Gun-Britt Wärvik

Swedish Adult Education in Transition? Implications of the Work First Principle

The Swedish government recently launched a number of short-term initiatives within the framework of formal adult education. These initiatives are: vocational adult education, education for commercial drivers and apprenticeship education for adults. The new initiatives can be seen as education for the short-term needs of the world of work and we will argue that they can be understood in the light of a changing labour market policy, the so called work first principle’. In the late 1990s, when the Adult Education Initiative was launched, the government stressed that a person needs a general education of at least three years at upper secondary level in order to be employable. The new initiatives illustrate another view of reasoning, i.e. that specific vocational knowledge and contact with the workplaces are crucial for getting a job. The work first principle is reflected in the idea of adult education as a way to satisfy the short-term needs of the labour market having been squeezed into the larger aim of formal adult education as a way to upgrade formal qualifications for the long-term needs of society as a whole. The article identifies and analyses tensions and conflicting interests concerning adult education on a systemic level.

The Reconfiguration of Adult Education VET Teachers: Tensions amongst Organisational Imperatives, Vocational Ideals and the Needs of Students.

Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the introduction of a quality assurance scheme as a regulating technology that is part of adult education restructuring occurring currently, and to examine the subsequent tensions in the work of the VET teachers. The scheme implies a standardisation of educational content and of assessment procedures. It is a management tool for customer orientation as well as for soft control of teachers’ work. The concepts of reconfiguration and de-coupling are used to illuminate how the teachers are referring to themselves and their work, in relation to the introduction of these new arrangements. The main source of tensions emanates from teachers encountering students with multiple needs embracing not only educational, but also social and psychological as well as existential aspects. This tension also points to situations when teachers are able to preserve another type of individualisation than the standardised. However, the scheme also has the potential to govern new relations in teachers’ work by creating new links between knowledge, adult education policy, management, teachers and students.

Marketisation of adult education: principals as business leaders, standardised teachers and responsibilised students

Abstract The marketisation of education is a global phenomenon and has attracted increased interest during the last three decades, not least in terms of research on school choice and its consequences. However, while much research has been conducted on the marketisation of schooling, less attention has been directed at adult education. In this paper, focus is directed at institutional logics and institutional responses to the process of marketisation of adult education. More specifically, we focus on how a procurement system, implemented in order to create competition and to increase quality in adult education, influences how students construe themselves, as well as the way principals and teachers work. Our results indicate that teachers emerge as the main source of resistance towards an institutional logic emerging in the wake of marketisation, while principals and students to a large extent conform to the emerging institutional demands.

Conditions for Learning During a Period of Change. Dilemmas and Disturbances on the Production Floor

According to powerful rhetoric, economic competition within the industry, related to globalization and new technology demands ‘something different’ — traditional solutions do not work any more. The traditional solutions are often related to Frederic Taylor and scientific management and a production system connected to mass production. A Tayloristic top-down command and control system where the work is planned in the office and carried out by the workers on the production floor should be replaced by flexible and competent workers in self-directed work teams (Karlsson & Eriksson, 2000; Sandkull & Johansson, 2000).

Integration Between School and Work: Changes and Challenges in the Swedish VET 1970–2011

This chapter focuses on Swedish upper secondary vocational education and training (USVET) and evolving conditions for the integration of education in schools and workplaces, as intended in the goals of three upper secondary school curricular reforms of 1970, 1994, and 2011. These reforms have transformed educational traditions in response to new societal expectations arising from changing working life and educational individualisation. Two occupational areas—healthcare and the textile industry—serve as examples that, over several decades, have been exposed to radical transformations in production and their contributions to the economy. Accordingly, the demands of occupational competencies have changed. The chapter is mainly based on secondary analyses of empirical research. Activity theoretical concepts are used as a lens for analysing changes. The main findings highlight different societal motives for education and the labour market under each of the three reforms, which impacted the objects formulated for USVET and the general organisation of how USVET was to be realised. A notable difference was the emphasis on vocational or general content, which has changed the ways in which integration between school and work has been realised. In both healthcare and the textile industry, VET teachers have been the main mediating agents of integration, albeit with a diminished role, since their contact and engagement with work sites became limited to a few visits. Teachers are now dependent on workplace activities they are not part of, yet have the responsibility to enact the curriculum in ways needed to optimise integration. The point being made here is that teachers’ roles in integration need to be understood in terms of cultural and historical contexts that influence the quality of integration they are able to enact and facilitate.

Concepts, Purposes and Practices of Integration Across National Curriculum

The concept of integrating two sets of experiences implies a duality, that is, a consideration of the contributions of and relations between these two entities. For vocational education, it means accounting for experiences in at least two separate physical and social settings (i.e. workplaces and educational institutions) and how these can be and are reconciled by learners. These two kinds of settings exist for different purposes and have distinct goals, processes and practices aligned for their continuity. There are also other stakeholders who have an interest in the goals for and processes for realising vocational education, as well as an interest in securing their purposes. National industry groups, employee unions and professional agencies seek to achieve specific outcomes for particular industries and workplaces. All these stakeholders also make particular contributions to the provision of vocational education and implicitly to students, apprentices and workers’ learning. As illustrated in the national cases presented in Section II of this volume, the dual set of experiences in workplace and educational institutions is now an increasingly significant and common feature and characteristic of vocational education. This is the case whether it is enacted by upper secondary schools, specialised technical education institutions or universities. It is experiences in dual settings, the relations between them and how learners come to engage with and reconcile these experiences that make this form of education quite distinct from general education. Thus, integration of these experiences is salient, including how provisions of experiences are enacted and experienced across a wide range of educational and work settings, and in quite distinct ways.

