Elly de Bruijn

Teaching in innovative vocational education in the Netherlands

The orientation of vocational education towards competence-based education has led to fundamental changes in the work of vocational education teachers. This article pictures teaching in innovative, competence-based vocational education in the Netherlands. In a multiple case study, the teaching practices of 10 teachers from five vocational schools were thoroughly studied. By examining not only the actual behaviour of teachers but also their related personal ideas and professional attitudes, we learn about the ways teachers implement new educational concepts and their experienced uncertainties, dilemmas and practical tensions. These insights lead to a better understanding and specification of the concept of competence-based vocational education at the micro level of educational processes, that is, the interaction between teachers and students. Implications are described in terms of new repertoires of teaching behaviour and teaching methods – all in the context of vocational education.The orientation of vocational education towards competence-based education has led to fundamental changes in the work of vocational education teachers. This article pictures teaching in innovative, competence-based vocational education in the Netherlands. In a multiple case study, the teaching practices of 10 teachers from five vocational schools were thoroughly studied. By examining not only the actual behaviour of teachers but also their related personal ideas and professional attitudes, we learn about the ways teachers implement new educational concepts and their experienced uncertainties, dilemmas and practical tensions. These insights lead to a better understanding and specification of the concept of competence-based vocational education at the micro level of educational processes, that is, the interaction between teachers and students. Implications are described in terms of new repertoires of teaching behaviour and teaching methods – all in the context of vocational education.

The role of professional objects in technology-enhanced learning environments in higher education

We study project-based, technology-enhanced learning environments in higher education, which should produce, by means of specific mechanisms, learning outcomes in terms of transferable knowledge and learning-, thinking-, collaboration- and regulation-skills. Our focus is on the role of objects from professional practice serving as boundary objects and the authentic mechanisms they are to activate. We identify three sets of features of boundary objects: (1) facilitation of the interaction between actors enacting various roles; (2) handling in diverse physical and digital spaces; and (3) usage across certain timeframes. Data from an in-depth case study show that these features help to activate authentic mechanisms, namely, using expert performances, enacting multiple roles and perspectives, collaboratively constructing knowledge, reflecting and articulating. The identification of boundary objects and the way they trigger authentic mechanisms for learning, provide concrete guidance for the design of project-based, technology-enhanced learning environments in higher education.

Students’ meaning-making and sense-making of vocational knowledge in Dutch senior secondary vocational education

Abstract Meaning-making and sense-making are generally assumed to be part of students’ personal vocational knowledge development, since they contribute to both students’ socialisation in a vocation and students’ personalisation of concepts, values and beliefs regarding that vocation. However, how students in vocational education acquire meaning and make sense of vocational knowledge is not explained. Furthermore, examples of what these processes entail in the context of vocational education are lacking. A multiple case study was performed to explore students’ meaning-making and sense-making in classroom interactions in Dutch senior secondary vocational education. Our results show that meaning-making is a process in which students interpret vocational knowledge by explicating and clarifying this knowledge. Sense-making is perceived to be a process in which students concretise vocational knowledge by testing and justifying this knowledge. A research model was developed to describe how students make meaning and sense of vocational knowledge in interaction with practitioners.

Differences in design format and powerful learning environment characteristics of continuing pathways in vocational education as related to student performance and satisfaction

An important trend in Dutch Vocational Education and Training (VET) to ensure the curriculum continuity of sequential educational programmes is the design of continuing pathways encompassing more than one qualification level. These continuing pathways are characterised by different design formats and differences in learning environment characteristics that are regarded as powerful. In this study, the variety in design formats and powerful learning environment characteristics of existing continuing pathways, and the relationships between design formats and powerful learning environment characteristics on the one hand and student performance and satisfaction on the other hand were examined. Participants were five co-ordinators and 161 students from five so-called Green Lycea – each of which comprises a two-level (i.e. ‘Pre-Vocational Secondary Education (vmbo)’ and ‘Secondary Vocational Education (mbo)’) agricultural VET trajectory. There are preliminary indications that students benefit most from continuing pathways in which vmbo and mbo elements are truly interwoven, as these have relatively more powerful learning environment characteristics than those of separate pathways. When separate vmbo and mbo programmes are simply stuck together, the pathways seem to be relatively less powerful and to lead to lower satisfaction scores and a decrease in learning performance.

Interactions in vocational education : negotiation of meaning of students and teaching strategies

ABSTRACT This study aimed to describe verbal student–teacher interactions in vocational education from a socio-cultural perspective on negotiation of meaning. Teaching as part of these interactions is addressed by a combination of diagnosing, checking and intervening strategies. A study was conducted in which students (n students = 20) and teacher (n teachers = 5) from Social Work (SW) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) worked together in small groups (n groups = 5) discussing vocational core problems. Each group held five discussions (n discussions = 25). All discussions were audio recorded and transcribed before they were analysed for negotiation of meaning including teaching strategies. The results showed that 5–8% of the interactions include negotiation of meaning. Interactions in SW groups revealed more negotiation of meaning than in interactions in ICT groups. Teaching strategies mainly included checking and intervening activities in favour of diagnosing activities. Furthermore, teachers used meta-cognitive and conceptual interventions most frequently. The implications of these results are discussed by reflecting on occupational differences and on how negotiation of meaning including teaching strategies can be enhanced.

