Studies with an international scope are more commonly concerned with the systemic conditions than with empirical results of vocational training.  The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research sponsored from 2011 to 2015 projects to gain insights into the structure of professional competences in different demanding occupations with skill profiles relevant to current challenges in the job market in Germany. The field of work of electronics technicians for automation technology (ETAT) is closely linked to the newly emerging challenges of Industry 4.0, for example the integration of assembly lines and the need to reduce downtimes in production due to malfunction. The aim of the project KOKO EA at the University of Stuttgart was to provide a reliable instrument to assess the competences of ETAT at the end of their vocational education.

Throughout the domain of technical occupations a multidimensionality of professional competence is well established, separating content knowledge and its application (Nickolaus & Seeber, 2013), usually understood as (analytical) problem solving. 

For a number of professions e.g. automotive mechatronics (Schmidt, Nickolaus & Weber, 2014) and electronics technicians for energy and building services (Geißel, 2008) a multidimensional structure of content knowledge related to content domains at the end of vocational training proved to be the best fitting model. Consistent with the findings from other occupations within the technical domain van Waveren and Nickolaus (2015) documented a three-dimensional model drawing on content domains as appropriate for ETATs content knowledge at the end of their vocational training.

Discrepancies between intended and achieved competences in VET were documented in the ULME studies (Lehmann & Seeber, 2007) and have been repeatedly found in a broad number of occupations in the technical domain e.g. automotive mechatronics (Gschwendtner, 2008) and construction workers (Petsch, Norwig & Nickolaus, 2015). In the field of electronics technicians the trainees for automation technology are comparatively strong in the cognitive domain. Therefore a curricular valid paper-pencil test was used to assess the content knowledge at the end of VET. Using the approach by Beaton and Allen (1992) achievement scales were applied seperatly for each subdomain. Despite an above average IQ of 108 and a strong school background (roughly 70 % attended an intermediate, 25 % an upper secondary school) only a comparatively small percentage of the participants (roughly 10 %) achieve results similar to the requirements set in the curricula, while, depending on the subdomain, 50 – 60 % failed to achieve results equivalent to the level put forth in the curricula, when their content knowledge was assessed via a paper-pencil test (Walker et al., 2016).

In the Feasibility Study VET-LSA (Baethge & Arends, 2009) for a number of occupations a general overlap between the VET curricula in different countries was found. Among these was the commercial sector in Germany and Switzerland. In a comparison focussed on commercial competence Holtsch, Rohr-Mentele, Wenger, Eberle, and Shavelson (2016) demonstrated, that on general terms using an instrument developed for the German curriculum yields valid testscores in the respective training in Switzerland – although adaptation was needed.

Also in the Feasibility Study VET-LSA similarities between the German “Elektroniker für Automatisierungstechnik” and their Swiss counterpart “Automatiker (EFZ)“ are outlined. It was concluded that they share enough overlap between their curricula to warrant an empirical comparison regarding the training outcome.

In this paper results from a first pilot study are presented, comparing the outcome of VET for the vocation of electronics technicians in both countries.

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