Close-to-practice research in educational contexts such as a Swedish upper-secondary school vocational education and training (VET)  involves a collaboration between researchers and VET teachers. Here, an example of research collaboration between a building and construction teacher and a researcher is presented. In the Swedish context, close-to-practice research has been recently advocated as a means to strengthen the scientific base of teacher education (cf Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Therefore, the Swedish government has piloted a national programme to fund and stimulate the growth and trial of collaboration models between academia and the school called in short ULF. ULF stands for Utbildning (Education), Lärande (Learning) and Forskning (Research). Common projects often involve interventions to improve different aspects of education, e.g., teaching and instruction activities. Sometimes there is a close connection to a school’s quality assurance work.  However, the explicit goal is to facilitate collaboration between academia and schools on an equal footing. Eplicitly, the need for creating symmetrical relations between the researchers and teachers prcatitioners are emphasized along with the presumed and sought for complementarity of each part’s contributions. Close-to-practice research presents however considerable challenges due to the tensions surrounding different interpretations of teacher knowledge as professional and academic. According to the Education Act, both scientific grounds and proven experience are two stipulated bases for education in Sweden. In particular, the relation between  these two, cognizant of theory/practice division, may influence the collaboration practices (Bergmark & Erixon, 2020). To sum up, close-to-practice research presents challenges regarding the variety of knowledge contributions as well as the level of engagement on the part of teachers practitioners (Anderhag et al., 2023; Magnusson & Malmström, 2022).  Swedish VET is mainly school-based and integrated with upper-secondary education. The vocational teacher works in a Building and Construction Programme, one of the 12 vocational programmes. Vocational teachers are responsible for assessment of student performance in school and in workplaces, e.g., building sites. That is why a close co-operation with the appointed supervisors is required for students’ vocational learning. Previous research on learning to become a building constructor shows traces of apprenticeship traditions still present. As a result, students may encounter a strong division between theory learnt in school and practice at building sites (Berglund, 2009: Fjellström, 2015).     

The aim of the article is twofold, to illuminate 1) how a vocational teacher and a researcher develop knowledge of teaching practice regarding vocational didactics, and 2) to develop a methodology for researcher-practitioner collaboration. The focus for the collaboraton is on the integration of vocational knowledge across school- and work-based parts of education as a central and generic issue in vocational education and training. The research questions are as follows: What characterizes a collaboration between a vocational teacher and a researcher in close-to-practice research? How does the process of collaborative researcher-vocational teacher knowledge development in student work-integrated learning emerge?

Self-study is used as a theoretical approach (Cooper & Curtis, 2021; Kitchen et al., 2020; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015) in line with the study’s main interest in the theory/practice interface in vocational didactics generated from self-understanding of experience. The intention driving the study is to reflect the researcher-teacher practices within the institutional framework of upper-secondary VET (Craig & Curtis, 2020; Ergas & Ritter, 2020). The main interest for the collaboration is to investigate the events that the teacher stages to help the students connect their learning experiences in workplace-, and school-based parts of education. When the teachers and researchers make meaning of actitivities they stage together the collaboration can contribute to self-understanding of various facets of collective me-as-a-teacher, which is formed through and in social relations in teacher communities (Mokuria & Chhikara, 2022).

The study is a part of an ULF project called Conceptualising vocational knowing in learning communities at University West. Following upon her earlier semi-structured interview with the teacher that was the initial part of the ULF project, the researcher was also granted access to the vocational teacher’s classroom, workshop and to some extent workplaces. The starting point for the collaboration was therefore an invitation to come and see rather than the need for change or improvement. Thus, she followed the teacher’s group of six students during approximately one term of their third final grade. Together with a colleague she used field notes, transcribed interviews and recordings of lessons and study visits at workplaces. Martina run a journal to collect material for so called interim texts that she shared with the teacher (Cooper & Curtis, 2021). The texts summarized running observations, their interpretations and preliminary hypotheses, all of which was free for Emil to share with his colleagues and the headmaster, which he did. The teacher kept commenting these short texts throughout and they served as a basis for recurrent discussions also recorded and transcribed. The data generation and data analysis went on therefore iteratively. As a method, a narrative, open-ended inquiry is used to study collaboration between the teacher and the researcher (Cooper & Curtis, 2021; Mokuria & Chhikara, 2022). A starting point was broadly about the teacher’s ways to connect and integrate the students’ learning in a system of exchange between two days of school instruction and three days of workplace-based training in a week. This shared research interest served as an entry point for the collaboration as relational, ongoing and unfinished work (Pinnegar et al., 2020). Accordingly, the narrative weavs together the result about the teacher’s work with vocational didactics (as displayed in a choice of activities that bind together vocational knowing and learning across settings) with a model for collaboration as relation-building between the teacher and researcher in close-to-practice research in VET.

