PhD-fellow, Arnt Louw Vestergaard

The Danish Centre for Youth Research

The Danish School of Education / Aarhus University

DK- 2400 Copenhagen NV

T: +45 8888 9920

M: arl@dpu.dk

Abstract for the Summer School: Learning cultures, cultures of learning.
The National Network for Graduate Schools in Educational Research: The universities of Roskilde, Copenhagen, DPU/Aarhus, Aalborg and Southern Denmark.

TEACHING AND LEARNING IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING FROM A STUDENT'S PERSPECTIVE

The subject of this paper focuses on classroom/workshop teaching in the Danish Vocational Educational and Training (VET) from the perspectives of the students. The paper will deal with how the students´ actions, interests and experiences are related to the teaching space and the way the teaching is organized as well as what makes students thrive and learn in the learning environment and what blocks this thriving and learning.

The paper is based on empirical studies of the teaching, the social positions and positioning in the classroom, pupil-identities and the processes of in- and exclusion among the students. The purpose of the project is to point to successful learning processes and to shed light on the challenges the students as well as the teachers face in relation to the student's requirement of professional vocational skills. The paper will investigate the term: strangeness to the vocations as a concept that might shed light on the learning processes and the different possibilities different students has and occupy in the social space of the learning environment in VET. The paper is based on a 5 week anthropological field study, where I was enrolled as a student at the foundational course to become carpenters.

The paper will point to the challenges in organizing the learning of the student as well as the individual difficulties of the students in relation to grasping the tasks at hand and solving them (correctly) - both the theoretical as well as the practical tasks. The project will also highlight the important role of the social learning environment, in relation to the learning outcome of the students. 

The theoretical foundation of the project is socio-cultural and social-anthropological inspired among others by Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein's educa­tional sociology, Clifford Geertz thick description anthropology, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger theories of social relations and learning and Bronwyn Davies & Rom Harré's theories of identities and positioning.

Key Words: Learning outcome, social relations, organization of learning-processes, vocational skills, identity, anthropological field study and strangeness to vocation.