To Be Trained To Be Something Or Someone - A Study Of Vocational Habitus Among Hairdresser Students In Upper Secondary School
Author(s):
Eva Klope (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2014
Network:
02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Format:
Paper

Session Information

02 SES 11 C, VETNET Early Career Researchers - Swedish PhD Programmes in Vocational Pedagogy

VETNET Early Carreer Researchers

Time:
2014-09-04
17:15-18:45
Room:
B025 Anfiteatro
Chair:
Gun-Britt Wärvik
Discussant:
Michael Gessler

Contribution

Departing from Bourdieu´s conceptualization of habitus Colley and other contributors (2003) present the concept vocational habitus arguing that learning cultures in the VET-field are steeped to transform those who enter them. Furthermore Colley claim that learning is a process of becoming, which means that there is no such thing as being ‘the right person’ for the job. This in turn raises questions about who the VET student is supposed to become through its education.

 

Studying this in the specific area of hairdresser training is particularly interesting. To be trained to be a hairdresser means that more has to be learnt than to do nice haircuts or other treatments. The handicraft is one part of the vocational knowing of hairdressing, but to be a hairdresser demands more than handicraft.  Students in the education of hairdressing also have to orient themselves to the vocational habitus of the area and the dispositions, realised as well as idealised which constitutes it (Colley et al 2003). The vocation of hairdressing also involves emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) which means that students has to learn how to handle their emotions and to make their clients feel satisfied and taken care of.  The field of hairdresser training is regulated by different interests such as employers, curriculum, customers, teachers and the students themself. With focus on learners’ perspective this paper presents and discusses initial outcomes of a study about what kind of ‘person’ the education of hairdressing is training the students to be. The study intends to contribute to a better understanding of how vocational habitus is operating among students in the vocational education and training program for hairdresser students in upper secondary school. The study also aims to describe if and in what ways students’ identities are influenced by their education.  A key research question of the study is: How does vocational habitus emerge in the vocational education and training for hairdressers? 

Method

Methodologically this study is inspired by ethnography. Hammersley & Atkinson (2007) argues that the hallmark of an ethnographic study is that it’s interested in the participants' everyday activities and how they regard them, where the researcher is approaching the field with an open mind. Method as well as the research questions are characterized by being present and not fixed at the outset, and that considerable time is spent on the field (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Data for the study reported in this paper has been gathered using participant observation, as well as the different types of talks, which some authors (Lofland, Snow, Anderson, Lofland, 2006) describe as talk in action, informal interviewing and intensive interviewing. Various documents such as instructions, samples and information from the schools website has also been used. The study was carried out in a public municipal school where 9 students were observed and interviewed during the end of their second and beginning of their third year at upper secondary school. The class has been observed at twenty occasions and the length of the observations varies between 30 minutes and complete schooldays. The observations were concentrated to the activities in the classroom when the students where trained in the VET courses. The courses which has been observed included different elements like attending to clients or models, exercising hairdressing at mannequin heads, lectures held by teachers or other represents from the branch of hairdressing, group work or writing tests by learners and so on. The students initially train the vocation on mannequin heads, but after 1,5 year they receive clients in the schools saloon. This means that the students in the present study have been working with clients in school for about 6 months when this part of data was constructed. Over three years the hairdresser students have 53 days internship. Most of their internship takes place in the third year when they are at different saloons two days a week They have had about one week internship in the beginning of year one; accordingly students in the study have mostly been trained in school settings.

Expected Outcomes

The preliminary outcomes from this study indicates that they are relevant also for other professions and context others than where the study was made (Sweden). Preliminary conclusions so far are the following 1) Learners in the VET field of hairdressing in different ways are taught how to be, act and behave in the specific vocation. Through their education they are taught to be careful, hard working, glad and to ‘sell them self’ 2) Students make differences between whom they are drawing upon what kind of assignments they work with. They swing between an identity as a hairdresser when they work with clients or models and being ‘an ordinary student’ when there are no clients present. 3) Students identity in their own perspective is affected by the impression of mastering the vocational knowing of the handicraft, which makes the students feel confident since they master something exclusive. The sense of making clients satisfied and to handle different persons also make them more confident.

References

Colley, H. James, D., Diment, K& Tedder, M.(2003) Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 55:4, 471-498 Hochschild, A.R. (1983). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Hammersley, Martyn & Atkinson, Paul (2007). Ethnography: principles in practice. 3. ed. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Lofland, John (red.) (2006). Analyzing social settings: a guide to qualitative observation and analysis. 4. ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Author Information

Eva Klope (presenting / submitting)
Stockholms universitet
Kalmar

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