvement (Ferm et al. 2018).

Drawing on the previous research, I argue that learner readiness is personally, motivationally and affectively distinct, but socially derived. Thus, learner readiness extends beyond generic notions of interest, energy, keenness, curiosity, arousal and motivation (although all these traits may be significant), reflecting a group’s current state of learner readiness. This, in turn, is expressed through the group’s feedback-making.

Theoretical grounding of learner readiness as experiential

The focus here is on young prospective security officers’ learner readiness for exposure to and receptiveness towards the socially interactive acquisition of new conceptual, procedural and dispositional knowing of the law. Thus, learner readiness is seen here as a fluid and experiential (Vygotskij 2001) process of student sense-making as a symbolic configuration of law (or meanings assigned by security professionals to relevant law) and how they relate to each other. This sensitises students to potentially greater wholes of significance (Roth and Jornet 2017) for their future vocation, directing their attention and efforts to transform themselves. A key hypothesis, tested here, is that feedback-making may support these processes of induction and initiation into the security officer job as a vocation.

For Vygotskij (2001), the environment and social suggestions it generates constantly interact with individuals’ cultural development. This interplay forms an entity rather than a union of two separate parts, e.g., personhood and the environment. Thus, from a relational entity perspective, it is perhaps more useful to study learner readiness in terms of environmental moment (social situation) of development that constantly unfolds. Hence, each unfolding moment comprises the dynamics of interdependency between the intended and enacted dimensions of the curriculum from which students’ experienced curriculum emerge. Therefore, learner readiness emerges from two sources coming and possibly clashing together, i.e., the prism of the individual’s occurrence of living through a particular moment in time and space, captured here by what Vygotskij (2001) calls переживание (periezhivanie) and potentialities for cultural development inherent, but latent, in the environment. The latter appear through the intended and enacted curriculum. These potentialities that enable cultural development include access and prolonged exposure to refined and developmentally finished models and patterns, which Vygotskij (2001) dubbed идеальная форма (ideal form).

Interaction in educational settings, e.g., feedback-making, can be examined, for solely analytical purposes, as chains of exchanges between relevant actors, e.g., instructors, students and peers, because they all routinely engage in the empirical process of giving and receiving feedback (i.e., information). The three sets of actors may, for instance, ask questions or evaluate provided answers. However, the commonality and reciprocity of this involvement, e.g., the interlocking quality of what these exchanges express together (as opposed to individually), provide feedback-making (as sense-making) with a transactional quality, which is of particular interest in this article.

In sum, the individual student’s periezhivanie constitutes an entity of experience as subjectively lived. That is, through the interaction of personhood (лицность) and the environment played out in successive dynamic moments of the unfolding relationship between the intended, enacted and experienced dimensions of curriculum. From Vygotskij’s perspective, relevant environmental inputs, e.g., instruction in a classroom setting (enacted curriculum), crystallise from the perspective of social groupings (experienced curriculum). Conversely, the environment contributes to learner readiness by enabling students’ access and exposure to finished or refined forms of understanding.

Method

In total, 34 students in 2^nd and 3^rd grades, of two upper secondary schools were interviewed and observed during interactions with other students, instructors and teachers. This article specifically presents findings drawn from interviews with, and observations of, 10 students (4 girls and 6 boys) in two grades with five students each at one of the schools participating in the training package provided by the industry. The school was selected on advice from representatives of the security industry (BYA), for its excellent collaboration with the industry. The data were collected during parts of the training package provided by the industry, delivered and led by seven instructors in total. These were all security industry practitioners who provided instruction (one at a time) between March and May 2016. The instruction was neatly time-tabled, tightly instructor-led and explicitly aligned with learning outcomes set out in an outcome catalogue that instructors frequently referred to. Therefore, students’ attention was usually directed to the front and the whiteboard, interspersed with short bouts of pair or group work centred on clearly identified tasks to be addressed by collective reasoning. These features restricted the scope of observation to mostly verbal exchanges. The training package is part of the final stages of the curriculum, when the students have had opportunities to advance their vocational knowing and develop a sense of belonging to a group, facilitating exploration of learner readiness in a group.

