“This angle that we talked about”: learning how to weld in interaction

Abstract

The specific focus of this article is how critical aspects of the object of learning to weld are made relevant in interaction between a vocational teacher and a student in the learning processes of welding as part of a Swedish upper-secondary technical vocational education programme. By intertwining variation theory with a conversation analytical approach, our analysis shows that the teaching focus alternates between the process as a whole and details about the welding process, and how the relation between the critical aspects are negotiated in the teaching situations. Furthermore, the teacher and the student together build up a common resource of experiences to which they can relate the parts and the whole, and the teaching becomes increasingly subject specific as the teacher and student build up more common experiences. The approach used in this article sheds light on the complexity of learning to weld, and also facilitates an understanding of welding as an object of learning as such.

Lessons from the welding booth: theories in practice in vocational education

“…These results are concrete expressions of movements towards teaching and learning processes where the so-called "tacit knowledge" is not only something that is made visible, but also something that is specified, through the simultaneous use of several different semiotic resources (cf. Kilbrink and Asplund 2018). More precisely, in the examples that we have focused on in this article, we can see how this takes place in relation to the orientation towards the critical feature of the OoL the melt.…”

“…Therefore, it can be developed over time as well as in the interaction between teacher and student (cf. Asplund and Kilbrink 2018;Kilbrink and Asplund 2018;Lo 2012).…”

“…When combining these theories we use the abbreviation CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach). Those theories have previously been used together when analysing learning processes in school contexts (Asplund and Kilbrink 2018;Emanuelsson and Sahlström 2008;Kilbrink and Asplund 2018), but in this article we go one step further and integrate them into CAVTA. Our approach is in line with the content centred CA-studies that aim to capture interactional practices linked to learning a specific content or practice (cf.…”

“…This could be done between teacher and students in interaction in which both parties can initiate and influence what is highlighted in the teaching situation (cf. Asplund and Kilbrink 2018;Kilbrink and Asplund 2018). Furthermore, the OoL can be divided into a direct and an indirect OoL, where the direct OoL refers to content and indirect OoL to a capability related to the content (Lo 2012).…”

“…Despite this, there is a significant lack of studies focusing on how a specific vocational learning content is taught and learned when vocational teachers and vocational students interact in a vocational education context. Most studies that examine the practices of the vocational classrooms tend to focus more on general pedagogical issues such as how meaning is negotiated between teachers and students, and what communicative strategies teachers and students use when interacting with each other in teaching and learning situations (Khaled et al 2016;Schaap et al 2017), while questions about the specific content to be learned have been of less interest (however, see Asplund and Kilbrink 2018;Kilbrink and Asplund 2018, for some exceptions). Furthermore, in order to keep quality of vocational education, vocational teachers need to get opportunities to develop professionally during their professional working lives as teachers (cf.…”