02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Paper
A Review of Design Principles for Developing Vocational Skills of low-qualified Adults
Bernd Gössling
University of Innsbruck, Austria
Presenting Author: Gössling, Bernd
Adults with low or no formal qualifications are at risk of losing their jobs or slipping into precarious employment. Upskilling can improve their situation and is becoming even more important due to increasing reskilling needs in response to the transformation of the world of work. However, prior research shows that low-qualified adults tend to participate less in in continuing VET than better educated individuals (Nieuwenhove/De Wever 2022, Kruppe/Baumann 2019, Müller/Wenzelmann 2019). If they do participate in vocational training their dropout rate is comparatively high (Baas/Philipps 2019). And although already disadvantaged in terms of their education, the learning intentions of low-qualified workers can be below average (Kyndt et al. 2011).
Nevertheless, there are efforts in many countries to set up more workplace preparation programs to address urgent shortages of skilled workers. This is also the case in Austria, where the AMS - the Austrian labor office - finances competency-based VET programs for the unemployed as part of its active labor market policy. These programs are meant to ease the transition in employment.
Often, these vocational education and training measures can not achieve the purposes for which they were established. This leads to the question of how competency-based approaches to vocational education and training for low-qualified people need to be designed. Therefore, the presented study aims to formulate a set of design principles to develop vocational competencies for the transition to the labor market.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe didactic research project starts with an initial set of design principles based on a review of the literature (including Gillen 2013, Euler/Hahn 2014, Weber/Hojnik 2016). This is followed by a cross-case analysis that included four vocational education and training suppliers that the labor office considered to be good practices. Focus groups with VET trainers of these providers were conducted first to validate and refine design principles and second to gather implementation examples for the application of design principles in educational practice. Case comparisons then reveal what it takes in different contexts to make competency-based education and training work.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe study creates knowledge about the practice of competency-based training for the difficult-to-reach group of low-qualified adults from the perspective of the trainers involved. In this way, the gap between the theory of competency-based training and its implementation in practice is addressed. The cross-case analysis leadsto a list of refined design principles and their implementation conditions (Gössling et al. 2022). The comparison of very different training designs shows the transferability of these basic principles. The results can be used for the development of VET programs targeted at the needs of low-qualified adults.
ReferencesBaas, Meike / Philipps, Veronika (2019): Über Ausbildung in Arbeit? Verläufe gering gebildeter Jugendlicher. In: Forschungsverbund Sozioökonomische Berichterstattung (Hrsg.): Berichterstattung zur sozioökonomischen Entwicklung in Deutschland: Exklusive Teilhabe - ungenutzte Chancen. Bielefeld: wbv. 1-36. https://doi.org/10.3278/6004498w012
Euler, Dieter / Hahn, Angela (2014): Wirtschaftsdidaktik. Bern: Haupt.
Gillen, Julia (2013): Kompetenzorientierung als didaktische Leitkategorie in der berufli- chen Bildung. Ansatzpunkte für eine Systematik zur Verknüpfung curricularer und metho- discher Aspekte. In: bwp@ Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik – online. Ausgabe 24. http://www.bwpat.de/ausgabe24/gillen_bwpat24.pdf
Gössling, Bernd / Borbe, Victoria / Hauser, Lena / Thurow, Nina (2022): Präzisierung und Entwicklung von Schlüsselkompetenzen in der beruflichen Aus- und Weiterbildung. Abschlussbericht des Kooperationsprojekts ‚Key Competencies‘ (KEYS) in Kooperation mit dem AMS Tirol. Innsbruck: Universität Innsbruck. https://ams-forschungsnetzwerk.at/pub/13665
Kruppe, Thomas / Baumann, Martina (2019): Weiterbildungsbeteiligung, formale Qualifikation, Kompetenzausstattung und Persönlichkeitsmerkmale. In: IAB- Forschungsbericht. No. 1/2019. Nürnberg. http://hdl.handle.net/10419/204767
Kyndt, Eva / Govaerts, Natalie / Dochy, Filip / Baert, Herman (2011): The Learning Intention of Low-Qualified Employees. A Key for Participation in Lifelong Learning and Continuous Training. Vocations and Learning 4, 211-229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-011-9058-5
Müller, Normann / Wenzelmann, Felix (2019): Berufliche Weiterbildung – Teilnahme und Abstinenz. In: Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung (ZfW) / Journal for Research on Adult Education. 47–73 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40955-019-0141-0
Nieuwenhove, Lisse van / De Wever, Bram (2022): Why are low-educated adults underrepresented in adult education? Studying the role of educational background in expressing learning needs and barriers. In: Studies in Continuing Education, 44:1, 189-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2020.1865299
Weber, Friederike / Hojnik, Sylvia (2016): Praxishandbuch Kompetenzorientierung. Theoretische Grundlagen und praktische Methoden eines kompetenzorientierten beruflichen Trainings. Unter Mitarbeit von: Dorothea Pausch-Heidarian und Andrea Reiter. Wien: Communicatio. https://www.ams-forschungsnetzwerk.at/downloadpub/AMS_PH_Kompetenzorientierung.pdf
02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Paper
Inclusive Vocational Education and Situation Definition
Patrick Schaar, Matthias Vonken
University of Erfurt, Germany
Presenting Author: Schaar, Patrick;
Vonken, Matthias
Since the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into force in Germany in 2009, inclusion has become increasingly relevant in vocational education and training. What is missing so far is a foundation of inclusive VET, namely concerning the micro level of the teaching-learning situations in classrooms.