Data were collected from March to May 2016, following widely applied ethnographic practices (Delamont 2008; Gibbs 2012), through participant observations and interviews in the form of field notes and transcripts of lessons (derived from approximately 90 h of observations) and five focus group interviews. The classroom observations were intended to record students’ interactions with instructors and peers, supported by learning materials. The purpose of these loosely structured observations was to identify what learning affordances were presented to the students and how they engaged with them. Segments of lessons judged in advance to be potentially rich in recordable interactions were selected, audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed, while observations were recorded in field notes. When the observations had finished, three focus group interviews, each lasting about 1 hour, with a total of nine students were carried out, to facilitate student-led conversations (Wyszynska Johansson 2015) about security officer-specific occupational knowing. A few broad interview questions were formulated to probe students’ understandings of different kinds of knowing, for instance, How is this occupation practical and theoretical? Do prospective security officers need formal education and training? Throughout the study, ethical guidelines for humanistic and social science research published by the Swedish Research Council (2017) were followed. Prior to observations, students’ written consent to participate was obtained from nine of the 10 students. The student who initially declined to participate subsequently chose on her own accord to participate in a focus group interview.

Data analysis

Since it is not possible to obtain direct access to students’ experience (Veresov 2016; Vygotskij, van der Veer, and Valsiner 1994), intermediary steps are needed to tap into students’ experiences of engaging with the law during the course of instruction. Clearly, in order to understand the participants’ learner readiness, with respect to the law, it was necessary to establish (construct) how the law was presented to the students in the social situation of learning during instruction (the enacted curriculum). The first step was to identify and closely study parts of the acquired data that explicitly dealt with instruction regarding the law, commonly referred to as the law(s), jurisdiction, jurisprudence, regulations and legal support. The two sets of data sources, transcripts and field notes, were treated equally as textual evidence to which analytic memos were added (Saldaῆa 2014). To gain a deeper understanding of the legal content, course materials and comments in background interviews with the instructors (e.g., responses to questions such as ‘Why is the law important?’ and ‘Does this importance mirror the security officer’s everyday work?’) were consulted. The first step resulted in a set of insights or indicators, i.e., ‘hypothetical pieces of meaning that are constructed by the researcher based on the empirical elements’ (Rey and Mitjáns Martinez 2017, 205). These emergent insights were clustered as they converged (Rey and Mitjáns Martinez 2017) into several themes, which represent the enacted curriculum and are collectively referred to as the social situation of learning (relevant aspects of the social situation of development sensu Vygotskij 2001) as presented to the students. The second step was guided by the analytic question regarding the practical value students attached to the law during instruction to become security officers. The themes (anchorage of the law, the law as a toolbox, and the law as situated judgement practice) distilled from the insights (Rey and Mitjáns Martinez 2017) stimulated close analysis of two phenomena. These are the patterns in students’ responses to the instruction regarding the legal content, and the feedback enactments, i.e., the feedback-making, these patterns generated. In line with my view on feedback-making as transactional (see above), the data analysis centres on the inter-weaving of contributions of various actors (students and instructors) to the entity of students’ transformed understanding. In Vygotskij’s terms, the focus is on the interaction between their experienced curriculum and the environment, i.e., the intended and enacted curriculum.

To recap, the first step was to establish the law as part of the social situation of learning during instruction (enacted curriculum). The second step was to analyse and interpret students’ involvement in feedback-making (by initiating and responding to it), through which they reconciled their laypersons’ understandings with the law as vocational specialist knowing, that is from the perspective of their current learner readiness (experienced curriculum).

Results

The section is structured in two parts. The first part pertains to the enacted curriculum and the findings are presented with the help of illustrative excerpts from the data (observation), reflecting three aspects of the students’ learner readiness with respect to the law. These are: Construction of the law as emergent, feedback-making facilitating understanding of the law and development of a vocational stance as the expansion of learner readiness. The second part illuminates the experienced curriculum as illustrated by excerpts from the focus group interviews. The main finding, that is, the development of a vocational stance grounded in a novel understanding of surveillance law is elaborated on. Italicised passages in these sections are quotations of instructors and students (as indicated in the text). All names are pseudonyms.

