Technical vocational education and training (TVET) takes place both at school and workplace. As TVET students cross the boundaries of school and workplace, they encounter various educators, both teachers and workplace supervisors, who adopt different educational aims for student development in their teaching and guidance (Berner, 2010; Löfgren et al., 2022). Educational aims are theoretically integral to educators’ professional identity (Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024; Vähäsantanen & Hämäläinen, 2019). Educators who identify themselves as craftspersons prefer professional educational aims which are directly linked to the immediate vocational practice: development of professional expertise and professional identity, membership in the professional community of practice and employment (Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024; Löfgren et al., 2022; Nylund & Gudmundson, 2017). Educators who identify as pedagogues recognize the aforementioned professional educational aims but place particular emphasis on pedagogical aims that more comprehensively advance students’ personal growth: lifelong learning, general education and eligibility to further education, gender equality and a good life (Antera, 2022; Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024). Both workplace supervisors and TVET teachers have a background in the industry and those who choose to continue their career within teaching usually retain close connections to their previous profession; therefore, previous studies suggest that TVET educators more commonly would identify themselves as craftspersons (e.g., Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024; Nylund & Gudmundson, 2017).

While TVET educators’ professional identity seems to imply what knowledge they want to mediate to the students, it also suggests which tasks and practices educators prefer in their teaching and guidance (Berner, 2010; Löfgren et al., 2022). Previous studies suggest that pedagogues are more likely to establish a socio-emotionally supportive learning environment to the students than the craftspersons (Nylund & Gudmundson, 2017). A learning environment can greatly support student learning when educators provide the students with social support to overcome setbacks, recognition and equal treatment to strengthen student self-efficacy beliefs and motivation and when there is a positive and safe climate where learning is promoted without a fear of getting embarrassed when failing (Toom et al., 2017). However, previous European studies conducted in Sweden, Estonia and Finland suggest that TVET educators offer their students varying levels of socio-emotional support (Berner, 2010; Goodson & Ümarik, 2019; Löfgren et al., 2022). 

Previous studies concerning the associations between TVET educators’ professional identity and their support to students are mostly qualitative (e.g., Berner, 2010; Löfgren et al., 2022). There is a need for quantitative studies that could reveal ‘concealed aspects’ behind educators’ educational aims (Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024). Therefore, this study aims to quantitatively examine TVET educators’ professional identity. It employs latent class analysis (LCA; Weller et al., 2020) to investigate whether Finnish TVET educators can be classified into pedagogues and craftspersons according to their educational aims. The study also aims to explore possible class differences in socio-emotional support for students: social support, recognition, equal treatment and a positive climate for learning. The research questions and hypotheses are as follows:

RQ1. How can TVET educators be classified according to their aims for teaching and guidance? 

H1. TVET educators can be classified as either a pedagogue or a craftsperson.

H2. It is probable that a TVET educator is classified as a craftsperson.

RQ2. How do profile classes differ in TVET educators’ perceptions of themselves as advancers of a socio-emotionally supportive learning environment? 

H3. Pedagogues perceive that they provide their students with more social support, recognition, equality and positive climate than a craftsperson.

Research context Workplace learning is an integral part of the Finnish TVET system in which responsibility for supporting and assessing students’ learning is shared by the teacher and the workplace supervisor. However, only vocational teachers need to be pedagogically competent. Therefore, the Pedaknow project (University of Helsinki, Finland, 2022‒2023) investigated Finnish TVET teachers’ and workplace supervisors’ pedagogical competence. Vocational education providers from each Finnish province recruited local workplace supervisors to participate. Measures and data collection Data were collected between August 2022 and June 2023 with an online survey combining different measures. Firstly, participants’ educational aims were measured with a new instrument with eight optional educational aims based on earlier research. These covered four professional (‘professional expertise’; ’development of professional identity’; ‘membership in the professional community’ and ’employment’) and four pedagogical (’lifelong learning’, ’living a good life’, ’advancing gender equality within technical trades’ and ’general education and eligibility to further education’) educational aims. A participant could choose up to four aims. Subsequently, choices were coded as either 0 ’not selected’ or 1 ’selected’ resulting in eight dichotomous variables. Secondly, participants’ perceptions of themselves as promoters of a socio-emotionally advanced learning environment were collected with the modified instrument of Toom and colleagues (2017). Participants rated on a five-point Likert scale (1 = ‘completely disagree’ to 5 = ‘completely agree’) their proneness to provide the students with social support, recognition, equal treatment and a positive climate for learning. Sample and data analysis There were 387 TVET subject teachers and 250 workplace supervisors taking the survey which resulted in a total sample of N = 637. All observations were complete. There were 479 males (75.2%) and 126 females (19.8%). The rest chose the option ‘other’ or did not want to declare their gender. Mean age was 51.3 years (SD = 9.76; range: 23‒76 years). Every participant was asked for an informed consent. They participated voluntarily and without incentives. Statistical analyses were conducted in RStudio. First, participants were classified according to their preferred educational aims using latent class analysis (LCA) with the poLCA package (Linzer & Lewis, 2011). Then, class assignments were cross-tabulated with participants’ job positions to examine whether it was probable for the vocational educators at school and workplace to be assigned as craftspersons. Last, a series of Welch’s t-tests were run to investigate the possible differences in participants’ self-assessed provision of social support, recognition, equal treatment and a positive climate for learning.

Results from the LCA strongly implicate that TVET teachers and workplace supervisors could be classified based on their preferred educational aims into pedagogues (75% of the sample) and craftspersons (25%). For both pedagogues and craftspersons, professional educational aims were highly probable. The clearest distinction was the professional aim of ‘membership in the professional community’ which was extremely probable for the craftspersons and not very probable for the pedagogues. In addition, every pedagogical educational aim was more likely to be chosen by a pedagogue than a craftsperson. While the division between pedagogues and craftspersons is in line with the earlier studies (e.g., Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024; Nylund & Gudmundson, 2017), the results of this study also showed that there were more pedagogues than craftspersons both among the TVET teachers (80%) and workplace supervisors (68%). This result challenges the view of some previous studies which suggest that a craftsperson identity could be more common (Berner, 2010; Goodson & Ümarik, 2019; Löfgren et al., 2022). The results further imply that pedagogues tend to provide their students with more socio-emotional support than craftspersons: especially social support but also equal treatment and a positive climate for learning. However, there were no statistically significant differences between pedagogues and craftspersons regarding their recognition of student endeavours. This study added to the existing discussion about TVET educators’ professional identity by providing a more refined structure behind educators’ educational aims (Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024) and advanced this conversation by considering also workplace supervisors and the association between educator professional identity and socio-emotional support for students. The results may be helpful in developing vocational teacher training as well as TVET teachers’ and workplace supervisors’ continuous professional development.

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