The educational landscape is evolving, driven by societal developments, technological advancements, and the demand for 21st century skills (OECD, 2018). As a result, students will pursue education at multiple points in their lives. This results in a diverse student influx and results in a wide variety of student needs. As we know, meeting these needs of students is crucial for the learning process. In this workshop we will focus on the diversity in student needs in the context of vocational education and the meaning of the rising student diversity for teachers’ skills.

Content knowledge has long been considered a solid foundation for the teacher’s skills. However, when a teacher combines strong content knowledge with pedagogical and practical training, student achievement is higher (Clotfelter, Ladd and Vigdor, 2007). Teacher training that links content knowledge with an understanding of how learners acquire knowledge, how to teach students who are diverse in several aspects (e.g. achievement or motivation), and how to use a wide array of instructional strategies was found to be positively influencing learning processes (Constantine et al., 2009; National Research Council, 2010). Therefore, an effective teacher should possess pedagogical competences.

Like students, teachers also return to teaching training at multiple points. Shifts in educational paradigms require teachers who adapt their pedagogical competence to these new approaches. Nowadays, we see a shift from the traditional teacher as the primary source of knowledge, presenting students information in the form of lectures, towards a teacher acting as a facilitator of learning (OECD, 2018). They guide students in exploring and discovering knowledge for themselves, stimulating critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Moreover, becoming a teacher is increasingly a second career, after a period of working in the professional field. This means that in teacher training, teachers also vary greatly in their backgrounds.

So, we see teachers with a variety in backgrounds, content and pedagogical competence and we see a changing student population. Lifelong developments is commonplace for both teachers and students. With the constant influx of developments and insights from educational research, teachers must update their content, pedagogical knowledge and skills to remain relevant in their profession (OECD, 2018). Specific to vocational education, it also means relevant knowledge of the underlying professional field. Learning in vocational education takes place in two contexts: school and profession.  Zitter, Hoeve and De Bruijn (2016) divide these contexts into four quadrant, that can be roughly referred as theory, exercise, practice and reflection. While the first two quadrants often take place in the school context, practice and reflection take place in the professional context.

In other words, students and teachers differ largely in personal backgrounds like personal backgrounds, characteristics, knowledge, skills, experience. They all function within their personal frame of reference. This frame serves as a “framework and filter with which new experiences and new information are selected, organized and interpreted” (Bolhuis, 2016, p. 19). New information is selectively included, adjusted if necessary and incorporated into the existing framework. In this way, the previously formed ideas, feelings, skills and habits function as a starting point and benchmark for your professional behavior and views. The student but also the teacher take this frame of reference into account when they learn and when they teach.

So, both the teacher and the student population are diverse and then the question rises what this means for the learning and teaching process, where several frames of references meet. Little is known about this subject yet. In this workshop we will explore the question How do different frames of references of students and teachers influence the learning and teaching process?

A qualitative study was conducted through exploratory interviews (n=20) at a vocational teacher training program of a university in the Netherlands. The open interviews revealed that many people involved in this program are hardly aware of the significance for the learning process of the diversity that manifests itself on both the student (teacher) side and the teacher trainer side. To gain more insight into this gap, (largely) open interviews with six students and 14 teacher trainers (n=6 and n=14 respectively) were conducted, always starting with the question How where you yourself trained? The following questions also came up: Do you have experience in the underlying professional field? How do you think learners learn? What do you find difficult in supporting your learners? Students were asked the same questions, but phrased from a learner's perspective. Open interviews seemed appropriate here because not much is yet known about the topic of diversity and frames of reference in relation to the learning process. Data analysis took place via open labelling. The analysis revealed a number of themes. The themes and the labelling were discussed in the research group (authors). This research group recognized the themes and had no additions. Differences in labels were discussed within the research group until consensus was reached. However, some themes were further refined. For example, what characterizes the education of a second career teacher. Based on Zitter, Hoeve and De Bruijn's quadrant model (2016), a tool was then developed to visualize diversity in patterns at an individual and team level. In the workshop, we will work with the tool and actively involve participants in interpreting the patterns that emerge and what significance they have for the learning and teaching process. The dialogue and activities during the workshop will move around themes like variety in students’ references, how to handle this variety, personal frames of teachers, frames of a team and their consequences. We will also elaborate on the role of teacher trainers. Reliability and validity were ensured by formulating the identified themes and labels by using concepts that are grounded within the literature.

At the time of submission, the first prototype of the tool is put into practice. During the conference, the first results will be presented and used in real time. From the experience with the tool, we expected there will be two distinct patterns of teacher frameworks. The first pattern relates to teachers who directly started as teacher when they completed their training. Their frame of reference is related to theory. The second pattern relates to teachers who had a career in the professional field and retrain to teaching. Their frame of reference is related to practical perspectives. In addition to the teacher’s patterns, we also expect patterns of student’ framework. This pattern depends on when the student enters education.Students who enter education later have a different pattern than students who only have experiences in the school context. Matching teachers’ patterns with those of students’, provides insight into the gap the teacher must bridge. Probably, teachers will have more or less difficulties bridging the gap, depending on the amount of congruency between the teacher’s and the student’s frame of reference. When the patterns of different teachers are merged, we expect to see different types of teams based on the similarity between their individual patterns. This is consistent with the hypothesis that teachers are comfortable with students moving in similar circles and that teachers can then easily adapt their teaching to these students. We also hypothesize that thinking about the significance of one's own frame of reference for learning processes has not yet penetrated the thinking of teacher educators. From our expectations, we recommend that teacher teams become more diverse to match the diversity of the student population. Also, teachers can better empathize with students learning within a different frame of reference. In this workshop, we expect to provide insight into this.

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