The study’s contribution is two-fold. Apart from presenting an empirical example of vocational didactics, it also presents a model for collaboration between the vocational teacher and the researcher that builds on ongoing shifting in positioning as the two parts build their relationship of trust. The collaboration enables and is enabled by constant shifts between different me-as-a teacher positions that evolve and interact with each other. In the dialogue, me-as-a-teacher-educator, me-as-a-researcher interact with me-as-a-vocational-teacher and me-as-a-vocational teacher-of-another-kind. With the help of self-study as a methodology for collaboration, the teacher’s specific method is deconstructed by a joined effort (Cooper & Curtis, 2021). The teacher’s method is a strongly bounded and recurrent round of questions or prompts to systematically interrogate the students’ experience of workplace-based learning. This method’s reconstruction, which is performed in collaboration points to the method’s contingencies such as 1) the teacher’s presence in workplaces and his strategic involvement in the production that goes on in building sites 2) parallel, that is, the teacher’s and the students’ learning of new methods and innovations. The vocational didactics example shows how a particular work tasks in the production at a building site can be integrated in VET instruction. In contrast to Berglund (2009) and Fjellström (2015), work tasks in running production can be used in classroom instruction to support the students’ opportunities to develop multidimensional vocational knowing. The collaboration featured initial open inquiry; collective narrowing of a study object, that is, a specific vocational didactics method, collective data production and analysis through putting forth hypotheses by the teacher and the researcher, activating different ”teacher selves” and work division between the teacher and the researcher. The findings show how the instruction can be organized to encompass student experience of work-integrated learning to create a meaningful whole for the students and the teacher.

Anderhag, P., Andrée, M., Björnhammer, S., & Gåfvels, C. (2023). Den praktiknära forskningens bidrag till läraryrkets kunskapsbas: en analys av kunskapsprodukter från kollaborativ didaktisk forskning. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige. Berglund, I. (2009). Byggarbetsplatsen som skola-eller skolan som byggarbetsplats?: En studie av byggnadsarbetares yrkesutbildning [Doctoral dissertation, Institutionen för didaktik och pedagogiskt arbete, Stockholms universitet]. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A235820&dswid=7640 Bergmark, U., & Erixon, P.-O. (2020). Professional and academic knowledge in teachers’ research: An empowering oscillation. European Educational Research Journal, 19(6), 587-608. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904119890158 Cooper, J. M., & Curtis, G. A. (2021). Employing self-study research across the curriculum: Theory, practice, and exemplars. In S. W. Watson, S. Austin, & J. Bell (Eds.), Conceptual analyses of curriculum inquiry methodologies (s. 155–181). IGI Global. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (2009). Teacher research as stance. The Sage Handbook of Educational Action Research. London: Sage, 39-49. Craig, C. J., & Curtis, G. A. (2020). Theoretical roots of self-study research. In J. Kitchen, A. Berry, S. M. Bullock, A. R. Crowe, M. Taylor, H. Guðjónsdóttir, & L. Thomas (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (2nd ed., pp. 57–96). Springer. Ergas, O., & Ritter, J. K. (2020). Introduction: Why explore self in teaching, teacher education, and practitioner research. In Exploring Self Toward Expanding Teaching, Teacher Education and Practitioner Research (Vol. 34, pp. 1–16). Emerald Publishing Limited. Fjellström, M. (2015). Project-based vocational education and training: Opportunities for teacher guidance in a Swedish upper secondary school. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 67(2), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2014.983957 Kitchen, J., Berry, A., Bullock, S. M., Crowe, A. R., Taylor, M., Guðjónsdóttir, H., & Thomas, L. (Eds.). (2020). International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. Springer. Magnusson, Petra, & Malmström, Martin (2022). Practice-near school research in Sweden: tendencies and teachers’ roles. Education Inquiry, 14(3), 367–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2022.2028440 Mokuria, V. G., & Chhikara, A. (2022). Narrative inquiry as a relational methodology. In S. White, S. Autin, & J. Bell (Eds.), Conceptual analyses of curriculum inquiry methodologies (s. 1–27). IGI Global. Pinnegar, S., Hutchinson, D. A., & Hamilton, M. L. (2020). Role of positioning, identity, and stance in becoming S-STTEP researchers. International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices, 97-133. Vanassche, E., & Kelchtermans, G. (2015). The state of the art in self-study of teacher education practices: A systematic literature review. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(4), 508–528. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2014.995712