Joint (inclusive) teaching-learning processes represent action situations that depend on comparable interpretations of the situation by the actors involved. A starting point for enabling joint teaching-learning processes are the lifeworlds (Lebenswelt) of all those who are involved in this process. An important prerequisite for teachers at VET schools to deal with the heterogeneity prevailing in VET, especially from the perspective of inclusion, is therefore to recognise and understand the life worlds of the students. It needs to be clarified how teachers can access these lifeworlds and how learners can (learn to) understand them among themselves. While in relatively homogeneous groups it is comparably easy to understand and often accept another one’s lifeworld, this process becomes more difficult with the increase of the distance of one’s lifeworld from others. Therefore, one important question that needs to be explored in order to foster inclusive teaching and learning is how teachers (and pupils) can gain access to the understanding (in the sense of comprehension) of disparate lifeworlds.
Teachers usually attempt to classify their pupils on the basis of reports, diagnostic instruments etc., which is necessarily subjective. Often this leads to labelling and stigmatisation, which impedes the process of inclusion. Another way that could facilitate the pedagogue’s access to the process of understanding are critical situations in the sense of situations in which teachers and learners perceive a lack of comprehension towards others and their intention. In these moments, consciously or unconsciously - according to the assumption - a process of reflection on each other's access to the world begins
The presentation shows the results of an empirical study within the framework of the BMBF project InklusiBuS "Inclusive vocational education and training and situation definition", in which the possibilities and limits of inclusive teaching and learning in vocational school teaching situations were investigated. To this end, inclusion is first explained on the basis of system-theoretical and action-theoretical approaches as well as with the help of a phenomenological concept of lifeworld and situation. The first survey phase followed a Grounded Theory oriented approach. Codes were developed which include on the one hand basics of recognizing and interpreting other lifeworlds, the externalization of one's own lifeworld and the perception of its limitations as well as recognizing and creating common situation definitions. Those codes were operationalized and investigated in a nationwide questionnaire survey with vocational school teachers. The presentation will show results on how teachers and pupils understand and externalise their lifeworlds to support inclusive teaching and learning, and what can be done to facilitate the understanding of others lifeworlds to support inclusive teaching and learning.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe empirical study is devised in two parts. In the first part a grounded theory approach was used to collect qualitative data on self-perception and perception by others, on defining the situation and exploring subjective theories of the actors in inclusive learning and teaching settings in vocational education in the German federal state of Thuringia. Following the principle of theoretical saturation, the sample includes 53 interviews: 24 teachers from vocational institutions, 6 members of in-company training staff and 23 trainees with and without disadvantages / disabilities. Codes were developed which show different approaches of recognizing and interpreting other lifeworlds, the externalization of one's own lifeworld and the perception of its limitations as well as recognising and creating common situation definitions.
