Challenges in the training of health and social care workers. Ideas and ideals regarding students and vocational knowing.

Author(s):

Helena Rehn(presenting / submitting)Eva Eliasson(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

02. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

02 SES 08 B, Transitions: Teachers' Learning at Work

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

09:00-10:30

Room:

324. [Main]

Chair:

Vibe Aarkrog

Discussant:

Lars Heinemann

Contribution

Vocational training not only creates opportunities for students to participate in the labour market, but also helps to develop qualities, skills and traits that are desirable in the workplace and based on prevailing ideals (Dahlstedt & Olson, 2013; Köpsén 2014). However, as Bourdieu and Passeron (2008) point out, these ideals tend to preserve the hierarchies in work and society. What knowledge and skills become available to vocational students, and what professional identities are encouraged in them, largely depend on the expectations and the teaching the students encounter during their training (Wenger 1998; Korp, 2012). In vocational training, the teachers are central carriers of the vocational knowing and culture that the students are going to be part of (Köpsén, 2014). The vocational teachers should base their teaching on the learning objectives defined in the national curriculum, but they also need to adapt to changing needs and conditions in their field (Robson, Bailey & Larkin, 2004). As Englund (1997) points out, there is great potential for variation in each teacher’s interaction with students, where factors such as personal experiences, values and ideals, as well as former employment, serve as the foundation.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse which underlying ideas and ideals regarding students and their future vocational knowing emerge from teachers’ descriptions of challenges. We assume that the teachers’ conceptions of the students and what they should know act as a basis for how the teachers view their own work and, consequently, what they perceive as challenges. Many categories of teachers can probably identify with the description of challenges, although some challenges may be bound to the context of teaching in the health and social care programme. Our intention is not to neglect the actual challenges the teachers experience and have to deal with in their work, but our interest is mainly focused on what their descriptions reveal about their conceptions of students and their vocational knowing.

From a social constructionist perspective (Burr, 2003; Barlebo Wennberg, 2001), different tasks can be said to not only be socially and culturally constructed, but also indications of position and status. In order to detect these aspects of power, we have been inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts and perspectives. The foundation of Bourdieu’s theoretical argument is that actions, thoughts, conceptions, and values are the result of a meeting between people’s habitus and specific social contexts. Habitus refers to a “system of dispositions that allows people to act, think, and navigate within the social world” (Broady, 1998:3). These dispositions are embedded in us as individuals in an automated fashion and influence our taste as well as the way we see, think, and understand the world. The habitus that arises in the early years characterises individuals, although the habitus may partially change through participation in new contexts, such as an educational or work setting. Bourdieu (1984) argued that working conditions and environments may contribute to the creation of a fairly homogeneous habitus among colleagues, as they have a structuring effect on habitus. In our study, this means that we want to highlight which dispositions students are expected to acquire in order to be regarded as “good” nursing assistants, and which ones they are not expected to acquire. Our use of the term vocational habitus thus relates to health care teachers’ conceptions of desirable vocational knowing, not the actual habitus of individuals. The concept of capital is closely related to habitus, and Bourdieu uses the term symbolic capital for what is considered valuable to a certain group (Bourdieu, 1998).

