Daniel Persson Thunqvist

Moving in and out of framings: activity contexts in talks with young unemployed people within a training project

This paper is concerned with talk activities in and through which parties simulate another talk activity. Data are drawn from a social and vocational training project for young unemployed people involving talk activities of multiple ambiguous kinds. In particular, we analyze simulated job interviews in which the young people are supposed to learn how to behave in real job interviews, but the parties seem to orient to several other goals simultaneously. Participants do not sustain a unified definition of what is going on and activities involve complexities and hybridities on several planes. This allows us to probe issues having to do with concepts like context, frame, activity type, and genre. In terms of theory, we challenge some approaches to context as developed within Conversation Analysis.

Comprehension checks, clarifications, and corrections in an emergency call with a nonnative speaker of Swedish

This article reports on a case study of an emergency call with a 12-year-old girl, who is hearably not a native speaker of Swedish. A sequential analysis of the recorded call revealed two interesting interactional practices through which the participants can be seen to pursue mutual understanding. The first type of practice involves the participants’ orientation toward potential or projected problems of comprehension and should therefore be understood in terms of preemptive management of mutual understanding. This is chiefly accomplished by either party (a) making sure that the other party has understood; (b) checking the correctness and adequacy of one’s own understanding; and finally (c) displaying one’s own understanding of the other party en passant, that is, without requiring the other party’s confirmation. The second type of practice, commonly known as conversational repair, is used to deal with established problems of comprehension. The methods through which these problems are managed involve (d) repeating and paraphrasing preceding turns or their problematic fragments; (e) finding alternative ways of talking about demonstrably noncomprehended information; and finally (f) postponing such problematic exchanges. The study demonstrates that despite the institutionally asymmetric character of emergency calls, both participants are actively engaged in working toward intersubjectivity, and the analysis identifies several different ways through which the parties orient to and handle interactional trouble so as to secure mutual comprehension in a socially smooth yet efficient manner.

Now It's Not School, It's for Real!: Negotiated Participation in Media Vocational Training.

By taking up the strand in Lave and Wengers writing on situated learning that directs attention to social dynamics and issues of power and positioning, the present article argues for the fruitfulness of including the concept of negotiated participation in approaches to teaching and learning. Based on a fieldwork in vocational media production projects, this study demonstrates the tensions and contradictions that came out of the hybrid nature of these vocational practices in high school. Establishing the professionally relevant modes of participation in the projects was fraught with struggles in which the project members had to bracket institutionalized school routines as well as handle and negotiate particular work life conditions (including cooperation with old timers in the target professions). It is argued that the way institutional contradictions are manifested and negotiated in everyday teaching and interaction can inform our understanding of the premises for multifunctional educational praxis.

Students' Strategies for Learning Identities as Industrial Workers in a Swedish Upper Secondary School VET Programme.

Abstract The aim of this article is to investigate the learning strategies vocational students use to become part of a work community, and how these strategies are related to the formation of a vocational identity at the workplace. Conducting qualitative interviews, data were collected from 44 industrial programme students from six upper secondary schools. The findings revealed five recurrent strategies used by the students for learning vocational identities as industrial workers. The students took individual responsibility for their own learning, asked questions to gain deeper vocational knowledge, searched for role models in the work community, positioned themselves as a resource to the work community, understood and used humour and jokes in order to become a member of the community. The conclusion is that the students actively develop learning strategies to adapt their behaviour to the norms and ideals of the industrial work community. In the process of develop the vocational identities as industrial workers, the students’ vocational habitus is transformed to better fit the industrial work community. The integration of the notions of agency and habitus demonstrates the dynamic nature of students’ participation in work communities; simultaneously, the students reproduce social structures that promote vocational identities.

Media literacy and digital divide: a cross-cultural case study of Sweden and Lithuania

A case study of Sweden and Lithuania aims at analysing the important question of inclusion and exclusion when it comes to the media literacy and the digital divide. Analysis of country-level factors, such as social-stratification, technological infrastructure, educational system, cultural values is provided with the goal to identify the keen factors widening the digital divide of certain population groups in both countries. The study has revealed that in regard to media literacy, age matters the most in case of Lithuania. On the contrary, in Sweden the digital divide between different age groups is diminishing but the media literacy of socio-economically marginalized groups (immigrants in particular) is much lower as compared to the general trends in population. The digital generation – children and teenagers – have got much more in common in both countries as opposed to the senior adult populations.

Vocational education in the Nordic countries: Learning from diversity

Vocational Education in the Nordic Countries: Learning from Diversity is the second of two books that disseminates new and systematic knowledge on the strengths and weaknesses of the different mode ...

Same, but different - The Emergence of VET in three Nordic Countries

The post-compulsory educational offers in Switzerland are characterised by a strong focus on professional qualifications. Even today, three out of four diplomas awarded at this level are vocational certificates (Cortesi/Imdorf 2013). Thereby, vocational education at companies and vocational schools is of great significance. In 2010, 87% of all vocational education learners in Switzerland completed their basic vocational training in the context of programmes happening simultaneously at the company and the vocational school. In the German-speaking part of Switzerland this share approached 90%, while in the French-speaking part the share was 76% (SBFI 2014, p. 12). Known for its alignment with the needs of the economy, this kind of educational organisation continues to guarantee its graduates a good labour market chance in Switzerland. Respectively, Switzerland is increasingly perceived as a showcase model for vocational education.Historically apprenticeship has developed very differently in the Nordic countries, either as a separate dual system (Denmark), as an integrated part of upper secondary education (Norway) or has almost disappeared (Sweden). The purpose of this paper is to examine the roots of these differences in the period of re-regulation following the deregulation caused by the dissolution of the guilds from the middle of the 19th century. The paper presents the first results of a comparative study of the roots of these differences in the historical transition of [vocational education and training] VET in three Nordic countries. A number of earlier studies (Archer 1979; Thelen 2004) have pointed to the significance of the formative transition period after the dissolution of the guilds for the subsequent trajectories of VET, especially the relation between artisans and industrialists and the relation between the labour market partners and the state in establishing new forms of regulation of collective skills formation. Even though the coalitions and institutions formed in this period do not determine subsequent development, they do make some policy options more likely than others (Dobbins and Busemeyer 2014).Austria with its specific ‘dual’ structure, including both, a strong fulltime school sector and a strong apprenticeship system, lies in-between the established classifications of VET. This structure is not a result of ‘systemic’ political decision-making; rather the different institutions have evolved more or less parallel. It is a remarkable phenomenon that the formal structure has remained quite stable through history, throughout very different regime periods (the Habsburg Empire, 1st Republic, two Fascisms, 2nd Republic). The challenges are first to identify the persistent structural traits, and second to explain the historical processes. Methodologically, the different versions of institutionalist approaches are used for the reanalysis of artefacts from historical studies; the main task is a consistent interpretation of the material, providing new insights about the long term patterns of education reform.