The second survey phase focussed on the question, how these approaches can be combined to strategies by the teachers. Therefore the codes were operationalised and investigated in a nationwide (Germany) online questionnaire survey with 866 vocational school teachers. According to the topics and the scales of the questions, the data was structured in separate principal component analyses (PCA). After the dimensional reduction of the data, the components that were extracted show the combinations of different approaches to different strategies. The data was simultaneously checked by T-tests to investigate how often the different aspects are used in the respective strategy of each component.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe procedure of how teachers in vocational schools arrange inclusive learning settings can be described in three phases. Before teachers can act as a mediator between the life worlds of their pupils, they must first decipher the lifeworlds themselves.
Therefore, the teacher first needs access to the life worlds. Direct communicative access takes place in classroom situations through direct questioning, like in familiarisation rounds, but also in the form of short conversations before or after the lesson. The observational approach is less obtrusive. This focuses primarily on the body language of the students and pays attention to mood swings. Communication with third parties is a characteristic of the indirect-communicative approach. Teachers have, depending on the educational institution, various documents related to their students at their disposal, which they can use to obtain information. This is described as access via documents. Sometimes, however, teachers do not want to spend energy on understanding the students' lifeworld, which is described as procrastination.
The results of the different variants of access to lifeworlds must be processed in the second step, i.e. reconstructed, in order to then create situations that are conducive to inclusive teaching-learning processes. In the process of understanding, it often becomes clear that one's own limitations can hinder access to the lifeworld of the other and must be overcome.
After the teacher has identified and interpreted the students' lifeworlds, the next step is to transfer this to the level of action. The teacher supports the pupils in going through a similar process of identifying and interpreting. Either the framing of the learning situation takes place through the teacher, the group or a set of rules. This is followed by lifeworld exchange through the support of communication at the individual or group level and the exchange of lifeworlds through communicative or experiential approaches.
ReferencesBaraldi, Claudio, Giancarlo Corsi, and Elena Espositio. 1999. GLU - Glossar zu Niklas Luhmanns Theorie sozialer Systeme. 3rd ed. Frankfurt a.M. Suhrkamp.
Bürli, Alois. 1997. Sonderpädagogik international: Vergleiche, Tendenzen, Perspektiven. Luzern: Ed. SZH/SPC.
Chang, Sandra R. d. S., Marcia M. N. B. Duarte, and José R. P. Veloso. 2019. ‘Paths, misplacements and challenges in Brazilian VET for people with disability.’ Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 1–17. doi:10.1080/13636820.2019.1623296.
Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. 1998. Grounded theory: Strategien qualitativer Forschung. Bern: Huber.
Glasersfeld, Ernst. 1998. ‘Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit und des Begriffs der Objektivität.’ In Einführung in den Konstruktivismus, edited by Heinz Gumin and Heinrich Meier. 4th ed., 9-36. München: Oldenbourg Verlag.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Band 1: Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung. 4th ed. Frankfurt a.M. Suhrkamp.
Heidegger, Martin. 1996. Being and Time. SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy. Albany, N.Y. State University of New York Press.
Heinrichs, Karin, Hannes Reinke, and Gerhard Minnameier. 2019. Heterogenität in der beruflichen Bildung: Im Spannungsfeld von Erziehung, Förderung und Fachausbildung. 1. Auflage. Wirtschaft - Beruf - Ethik.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1999. Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. 2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M. Suhrkamp.
Pullman, Ashley. 2019. ‘A bridge or a ledge? The bidirectional relationship between vocational education and training and disability.’ Journal of Vocational Education & Training 34 (3): 1–22. doi:10.1080/13636820.2019.1631378.
Schweder, Marcel. 2016. ‘Inklusion/Exklusion par excellence – Der Freiheitsentzug als Vorbild für die Programme des Erziehungssystems.’ bwp@ (30): 1-10.
Thomas, William I., and Dorothy S. Thomas. 1928. The child in America. New York: Knopf.
United Nations. 2006. United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Vonken, Matthias. 2017. ‘Competence, Qualification and Action Theory.’ In Competence-based Vocational and Professional Education: Bridging the Worlds of Work and Education. Vol. 23, edited by Martin Mulder, 67-82. Technical and {Vocational} {Education} and {Training} 23. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Winkler, Michael. 2014. ‘Inklusion - Nachdenkliches zum Verhältnis pädagogischer Professionalität und politischer Utopie.’ Neue Praxis: np: Zeitschrift für Sozialarbeit, Sozialpädagogik und Sozialpolitik 44 (2): 108-123.
