What can technological innovation really bring to research on vocational education?

On the one hand, this question focuses attention on technological innovation. It can be a subject of study, but also a tool for collecting (and analysing) data. It can be a subject of study, for example, when investigating the training potential of innovative digital tools that redefine educational practice itself; it becomes a tool for investigation, when exploiting options – often already integrated into immersive devices – such as eye-tracking or sensors for detecting physiological parameters, which are increasingly paving the way for a multimodal approach to research.

On the other hand, it focuses on that specific context of the world of education which is vocational training. This is a complex context, in which school and work, theory and practice, the abstract and the concrete are intertwined in a logic of alternation. This is a complexity and alternation that certainly affects and involves learners, but also teachers, who are themselves engaged in en emploi professional development pathways. For them, once again, technological innovation is both an operational resource for teaching practice and a field of expertise and competences to be developed, thus becoming a further object of research.

In these dynamics and tensions, the relationship between research, training and work takes on specific connotations, which always involve a multiplicity of actors, including researchers, educators and learners, and which require seeking and finding a balance between interests in speculation and in practice.

The contribution will present some experiences of participatory research, with particular attention to the use of 360° immersive video, seeking to show how the interests of research and practice can intersect and combine to generate shared knowledge, and what this may imply at the methodological level. The aim is to reflect on how technology can serve as a point of contact between different worlds, contributing to the renewal of both training and research.