- Trial lecture starts at: 10.00
- Public defence starts at: 12.00
Title of trial lecture: Emergent challenges and possibilities in vocational teachers’ professional development for connecting school and workplace learning
Read the thesis in Nasjonalt Vitenarkiv
Disputation chair: Dean Ingunn Folkestad Breistein
Assessment committee:
- First opponent: professor Daniel Alvunger, Linnæus University
- Second opponent: associate professor Nina Aakernes, OsloMet
- Chair of assessment committee: associate professor Annette-Pascale Denfeld, UiA
Supervisors in the doctoral work:
- Main supervisor: professor Andrea Stefanie Hillen, UiA
- Co-supervisor: professor Eveline Wuttke, Goethe Universitet
Summary of thesis
This doctoral thesis examines how vocational education and training (VET) can support students in navigating boundaries between school-based and workplace learning, and how coherence across these learning contexts can be pedagogically constructed. The study is situated within the Norwegian Sales, Service and Tourism (SST) programme, a vocational pathway characterised by loosely structured work placements and limited pedagogical integration across learning arenas.
The overarching aim is to investigate how thematic assignments function as boundary objects that mediate students’ learning across school and workplace contexts. Drawing on boundary-crossing theory, the thesis explores how students, vocational teachers and workplace supervisors use these assignments to make vocational concepts visible, structure reflection, and negotiate meaning across contexts. Particular attention is paid to the pedagogical conditions in which thematic assignments support students’ meaning-making, motivation, and development of vocational identity.
Methodologically, the thesis adopts a qualitative, exploratory design comprising three interconnected studies. The empirical material includes classroom and workplace observations, student diaries, individual interviews with students, conversational interviews with vocational teachers and workplace supervisors, and a focus group discussion. The analytical approach is informed by hermeneutic phenomenology and reflexive thematic analysis, complemented by directed qualitative content analysis. The theoretical framework integrates boundary-crossing theory with Biesta’s domains of educational purpose, qualification, socialisation, and subjectification, and theories of workplace learning and reflection.
The findings demonstrate that thematic assignments can function as boundary objects that reduce discontinuity between school-based and workplace learning, but only through intentional pedagogical enactment. Their capacity to support coherence emerges through dialogic use, adaptive guidance, and structured opportunities for reflection-for-action, reflection-in-action, and reflection-on-action. Coherence in VET is thus understood as a pedagogical accomplishment rather than a result of structural arrangements alone.
The thesis contributes to vocational education research by conceptualising vocational learning as an interweaving of experiences, concepts, and reflections across learning contexts, and by proposing a conceptual model that illustrates how such interweaving supports students’ vocational understanding and identity formation.
What to do as an online audience member
The disputation is open to the public. To follow the trial lecture and the public defence online, register on Zoom.
We ask online audience members to join no earlier than 10 minutes in advance. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time.
Opponent ex auditorio:
Deadline for the public to pose questions is during the break between the two opponents. Questions ex auditorio can be submitted to disputation chair.
Contact:
- lise.moss@uia.no
- Phone
- +47 38 14 20 58