Margaret Malloch (Australia)

M Gessler, Hilde Hiim, Alexandra Lecours, Pierre-Yves Therriault, Vibe Aarkrog, Bjarne Wahlgren, Lea Zenner, Kumar Kothandaraman, Matthias Pilz, Laura Pylväs, Petri Nokelainen, Peng Chen (+26 others)
2018 Vocational Education and Training   unpublished
We also would like to thank the reviewers for their assessments and suggestions to improve the quality of the articles. Last but not least we thank Larissa Freund for managing the IJRVET Editorial Office and ensuring the process quality. Abstract: This article addresses challenges regarding relevance in vocational education and training (VET) curricula. Recent research on Norwegian VET shows that the educational content is not suciently related to the students' needs for qualification in the
more » ... ual vocations. I will present a new curriculum research project aimed at investigating and improving the vocational relevance in Norwegian VET. An important part of the project is to investigate epistemological perspectives on how vocational knowledge is constituted and developed, and consequences for the curriculum. The article presents results from these epistemological investigations. I will argue that the relevance problem relates to a one-sided rationalist epistemology in which a main idea is that vocational knowledge consists of theoretical principles and procedures to be applied in practical situations. This idea influences educational traditions and structures, and leads to a separation between theoretical and practical subjects and learning arenas. From a pragmatic epistemological perspective, it can be argued that vocational knowledge is contextual and holistic, and consists of complex wholes of physicality, motor skills, intellectual understandings, values, and verbalized concepts. To ensure curriculum relevance, a curriculum is needed in which authentic practical work is the base, and subjects are integrated with students' practical work experience.
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