The enacted curriculum

Construction of the law as emergent

This section describes how the law potentially emerged through the enacted curriculum for the students during the instruction to become security officers. The intention here is to ground empirically the students’ learner readiness with respect to the law in their experienced curriculum. Thus, the law as enacted is juxtaposed with the law as intended, forming together a backdrop for the emergence of the law in the experienced curriculum. Therefore, selected parts of the syllabus pertaining to the law represent here the intended curriculum (Table 1) (the National Police Board 2012). For clarity, the intended curriculum is then juxtaposed with the law as it emerged from the analysis of the enacted curriculum played out during the instruction.

Table 1. Four aspects of the law that emerged as part of the social situation of learning during instruction (enacted curriculum) and corresponding abilities the students should acquire according to the intended curriculum

Intended curriculum, abilities to:	Enacted curriculum
a) Recognise, identify and recall typical offences a) Invoke appropriate clauses of law for the circumstances	A) Founded on students’ commonsensical and everyday sense of justice
b) Apply sections and clauses of law in simulated cases to make plans of action	B) Foundation of action plans
c) Practice situated judgement c) Recognise non-action as judicious action in some circumstances	C) Freedom to abstain from action or initiate action
d) Know extended legal protection rights and circumstances of their application	D) Extended legal protection contingent on circumstances

The law crystallised in the enacted curriculum through interactions that addressed and activated students’ commonsensical sense of justice. Instructors often evoked and deployed young students’ ‘gut feeling’ or sense of what was justifiable and judiciously right. The importance of a sense of responsibility in people-centred service work was emphasised in everyday terms by instructors: Harming a person is worse than damaging a thing, say a door. Thus, these commonsensical remarks validated a shared understanding of what is right and wrong, while simultaneously establishing a common base for students to extend their learner readiness with respect to the law (Table 1, A). The law also emerged as a toolbox of ready-made vocational actions (Table 1, B), providing students with finished scripts to follow step-wise: You have no legal right to ask people for identification. Have you released a person and on what grounds have you released her/him? Finally, the law emerged in the enacted curriculum as a more elusive base for practising situated judgement, either through action or refraining from action (Table 1, C and D): The right approach is not to restrain people (inappropriately) but to retire and get the right resources to the right place. The need to practice situated judgement was closely connected to the benefits of highly restricted extended legal protection to be applied in certain circumstances (This is the answer to question B7 [in the goal catalogue, my emphasis]. Account for the right to extended legal protection). These emergent qualities of the law (the enacted curriculum) and corresponding elements of the intended curriculum are summarised in Table 1.

Having described how the law emerged during instruction as part of the social situation of learning, the next two sub-sections consider the feedback-making in which students participated and impacts of the construction of their experienced curriculum on their learner readiness.

Feedback-making facilitates understanding of the law

Acknowledgement of a discretionary space for security officers to exercise their judgement is an important aspect of vocational knowing. The legal space a security officer moves within is strictly restricted to ‘any person’ powers in contrast to (for instance) the police. Importantly, this (intellectual) insight emerges in collaboration between students and instructor, supported by feedback-making. In the excerpt below, one of the instructors (Kerem) initiates an exchange, a check of the students’ current state of learner readiness with respect to surveillance law. Standing in front of the students and facing the window on the opposite side of the classroom, Kerem (instructor) turns to Anders (student), who is seated in the first row.

Kerem:

Anders, when can you perform a citizen’s arrest? If you see me breaking the window (points to the window), are you allowed to pursue me?

Pernilla:

It depends.