The Role and Nature of Knowledge in Vocational Programmes

An important issue in the design of vocational education is the positioning of the knowledge component of occupations in the curriculum. The underlying question here is what knowledge contents students come across during their education in order to develop their personal knowledge base for professional performance. The knowledge contents of occupations are not unambiguous. In the literature, a distinction is made between different types of knowledge. The first type is codified knowledge that is related to disciplinary knowledge such as language and mathematics but also mechanics, physiology, nutrition, economy, et cetera. Occupational knowledge refers to the specific manifestations of this discipline knowledge. The second type of occupational knowledge refers to distributed and embodied knowledge that can be partly explicated in procedures.

Vocational Education in the Netherlands

This chapter introduces the Dutch vocational education system and aims to foster an understanding of how it currently works. It describes and discusses the features of this system and the foundational issues that underlie it. Patterns of participation show the crucial position of vocational education in the overall education system in the Netherlands. It provides opportunities for supporting promising educational careers and positive positions in the labour market. The system design is to be without “dead ends”: everybody is supposed to leave the system with a fitting qualification. However, this design has proven to be less promising in its realization. Early tracking foreshadows pathways and makes some careers, if not dead ends, difficult, elevating the risk of dropping out. Five fundamental issues are highlighted when discussing the current Dutch vocational education system in practice in this chapter. Firstly, within a public frame, vocational education is a product of cooperation amongst various stakeholders. The specifics of the private-public frame are helpful for understanding the processes by which Dutch vocational education is uniquely shaped, and lead to its specific kinds of programmes and cooperation between schools and enterprises. The freedom of education concept comprises a second issue. Thirdly, tensions between accessibility and allocation to labour market and, fourthly, between educating for the short term and the longer term future are common to most vocational education systems, albeit manifested differently because of the national peculiarities. Fifthly, the current expectation for the Dutch public provision of vocational education contributing to lifelong learning of workers is a challenge for the future and, already, testing its capacity as a system to support this goal.

Enhancing teaching and learning in the Dutch vocational education system

This book discusses how the Dutch vocational education system has undergone significant waves of reform driven by global imperatives, national concerns and governmental policy goals. Like elsewhere, the impetuses for these reforms are directed to generating a more industry-responsive, locally-accountable and competence-based vocational education system. Each wave of reforms, however, has had particular emphases, and directed to achieve particular policy outcomes. Yet, they are more than mere versions of what had or is occurring elsewhere. They are shaped by specific national imperatives, sentiments and localised concerns. Consequently, whilst this book elaborate what constitutes the contemporary provision of vocational education in the Netherlands also addresses a broader concern of how vocational education systems become formed, manifested within nation states, and then are transformed through particular imperatives, institutional arrangement and localised factors. So, the readers of this book whilst learning much about the Dutch vocational education system will also come to identify and engage with a selection of contributions that inform factors that situate, shape and transform vocational education systems. Such a focus seems important given an era when there are concerns to standardise and make uniform educational provisions, often for administrative or political imperatives. As such, this book will be of interest not only to those who are engaged in the field of vocational education, but those with an interest in educational policy, practice and comparative studies.

Revealing conceptual understanding of international business

This study aims to identify an adequate approach for revealing conceptual understanding in higher professional education. Revealing students’ conceptual understanding is an important step towards developing effective curricula, assessment and aligned teaching strategies to enhance conceptual understanding in higher education. Essays and concept maps were used to determine how students’ conceptual understanding of international business can be revealed adequately. To this end, 132 international business students in higher professional education were randomly assigned to four conditions to write essays and to construct concept maps about an international business research topic. The conditions were: essay alone, essay after concept map, concept map alone, and concept map after essay. An assessment rubric was used to assess the breadth and depth of students’ conceptual understanding. Results show essays are the most adequate approach for revealing conceptual understanding of international business. In particular, concept maps revealed fewer facts and less reasoning than essays. Essays written after concept maps were less effective than essays, possibly since students perceived these essays as redundant. Further research is suggested on how educators can foster conceptual understanding.

Know Your Onions: An Exploration of How Students Develop Vocational Knowledge During Professional Performance

ABSTRACT How students develop vocational knowledge is a rather under-researched topic in the context of vocational education and training. Vocational knowledge is perceived as the kind of knowledge required to perform in occupational practice. From an activity-theoretical approach to learning, supplemented with ideas borrowed from inferentialism, this article explores how students develop vocational knowledge in terms of a cognitive activity of contextualising. A qualitative in-depth study is presented, which explores students’ cognitive processes during professional performance. Hospitality students and culinary students were interviewed and asked to articulate the process of contextualising during their work in a sandwich bar. A detailed description of the characteristics of contextualising is presented, and the process is illustrated with examples from the data.