Ziemann, Andreas, ed. 2013. Offene Ordnung? Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Paper
Improving College Preparation for Students with Learning Disabilities through Engineering-focused Vocational Education
Jay Plasman1, Michael Gottfried2, Filiz Oskay1
1The Ohio State University, United States of America; 2University of Pennsylvania, United States of America
Presenting Author: Plasman, Jay
Over the next ten years, there is expected to be a significant increase in the demand for high-skilled and STEM jobs around the world, with some specific fields in engineering projecting increases of up to 14 percent while there has been a decrease in the number of students enrolling in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects and majors (National Science Board, 2010; Ognenova, 2019; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022a). Additionally, in recent years there has been a specific call to address the lack of diversity in STEM fields, including individuals with disabilities (Ladner & Burgstahler, 2015). This group has received attention given that individuals with disabilities have lower overall educational attainment in engineering than their peers without disabilities and are significantly less likely to have a STEM-related career (Campaign for Science and Engineering, 2014; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). Though current data availability makes disaggregation by specific type of disability difficult, students with learning disabilities (SWLDs) make up a substantial proportion of all students and are therefore an important population on which to focus educational and career progression.
As one potential means of promoting persistence along one STEM pipeline—engineering specifically—we explore how participation in engineering career-related coursework (E-CTE) may relate to a set of key college preparatory measures. To this end, we asked the following research questions:
- For SWLDs, how does E-CTE coursetaking in high school link to key college preparatory achievement and coursetaking outcomes?
- For SWLDs, how does E-CTE coursetaking in high school link to secondary-to-postsecondary transition outcomes?
E-CTE represents one strand of STEM-focused CTE coursework. Examples of such courses include surveying, structural engineering, and computer assisted design. Through participation in these courses, students gain the necessary skills and education to excel and persist in STEM-related areas by completing rigorous projects related to engineering design, manufacturing process implementations, and quality improvements (Gottfried et al., 2014). These courses are meant to complement the material and reinforce the conceptual and academic knowledge from these traditional STEM courses (Bozick & Dalton, 2013; Shifrer & Callahan, 2010).
Participation in this type of coursework links to improved student outcomes such as higher math scores, better chances of participating in advanced math/science coursework, higher postsecondary earnings, and better chances of graduating from high school (Bozick & Dalton, 2013; Dougherty, 2016; Gottfried, 2015). Additionally, there is reason to believe these courses are particularly beneficial to certain subgroups of students. For example, female students who complete engineering technology coursework in high school receive a boost in probability of earning an engineering credential in college greater than the boost for male students (Gottfried & Plasman, 2018a), and students with learning disabilities who participate in AS-CTE receive a boost in their probability of graduating from high school above and beyond the boost for the general population (Plasman & Gottfried, 2016).
There are three potential mechanisms by which E-CTE participation may link to improved college preparatory outcomes. First, students reinforce academic skills through opportunities to build on learning from traditional STEM coursework through more applied and hands-on experiences (Bozick & Dalton, 2013; Shifrer & Callahan, 2010). Second, students develop new skills through use of multiple learning techniques to teach these skills is an important pedagogical method to help students understand their own abilities and encourage interest in future pursuits along the engineering pathway (Stone & Lewis, 2012; Stone et al., 2008). Finally, the applied nature of CTE coursework in high school is designed to help students make the connection between high school coursework and later opportunities in college and career (Gottfried et al., 2016).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedTo explore whether E-CTE links to improved college preparatory outcomes for SWLDs, we relied on a recent longitudinal student dataset. This dataset includes multiple observations beginning with baseline data during the first year of secondary school. Follow-up data was collected during the third year. Transcript data was added upon completion of secondary school. We limit our analyses to the subset of students for whom a specific learning disability is indicated as present in the dataset.
Outcomes
Our outcomes of interest include the following four variables related to steps students can take to ease the transition to postsecondary education: math SAT scores, dual credit course participation, application to college, and completion of the FAFSA (a federal application for financial aid).
Main Predictor
The key independent variable is E-CTE coursetaking, which we operationalize here as the number of credits completed. A credit is equivalent to a single course taken for an hour per day across an entire academic year.