Kerem:

Is this an imprisonable crime? Do you apprehend me? Yes, you do because I´m caught in the act, damage to property is an imprisonable crime, I run, Anders runs … he could mistake me for someone else, you have to be 100% sure. Apprehension ceases because there is a risk for a mix-up, we must not pursue any further, and it ceases to apply. [Observation, School A, grade 2, May 2016]

Kerem’s questions both activate and stimulate students’ possible ways to perceive what is happening, but students’ frames of reference manifested in the group interactions shape the instructor’s guidance. Pernilla’s prompt statement in the exchange above that ‘it depends’ seems to display learner readiness on her part. She is quick to give feedback to the instructor Kerem and her classmates, thus sharing an insight that vocational knowing can be relative rather than inflexible or prescriptive. At this moment, she invites her classmates to transcend an epistemic boundary, embedded in a student experience of being interrogated and checked. Pernilla’s contribution shapes, therefore, the social situation of learning for all the participating students because her remark prompts Kerem to help students understand by asking a pivotal question (Is this an imprisonable crime?). Pernilla’s display of learner readiness is thus collaborative, inviting her classmates to follow in deliberation, together pushing the boundaries of the group’s performance. In this way, Pernilla’s manifestations of learner readiness (as preparedness for uncertainty due to situational boundedness) remain thoroughly social as learner readiness spills simultaneously in both directions of intra- and inter-subjectivity.

Pernilla’s remark may have been a casual response rather than a well-thought-out part of feedback-making. However, this seems irrelevant since her eagerness still stimulated the group’s learner readiness as manifested in the group’s performance at the observed moment. Responding to Pernilla’s opening of a group deliberation that follows, Kerem scaffolds the group’s efforts to move beyond their current level of performance. While questioning and interrogating, he offers a clue tailored to the group’s current state of learner readiness, offering a handy shorthand for appropriate decision-making by his contributions to the unfolding feedback-making in two consecutive questions directed to Pernilla and her classmates: Is this an imprisonable crime? Do you apprehend me? This is skilfully arranged feedback by Kerem (instructor) to get students on track from their unique (beginner) state of learner readiness. The implicit information that only imprisonable crime justifies direct intervention by security officers enables them to start thinking and moving like a security officer in an (imaginary) apprehension, as it suggestively unfolds in the confines of their classroom.

Awareness of occupational boundaries as a token of learner readiness

Another part of the training package with a strong legal element was practising writing reports. A report by a security officer may start a judicial chain of events that may lead to court cases (BYA 2015), so it must provide a sufficiently detailed and accurate account of events. For this, correct initial identification of the relevant law in the circumstances is required. Thus, writing a report carries a strong sense of moral weight and responsibility.

Frequently students exchanged their reports, explicitly encouraged by instructors to practice self- and peer assessment expressed by feedback-making. On one such occasion, an instructor (Heidi) told her students, third graders, to comment on each other’s written reports, stressing the value of discovering the differences among them (Listen to what´s different!). Heidi also acknowledged the students’ eagerness to give and receive comments (You both seem keen) as they were pinpointing the similarities and differences they discovered on their own. The students (together with the instructor) heard themselves loudly questioning (Did you use violence? Why do you write ‘evidence’?), praising (Description of a perpetrator is rich in detail) and self-critiquing (I gave no description of a perpetrator at all) (Observation, grade 3, School A, April 2016).

Superficially, students primarily learnt how to recognise relevant clauses of law that should be reported in writing, but they also obtained new insights about how boundaries demarcate a community of practice as in the excerpt below.

Heidi (instructor):

It’s up to the police to identify [an arrested person]. You can always ask them for assistance with that. Just plainly explain what you observed so that the police will help you with the classification. The main thing is to know that you should perform a citizen’s arrest and you knew that (reassuringly). Keep your focus on the judicial rights.

Ellen:

The man was violent. He raised his hand.

Hans:

The man inflicted an act of violence on a public servant.

