Integrating knowledge, skills and attitudes: conceptualizing learning processes towards vocational competence

Learning processes towards the integration of knowledge, skills and attitudes are currently still a mystery. In this article, three integration processes are developed: low-road integration, high-road integration and transformative integration. It also lays a basis for further empirical research by offering hypotheses regarding these different processes

Knowing everything from soup to dessert : an exploratory study to describe what characterises students’ vocational knowledge

Students’ vocational knowledge can be defined as all knowledge students require performing within occupational practice. In the context of vocational education and training, students’ vocational knowledge is often discussed from a perspective of either what should be taught and learned in schools or different kinds of knowledge students should gain in occupational practice. Much less focus is on students’ vocational knowledge itself. This exploratory in-depth study aims to describe what characterises students’ vocational knowledge. To explore students’ vocational knowledge, an analytic framework is used to describe vocational knowledge characteristics specifying: (1) occupation-specific knowledge components, and (2) qualities. Results show the framework provides a structure to gain insight into the nature and meaning of vocational knowledge, and is valuable to describe characteristics in terms of knowledge components such as technical procedures or the social and occupational environment, and qualities such as richness, complexity and specificity. Additionally, to use an existing framework–originally developed in the contexts of ICT and Social Work–its usefulness is explored in a new context, namely, the hospitality industry. Recommendations about the framework serving as a potential tool to support students’ learning processes are provided

Facilitating evaluations of innovative, competence-based assessments: Creating understanding and involving multiple stakeholders

Schools are held more responsible for evaluating, quality assuring and improving their student assessments. Teachers' lack of understanding of new, competence-based assessments as well as the lack of key stakeholders' involvement, hamper effective and efficient self-evaluations by teachers of innovative, competence-based assessments (CBAs). While evaluating two CBAs in Agricultural Vocational Education and Training institutions, two interventions in the evaluation process aimed to tackle these problems were examined: (1) starting with explicating the CBA in the teacher team using a concrete explication format and (2) qualitatively involving key stakeholders (i.e., teachers, students and employers) in the evaluation of the CBA through mixed-group interviews. Quantitative and qualitative analysis, as well as stakeholders' perceptions are used to find indications for the added value of these interventions for evaluation and further improvement of the CBAs. Results show that external facilitation is needed to make both interventions work. However, under this condition, explicating the CBA led to more complete, concrete and shared understandings of the actual CBA among teachers and mixed-groups interviews resulted in more concrete and elaborate evaluations of the CBAs' quality and more ideas for improvement. Both interventions can facilitate building up elaborate, more valid and concrete arguments for CBA quality in self-evaluations, certainly in the case of evaluating innovative assessments. Lessons learned will provide guidelines for incorporating the interventions into other evaluations of innovative programs.Assessment Evaluation Quality assurance Multiple stakeholders Teacher professionalization

How do workplace educators assess student performance at the workplace? A qualitative systematic review

One aim of vocational education is educating students for occupations by fostering the development of students’ capacities to become successful practitioners. During their education students are usually afforded work experience. When this is the case, students learn both at school and at the workplace. Learning at the workplace requires assessment, but this differs from assessment at school because of where (at the workplace), how (through participation) and what students learn (a process of belonging, becoming and being). At the workplace, students are usually assigned an educator who takes on the dual role of educator and assessor. This review takes a sociocultural perspective on learning at the workplace and from this perspective brings together what is already known about how workplace educators assess student performance through a qualitative systematic review. Our analysis aimed for narrative synthesis using iterative thematic analysis. The results depict workplace assessment as manifested in day-to-day work and shaped by relationships. Workplace educators are engaged in a continuous process of assessment-related interactions. They prefer using criteria that are embedded in the norms and values of their vocational community, rather than criteria prescribed by school. Workplace assessment requires negotiated criteria and truly collaborative assessment practices. These practices can be purposefully co-designed and require close communication between school and work. This review shows that assessment of workplace performance in vocational education can be conceptualised as a practice that is shaped by the specific workplace in which it is embedded. From this perspective assessment can be explicated and acknowledged, and as a consequence be further conceptualised and researched in both assessment research and vocational education research.</p

Self-evaluation of assessment programs: a cross-case analysis.

Item does not contain fulltextThe goal of this article is to contribute to the validation of a self-evaluation method, which can be used by schools to evaluate the quality of their Competence Assessment Program (CAP). The outcomes of the self-evaluations of two schools are systematically compared: a novice school with little experience in competence-based education and assessment, and an innovative school with extensive experience. The self-evaluation was based on 12 quality criteria for CAPs, including both validity and reliability, and criteria stressing the importance of the formative function of assessment, such as meaningfulness and educational consequences. In each school, teachers, management and examination board participated. Results show that the two schools use different approaches to assure assessment quality. The innovative school seems to be more aware of its own strengths and weaknesses, to have a more positive attitude towards teachers, students, and educational innovations, and to explicitly involve stakeholders (i.e., teachers, students, and the work field) in their assessments. This school also had a more explicit vision of the goal of competence-based education and could design its assessments in accordance with these goals.1 augustus 201