Sources of vocational knowledge

ABSTRACT

Vocational knowledge originates from both research and from practice, each of which is transformed across several epistemic levels to become vocational knowledge. The several transformations of research to vocational knowledge have been described by Young and Bernstein as recontextualisations. Less well described are the successive transformations of practice to become vocational knowledge. This paper observes that practical knowledge has to be transformed across several epistemic levels to become vocational knowledge. It examines different types of literature on European artillery in the early modern period: scholarly books on ballistics which were printed in Latin, gunners’ manuals which were manuscripts in the vernacular, and artillery books for non specialist readers which were printed in the vernacular. It finds that practical knowledge didn’t have to be transformed just to apply it to a new context. Knowledge is transformed to a different epistemic level when it is expressed for use by a different type of actor for a qualitatively different purpose from the initial use. The paper concludes by arguing that vocational colleges and institutes have a potentially valuable role in developing vocational knowledge from practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Vocational knowledge
• research
• practice
• ballistics
• artillery
• early modern period

Acknowledgments

I thank Steven A Walton for his instructive comments in personal communications and for directing me to a number of informative publications. I presented earlier versions of this paper to the Journal of Vocational Education and Training 13^th international conference at Oxford’s Keble College on 29 June 2019, at the 5th Cambridge symposium on knowledge in education at Jesus College on 2 July 2019, and at the European conference on educational research at Universität Hamburg on 5 September 2019; I thank conference referees and participants for stimulating me to improve the paper. I am very grateful to 2 anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Vocational Education and Training for their close reading of the manuscript submitted for their evaluation, for their astute critical observations, and for their most valuable proposals. In particular, I thank Jim Hordern for his encouragement and constructive comments as conference participant, as convenor of an invited session of the European conference on educational research in 2019, and as a lead editor of this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.