Ellen:

Threat to public servant, verbal threat. He offended by raising his hand to the public servant. [Observation, School A, grade 3, April 2016]

During the above exchange, Heidi’s feedback directs the group collectively to pay attention to the division of labour, i.e., of executive powers in legal proceedings. However, when the student Ellen triumphantly and exuberantly calls out a list of criminal offences (criminal damage, violence to a public servant, and attempted theft) the instructor Heidi emphasises reassuringly that the main thing here is knowing that you have to perform a citizen’s arrest, which you already knew. Importantly, Heidi’s feedback highlights the necessity of remaining within occupational boundaries. At this moment, Ellen gets carried away by well-rehearsed responses of students exhorted to provide correct answers quickly, living through this situation from a student’s perspective rather than a security officer’s perspective. Hence, Heidi tries to shape this social situation of learning back to the interaction between security officers rather than students. Heidi’s feedback reminds the students of the legal boundaries that circumscribe the executive powers of the occupation and reinforces their awareness of the boundaries. Such emphasis of the boundaries between different communities of practice is important to avoid students’ dispositions to act ‘right’ leading them to exceed their range of executive powers.

As previously noted, the ability to identify circumstances when a security officer should engage or refrain from engaging in action is an important kind of situative knowing that was one of the four aspects of the law that emerged for the students. A key enhancement of their collective state of learner readiness is a realisation that they will often need to abstain from action and ‘sit tight’ (as opposed to rushing in) in a vocationally appropriate manner. This insight about the necessity of respecting occupational boundaries is crucial practical knowing that is acquired indirectly, and not only intellectually but also affectively (as manifested in the students’ vivacious excitement about being in the know, being experts!) and bodily (sitting tight). An important practical element is knowing when to assist and be assisted by the police (the police will help you with the classification), rather than intervening unreflectively and instinctively.

The experienced curriculum: Development of a vocational stance as expansion of learner readiness

The students’ learner readiness entailed the development of novel ways to carry themselves in the social, historical and cultural world, where feedback-making flowed naturally through self- and peer assessment and through the instructors’ corrective feedback from a position of more seasoned work colleagues. These novel ways, which developed remarkably quickly, can also be referred to figuratively as novel positions, footings or stances from which the students could approach and transform the world.

The stances aligned with a sense-giving field of the law (e.g., requirements for sitting tight) relevant for the occupation. They also included increasing sensitivity to powers of authority and its boundaries. These findings indicate that the constantly unfolding learner readiness of students in settings such as ours is grounded in an increasing appreciation of the law as a marker of conformation to occupational boundaries, which is a key element of a vocational stance the students are developing.

The collected data also indicate that students embrace the law in the training package by developing a capacity to reason about ways of acting competently based on what one can and cannot do to avoid risking one’s own safety and the credibility of the security industry. In an excerpt below, a group of second graders seated around a table reflects on the written test they all passed successfully despite initial worries about the law as the most difficult part of this test. They collectively acknowledge that the law was presented as the theoretical, and thus most dreaded, part during the instruction, or as Anders says, the theoretical is the most difficult. Implicitly, and by the same token, passing the law component of the test was a salient status and achievement symbol as part of the social situation of learning.

Martina:

What is actually theory in the security officer education?

Anders:

It’s the laws really

Pernilla:

The laws and how you manage them

Anders:

How you’re allowed to (with emphasis) manage them

Pernilla:

Yeah

Anders:

When you’re out there, working as a security officer, sure you have an overview, a rough idea of the laws in your head because you don´t want to make a mistake, ending up in jail, getting fined

Carolina:

And ending up being fired (laughs)

Anders:

Exactly (laughs), it´s perhaps not the first thing you think of if you see someone breaking in or, actually yes you do think of that but it must just be there so you can quickly pick it up … you don´t freeze thinking: what was it again? It should just pop up like for instance when you learn to ride a bike (snaps fingers). It must never go away. Then perhaps we need to go through everything again, not everything, but most of it, just because it should stick because this is the most theoretical I´d say it is the laws

(…)

Martina:

Carolina, you’ve just said that inflicting restraint is practical

Carolina:

Yeah

Pernilla:

It’s both practical and

Carolina:

Sure it’s theoretical, firstly you can’t restrain just anyone, and secondly, you can’t restrain a person who hasn’t committed anything you’re allowed to inflict restrain for. It’s theoretical and then it’s practical, you do it with your hands.