Integration Between School and Work: Developments, Conceptions and Applications

Integration of students’ experiences in and between education institutions (as in schools, vocational colleges and universities) and workplaces, to develop vocational competence, is a central tenet of contemporary educational systems and provisions. Educational institutions and workplaces are no longer seen in isolation for pre-employment preparations as well as continuing development of the workforce. However, researchers (e.g. Onstenk J, Blokhuis F, Education + Training, 49(6):489–499, 2007; Billett S, Integrating practice-based experiences into higher education. Springer, Dordrecht, 2015) argue that the concept of ‘integration’ remains underdeveloped, both theoretically and conceptually. In this chapter we summarise some of the more general developments and complexities around integration of students’ learning experiences in schools and work sites. We discuss the historical intentions and progression of pedagogical means into curriculum design and delivery of vocational education to better prepare individuals as skilful and productive workers. The account here outlines conceptualisations and development of processes of integration as vocational education systems transformed in their manifestations, purposes and practices. Examples of different types of integration and typologies and their theoretical bases are summarised. We then outline examples of common applications, i.e. pedagogies and arrangements suited for integration. Three main units of analysis (individual, context and cultural and historical) are also introduced. While integration often has been an issue for two parties, school and workplace, students’ agency is also considered and given a foregrounded position here. An identified challenge in researching integration is to recognise agency intertwined with structure. The concluding section contends that the main aim of integration is to jointly interpret knowledge and knowing in the social cultural contexts of different settings and achieve a ‘common sense of mutuality’ (Edwards A, Revealing relational work. In Edwards (ed) Working relationally in and across practices. A cultural-historical approach to collaboration. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2017, p. 2). We recommend more research to further illuminate this complex phenomenon of integration.

Considerations for the Integration of Students’ Experiences

Educational institutions are fundamentally designed for teaching and learning, whereas learning in workplaces remains a secondary function supported through engagement in routine and nonroutine work tasks, direct and indirect guidance and opportunities and accessibility to a range of work tasks to gain experience (Billett, Stud Contin Educ 23(1):19–35, 2001). Development of skilled workers demands that learning at educational institutions and in workplaces is well connected and integrated. Without deliberate efforts from teachers, guides, mentors or other actors to make connections between learning at different sites, students could likely remain ‘passive bystanders’ during scheduled practice periods in workplaces. It therefore becomes necessary to develop learners’ capacities to help mediate between the curriculum organised by their educational institutions and the curriculum situated in the everyday business of workplaces where they gain vocational experiences. Further to empowering learners to access and engage in learning, there are other considerations necessary for effective integration of learning in different sites. In this chapter we draw on the cases presented in Part II to propose broad considerations for integration around four imperatives: social-cultural arrangements, negotiated curriculum, the roles of stakeholders and learner preparedness. Imperatives and implications for students’ learning are discussed. In the summary of the chapter, we recapitulate the main ideas about supporting integration of learning in educational institutions and workplaces and stress the significance of a collective and reciprocal approach for integration.

Integration of learning for refugee and migrant students: VET teachers’ practices through practice theory lens

ABSTRACT The study reported here used a practice theory lens to understand vocational education and training (VET) teachers’ current practices in supporting integration of learning in educational institutions and workplaces – specifically for refugee and migrant students. A case study was conducted with 10 teachers delivering aged care programmes in South East Queensland, Australia and in a municipality in West Sweden. During in-depth interviews teachers explained the enabling and challenging aspects of their practice, and specific strategies they used to support students with integration of learning in the two main sites. Analyses of data concentrated on understanding three types of arrangements in the practice architectures at the two learning sites. Teachers extended their everyday pedagogical approaches to support integration of learning and meet the specific needs of refugee and migrant students. Their teaching comprised interdependent practices of VET and aged care in two settings, each with distinct ecologies of practice. Their narratives reflect contestations between practice traditions of aged care practices in Australia and Sweden, and students’ understandings and reflections of practices in their birth countries. We conclude that teacher training and adjustments to these arrangements can bridge contestations between the enacted and experienced curriculum in the two sites.

Adult education in a workplace context: recognising production workers’ responses and partnership challenges

Abstract This article is about a larger regional Swedish partnership programme that was established to develop site-based education for production workers. A partnership is seen as composed of different practice architectures. The actors involved represented larger transnational as well as smaller manufacturing companies, employers, the metal workers’ trade union, educational organizations, university researchers and public labour market authorities. Adult education teachers were engaged to act as leading action researchers on company-specific projects. The partnership programme is used here to illustrate the problem of supporting recognition under shifting partnership circumstances. The aim is to analyse enabling and constraining conditions affecting the teachers’ efforts as well as new possibilities that appeared as the partnership evolved over time. The article illustrates how the development of site-based education within a partnership framework means to develop a new practice that is very sensitive to local circumstances. It also shows how local meetings between people both enable and constrain, but also may open up a space for mutual recognition. A normative argument is that local spaces for mutual recognition need to be supported in a respectful way. Recognition of the particularities of each site is vital for this to happen.