Vocationalising Specialized Concepts: Appropriating Meanings Through Feedback
File version
Version of Record (VoR)
Author(s)
Warvik, Gun-Britt
Choy, Sarojni
Griffith University Author(s)
Primary Supervisor
Other Supervisors
Editor(s)
Date
Size
File type(s)
Location
Abstract
This article is based on research about upper secondary students' experiences in vocational becoming as they develop conceptualized knowing through interactions with others. Interactions for meaning-making by vocationalising concepts also involve feedback relating to occupation-specific tasks. The aim was to understand this constructivist process of occupational identity formation - a goal of vocational education. The research reported here draws on data from participant observations and focus group interviews with 34 students in 2nd and 3rd grades in two schools, who were training to become security officers. Students vocationalise five features of security practices: (i) transforming anomaly into specialized concept; (ii) the uniform as a marker; (iii) accountability to the security industry through zero limit; (iv) modernizing the security occupation; and (v) social, study and professional conduct. The findings indicate that processual feedback supports the development of vocational conceptual knowing inferentially in the space of reasons. Teacher-led processual feedback provides more opportunities for vocationalising concepts, whereas student-led feedback during group work offers fewer such opportunities, although it does strengthen student identity. Overall, the findings show that collective meaning-making, supported by processual feedback, contributes to the construction of specialized knowledge for vocational becoming, thus leading to emergent vocational identity. However, making firm decisions about a chosen vocation takes time, and this appears challenging especially for youth with their limited life experiences (Tanggaard in Journal of Education and Work, 20(5), 453–466, 2007). For many prospective security officers, their vantage point remains uncertain, as they imagine, deliberate and put expectations to a reality check during the course of their study.
Journal Title
Vocations and Learning
Conference Title
Book Title
Edition
Volume
Issue
Thesis Type
Degree Program
School
Publisher link
Patent number
Funder(s)
Grant identifier(s)
Rights Statement
Rights Statement
© The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Item Access Status
Note
This publication has been entered into Griffith Research Online as an Advanced Online Version.
Access the data
Related item(s)
Subject
Education
Other education not elsewhere classified
Vocational education and training curriculum and pedagogy