Method

The empirical data consists of 17 qualitative interviews conducted in the spring of 2012. The teachers were contacted through a network of supervisors for prospective health and social care teachers maintained by our own department. A request to participate in the study was made during an organised meeting of supervisors. The teachers who wanted to participate were asked to complete a form in which they reported their interest and provided their contact details. All teachers who had reported their interest were subsequently contacted and scheduled for an interview. The interviews were conducted by using questions as open-ended as possible in order to enable the informants to define and process the content based on their own understanding of the field. In selecting the informants, we aimed for as wide a range as possible from several aspects. 12 of the teachers worked in adult education and 5 worked in upper secondary school. 9 of the teachers were from the Stockholm area, while 8 worked in cities in central Sweden. Teaching experience varied from 2 to 20 years. All of them were women, which reflect the female dominance in the profession. Most of them worked in the public sector, but a third were employed by private education companies. We asked the teachers what they believe is the most important content of the health and social care subjects, what kind of vocational knowledge they believe the students will gain, what challenges they see in the teaching and what a successful student will know upon completing the training. Each interview lasted for approximately 45 minutes to one hour and were recorded on a Dictaphone, and then transcribed. We transcribed our own interviews and then read each other’s transcriptions. We processed the interviews by conducting a general review of the various statements made about challenges in order to have an overview. Then, we highlighted differences and similarities in order to find patterns and themes in the informants' statements (Watt Boolsen, 2007). From the collected data, six themes were identified that, in various ways, highlight challenges expressed by the teachers during the interviews. The six themes reflect the variation in the teachers’ statements, which means that both common and more individual statements have been included. First, a more "general" social constructionist perspective was used as a theoretical grid; second, we related our interpretations to concepts such as professional habitus and symbolic capital.

Expected Outcomes

The findings show that the greatest challenges were a lack of motivation, language difficulties, and the link between theory and practice. The ideas and ideals that emerge about students and their professional expertise are that the students should be motivated to study and have made an active career choice. Since health care professions have been based on the idea of a calling, grounded in a middle-class ideal, creating motivation becomes part of the development of symbolic capital that is viable in the profession. In the creation of a professional habitus, the students’ personality development is in focus, where the intention is profound changes if the dispositions are not right from the beginning. The students are expected to develop into empathic, ethical, adaptable, and courageous health care workers who will dare to stand up against poor conditions in health and social care. It is considered very important that the students are guided by Western humanist values, which a stable habitus based in a different cultural background can render difficult. In the creation of a professional habitus, it is also important to improve language skills and understand the value of the profession. Many of the teachers discussed the relationship between theory and practice as part of the challenges of the profession. The main ideas that emerge from their arguments are related to knowledge, types of knowledge, and learning. Vocational knowing is perceived as both theoretical and practical, and also includes an understanding of workplace cultures. At the same time, we can discern a statement about students that could be interpreted to mean that some students are more practically oriented and need to use practice as a basis for learning the theory, instead of the other way around, which is described as the norm.

References

Barlebo Wennberg, Soren (2001). Socialkonstruktivism – positioner, problem och perspektiv. Stockholm: Liber. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre (1998). Practical reason on the theory of action. Oxford: Polity. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron (1990). Reproducation in education, society and culture. London: Sage. Broady, Donald (1998). Kapitalbegreppet som utbildningssociologiskt verktyg. [The concept of capital as an educational-sociological tool] Uppsala: Forskningsgruppen för utbildnings- och kultursociologi, ILU, Uppsala universitet. Burr, Vivien (2003). Social constructionism. London and New York: Routledge. Dahlstedt, Magnus, and Maria Olson (2013). Utbildning, demokrati, medborgarskap. [Education, democracy and citizenship]. Malmö: Gleerups. Englund, Tomas (1997).”Towards a dynamic analysis of content of schooling: narrow and broad didactics in Sweden.” Journal of Curriculum Studies, 29, (3); 267-287. Korp, Helena (2012). ”Identitetserbjudanden och lärare-elevrelationen.” [Identity and the teacher-student relationship] In Lärare och lärande i yrkesprogram och introduktionsprogram [Teachers and learning in vocational education] edited by Ingrid Henning Loeb and Helena Korp, 95-112. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Köpsén, Susanne (2014).”How vocational teachers describe their vocational teacher identity.” Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 66 (2):194-221. Robson, Jocelyn, Bill Bailey, and Shirley Larkin (2004). “Adding Value: investigating the discourse of professionalism adopted by vocational teachers in further education colleges.” Journal of Education and Work, 17 (2): 183-195 Watt Boolsen, Merete (2007). Kvalitativa intervjuer. Forskningsprocess, människa, samhälle. Malmö: Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Author Information

Helena Rehn (presenting / submitting)

Stockholm university

Department of education

Stockholm

Eva Eliasson (presenting)