Vocational education approach: New TEL settings—new prospects for teachers’ instructional activities?

Abstract

This study focuses on vocational education teachers' instructional activities in a new technologyenhanced learning (TEL) setting. A content analysis is applied to investigate teachers' and students' interactions in a 3D game context. The findings illustrate that when teachers' and students' interactions are mediated by a game, teachers seem to apply different discussion activities to empower vocational learning than they do in traditional classroom settings. Additionally, the present study shows that teachers spontaneously develop new ways of supporting vocational learning processes. In more detail, two main types of instructional activities were identified: a "knowledge-providing" approach and a "joint problemsolving" approach. Additionally, findings illustrate how teachers using different types of instructional approaches are followed up with different processes by students. The article is concluded with a general discussion of the emerging challenges regarding the technological and pedagogical development of vocational education and teachers' instructional activities in new TEL settings based on a more long-term design-based research project (ongoing since 2004).

Collaborative business planning in initial vocational education and training

“…The variations in the successful task structure may relate to the learning contexts. According to Hämäläinen and De Wever (2013) CSCL studies have typically focused on contexts other than vocational education (e.g., higher education). Thus, this study gives indication that research findings from other educational contexts may not be directly transferable to the VET practices.…”

“…The study focusses more on understanding the case than on making generalisations beyond its scope (Stake 2005). Additionally, a design-based approach to an educational model based on theoretical principles was applied by integrating a collaboration script in the task (Hämäläinen and De Wever 2013).…”

Supporting productive collaboration in a computer-supported instructional activity: peer-feedback on critical incidents in health care education

“…Gielen et al (2010) produced a table summarising the criteria used to define and evaluate 'good' peer-feedback in different studies (Kim 2005;Sluijsmans, Brand-Gruwel, and van Merriënboer 2002;Prins, Sluijsmans, and Kirschner 2006;Gielen et al 2010). In addition, we included a few studies that considered variables appropriate to our research (van den Berg, Admiraal, and Pilot 2006; Hämäläinen and De Wever 2013). On this basis, we elaborated the analysis grid used to evaluate the quality of each peer-feedback the students provided (Table 1).…”

“…The elements belonging to our grid, which took into account the aspects emerging from the cited literature that were applicable to the activity implemented in this context (in reason of the structure of our scenario and of the prompts provided to the apprentices), represent a list of the key aspects that constitute an effective peer-comment in this context. In order to organise the various aspects considered in our grid, we followed the categories created by Hämäläinen and De Wever (2013). various aspects were taken into account from the more formal, such as the way students followed the structure indicated in the prompts and their use of an appropriate style for this type of peer-exchange, to aspects related to content, such as the questions they asked and their ability to provide comments and ideas to suggest how to solve the situation.…”

“…This new grid is very much dependent on the specific structure and prompts provided to learners in our scenario. As for Table 1, we used some of the categories identified by Hämäläinen and De Wever (2013) to structure our grid.…”