“You’ll just have to practice until you find your own way to do it!” - A narrative study about how teaching is carried out in Technical Vocational Education

Abstract

This article examines how different arenas contribute to students’ learning in the Energy Programme and the Industry Programme at Swedish upper secondary school. The empirical data consists of semistructured interviews with three students and observations of the students, two teachers and three supervisors, focusing on how the teaching is carried out in school and workplaces, respectively. Theresult shows that the teaching in school and at the workplaces is carried out in different ways during students’ vocational education. In school the learning is influenced by the teachers’ acting as role models. This means that the teaching is normative in the sense that the teachers are demonstrating how to do. At the workplaces, the teaching differs between different supervisors and the learning is influenced by the supervisor’s daily agenda and in the way the supervisor gives instructions.