Pernilla:

Yeah [Focus group, School A, grade 2, May 2016].

In the above excerpt, the students collectively weave an account of the law as a multi-dimensional, highly symbolic, essential but difficult element of vocational knowing. In short, they relate to the law as a whole of significance rather than a set of discrete skills. Learner readiness in their words requires alignment with novel but unrehearsed and sometimes intimidating modes of existence imbued with emotions. For example, their expressions convey a feeling of pride in belonging (When you’re out there, working as a security officer), being in the know (you don´t want to make a mistake) as well as fear of failure associated with ending up in jail, getting fined. Carolina’s statement (you can’t restrain a person who hasn’t committed anything you are allowed to inflict restraint for) is a response (peer feedback) to Pernilla, pointing out to her and the others how the law conflates actions and awareness of one’s powers to act. The students, accepting and confirming Carolina’s current state of learner readiness, collectively acknowledge the security officer’s circumscribed scope of action. This insight, mediated by transactional feedback-making, is perhaps the first step towards the development of a certain vocational stance that will guide all their subsequent actions as security officers.

This readiness to act, which is underpinned by the law, covers both technical and practical aspects (you do it with hands) of restraining perpetrators as well as discretion and judgement (you don´t want to make a mistake, ending up in jail, getting fined). Vocational knowing in contexts such as this also requires automatisation of appropriate responses, as Anders stresses that It should just pop up like for instance when you learn to ride a bike rather than deliberation.

The students in the above excerpt gradually, and with the help of peers, build on each other’s understanding of the law, expanding their current level of learner readiness. An important element of this understanding that the students develop during the instruction is that it not only enables them to acquire knowledge of relevant regulations, e.g., particular legislation, but also (more importantly), allows them to apply the regulations. Moreover, the authority to do so is under their personal and public scrutiny and could be withdrawn if they make mistakes.

Summary of findings

Regarding the first question, the law in the enacted curriculum potentially emerges for the students through a constant interplay of four processes: Addressing a commonsensical sense of justice, formulating action plans, exercising freedom to abstain from action, and applying for legal protection. In response to the second question about the features of learner readiness as intertwined with and supported by feedback-making, the students’ expanded learner readiness involves a new appreciation of the law as awareness of: empowerment, occupational boundaries, and laws as grids for particular actions.

Discussion

Learner readiness, emergent from dealings with the law (tightly regulated by the industry) is here presented as preparation for unpredictable and potentially life-threatening situations where no simple solutions or quick fixes can be provided in advance (Valbärj and Nyberg 1997). Application of judicial knowledge as stated in the intended curriculum (the National Police Board 2012) (SNAE 2011b) is not a straightforward matter whereas the expectations to be ready to participate effectively are high (Billett 2015b).

The results showcase the expansion of learner readiness with respect to surveillance law in the initial stages of vocational becoming. This expansion through a development of a vocational stance grants the students access to an integrative mode for handling the law. The data were generated from observations of and interviews with students of two classes in a single school that reportedly enjoys excellent collaboration with the industry. Thus, despite the study’s clear limitation, the findings may provide valuable indications of effective practices in the initial stages of vocational becoming that could strengthen the relationship between the three dimensions of the curriculum.

Surveillance law emerges in the students’ experienced curriculum as well aligned with the intended and enacted dimensions of the curriculum for prospective security officers in upper secondary school. Starting off by validating the students’ prior understandings, which are embedded in everyday knowing, their current learner readiness is also endorsed but used only as a transient point of collective departure towards more vocationally specialised sense-making. The instructor led and monitored instruction, rich in feedback-making, helps students to transcend common sense knowing at a quick pace. However, the pace is not too quick, so as a group they still seem to gradually expand their current learner readiness for the law. Thus, instructors’ feedback validates students’ knowing at their current level of learner readiness, but does not keep them hostage to their non-specialised knowing. Feedback-making is closely moderated by instructors to support both self- and peer-assessment but this student engagement appears as a side effect of instruction tightly regulated by learning outcomes primarily defined by the security industry as a stakeholder.