Control Variables
We identify key covariates related to AS-CTE and student attendance falling into the following categories: student/family demographics, academic history and attitudes, and school characteristics. Demographic variables include gender, race/ethnicity, family arrangement, and parent education. Academic history and attitude variables include 9th grade GPA, academic untis, CTE units in other clusters, English learner status, advanced math coursetaking, math self-efficacy, school engagement, math homework, extracurricular participation, employment outside the home, and postsecondary expectations. Finally, school characteristics include percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, percent English language learners, and percent minority students.
Analytic Plan
We begin our analyses using an OLS regression for SAT score and a linear probability regression for the binary outcomes of dual credit course enrollment, college application, and FAFSA completion. We include all of the above-mentioned covariates to obtain a more accurate estimation. We also employ school-fixed effects estimates to account for potential omitted variable biases at the school level that may have influenced the relationship between E-CTE coursetaking and our outcomes of interest.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Our findings related to college preparatory achievement showed that SWLDs who took more E-CTE scored higher on their math SAT tests than students who took fewer E-CTE courses. Under our more rigorous fixed effects models, SWLDs see an increase in math SAT scores of about 74 points per each additional E-CTE credit earned. Second, with respect to college preparatory coursetaking, we observed a parallel relationship between dual credit participation and E-CTE enrollment, indicating that SWLDs had approximately 15 percent higher probability of participating in dual credit coursework for each E-CTE credit earned. Turning to secondary-to-postsecondary transition activities, E-CTE participation was linked to a 13 percent higher probability of college application and 17 percent higher probability of FAFSA completion.
Given the positive findings presented in this study, our study presents several important implications for both policy and practice. First, E-CTE courses benefit SWLDs with respect to a range of college preparatory outcomes. This provides evidence that these courses aim for more than just improving occupation-based skills; they provide students an opportunity to develop quantitative reasoning, logic, and problem-solving skills that are useful both in college and career pursuits (Bradby & Hudson, 2007) and their individual development. Second, policymakers should consider the relationship between E-CTE and college application and FAFSA completion as they seek ways to encourage the persistence along the E-CTE pipeline. E-CTE courses offer a potential means of increasing participation in STEM majors. Finally, our findings highlight how E-CTE participation may help SWLDs make decisions related to postsecondary opportunities. Through providing access to such courses for SWLDs, schools may ultimately help smooth the transition from high school to postsecondary education to career in STEM fields for this population of traditionally underrepresented students.
ReferencesBozick, R., & Dalton, B. (2013). Career and technical education and academic progress at the end of high school: Evidence from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. RTI International.
Campaign for Science and Engineering (2014). Improving diversity in STEM. King’s College London.
Gottfried, M. A., Bozick, R., & Srinivasan, S. V. (2014). Beyond academic math: The role of applied STEM coursetaking in high school. Teachers College Record, 116(7), 1–35.
Gottfried, M. A., & Bozick, R. (2016). Supporting the STEM Pipeline: Linking Applied STEM
Course-Taking in High School to Declaring a STEM Major in College. Education Finance and Policy, 11(2), 177–202. https://www.jstor.org/stable/educfinapoli.11.2.177
Gottfried, M. A., & Plasman, J. S. (2018). From secondary to postsecondary: Charting an engineering career and technical education pathway. Journal of Engineering Education, 107(4), 531-555
Ladner, R. E., & Burgstahler, S. (2015). Broadening participation: Increasing the participation of
individuals with disabilities in computing. Communications of the ACM, 58(12), 33-36.
Ognenova, B. (2019). STEM fields are lacking diversity in Europe. Marker Pro.
Plasman, J.S., & Gottfried, M. A. (2018). Applied STEM Coursework, High School Dropout Rates, and Students With Learning Disabilities. Educational Policy, 32(5), 664-696.
Shifrer, D., & Callahan, R. (2010). Technology and communications coursework: Facilitating the progression of students with learning disabilities though high school science and math coursework. Journal of Special Education Technology, 25(3), 65–76
Stone, J. R., Alfeld, C., & Pearson, D. (2008). Rigor and relevance: Enhancing high school students’ math skills through career and technical education. American Educational Research Journal, 45(3), 767–795.
Stone, J. R., & Lewis, M. V. (2012). College and career ready in the 21st century: Making high school matter. Teachers College Press.
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