This article shows how vocational students’ learner readiness for the law collectively unfolds, with support by instructor-, self- and peer-feedback. Instructors tightly monitor feedback-making through probing questions and monitoring answers, which seems particularly beneficial for enabling the students to expand their learner readiness constantly, as a small and homogenous group. Kerem and Heidi skilfully providing incisive cues, which appear finely tuned to the students’ responses in the studied settings, give the students access to more refined forms of knowing (Vygotskij 2001). The students appear neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed by the amount of resistance that the instructors’ feedback offers, indicating that the right amount of resistance was offered (Dahlbeck 2016, 98).

Students who participated in this study took up the invitation from instructors to reciprocally engage with feedback-making on the law. Despite the limited data pertaining to small group instruction, which may differ from more regular circumstances of vocational education and training, the results of this study indicate that learner readiness is a developmental feature of groups rather than individual students. In conclusion, further investigation of the role of learner readiness in vocational pedagogy is warranted, particularly related to contents that students may routinely approach or be led to approach as ‘theoretical’ (conceptual) and challenging. Conceptual knowing that underpins various service occupations may represent knowing that is dis-, and re-embedded from various sources to fit the needs of specific service work and its stakeholders, thus potentially creating difficulty for teenage students (Vaughan 2017).

The central finding here is that students reconfigure their understanding of the law in line with the development of a certain vocational stance. As expressed in students’ collective reasoning, the law becomes for them a central symbolic tool to reorient their knowing and being towards specialised forms. As shown here, student sense-making of the law is a powerful resource for such symbolic reconfiguration towards becoming a security officer as an example of service work. The concept of learner readiness as a group tool may help vocational teachers to tune in more precisely to students’ experience of orienting themselves to occupationally significant sense-giving fields (cf. Roth and Jornet 2017), such as care or customer care, which from a students’ perspective may appear as detached, theoretical or simply disparate matters.

Conclusion

The findings related to the first research question (What surveillance law is experientially emergent for upper secondary students through vocational instruction to become security officers?) can be summarised as follows. The law is refracted beyond factual and declarative knowing that (for example) security officers have the right to perform a citizen’s arrest, but not to ask people for identification. The students acquire proceduralised, attitudinal and rudimentary knowing of legal facts and basic protocols in accordance with the instruction’s tight alignment with learning outcomes and the industry’s requirements. Key facilitators of this process are instructor orchestrated self-assessment and peer assessment through feedback-making. As a result, the emergent surveillance law forms the core of a vocational stance in the initial stages of vocational becoming. Regarding the second question (How is learner readiness with respect to surveillance law expressed in the students’ feedback-making during instruction to become security officers?), young prospective security officers initially have crude forms of understanding (cf. Vygotskij 2001) of occupational powers and responsibilities. However, they gradually begin to develop stronger conceptual links between rudimentary legal terms, through the identified processes of knowledge integration when developing a vocational stance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Occupation here refers to the job of security officer whereas vocation refers to personal meanings that occupations acquire for individuals (Grubb and Lazerson 2009).

2. The term ‘security officer’ is used throughout this article as a synonym for security guard.

3. So-called foundation subjects are English, History, Physical Education and Health, Mathematics, Science Studies, Religion, Social Studies, and Swedish or Swedish as a second language.

4. Gauging from an estimate of 469 students in total (204 girls and 265 boys) (Lennart Johansson, the Swedish National Agency for Education, email message to author, 17 April 2019) who have completed the Fire, surveillance and safety course since 2011, the security officer training incorporated in institutional frameworks of upper secondary education, the context for this study, remains a viable but numerically minor way of becoming a security officer in Sweden.

5. BYA’s main mission is to develop the security officer occupation (see http://www.bya.se/).

6. Periezhivanie (in the singular) was introduced by Vygotskij in early stages of his career and elaborated in the final stages (see Rey and Mitjáns Martínez 2016).

7. Based on searches of EricEbsco (including Education Research Complete) and Google Scholar databases, using the Boolean string ‘learner readiness OR student readiness AND vocational education’.