Past research and future perspectives in terms of international research on vocational teachers' education and professionalisation

Summary
The first section of this contribution provides examples from the early stages of comparative research and documentation activities on questions of vocational teacher education and professionalism. In the subsequent section a number of more recent trends from different relevant research fields (comparative research; teacher education and professionalisation and general research on the professions) is being summarised very briefly and put into connection with international research on vocational teacher education and their profession. In the third section some remarks on research needs are being derived and their connection to questions of the development of European standards will be discussed.

Past research and future perspectives in terms of international research on vocational teachers' education and professionalisation
A short history of research and documentation measures
As to my knowledge the first existing work is a follow up of two conferences, one of which held in1956 in Geneva by the ILO and the OECD and the other one dated from 1962 hosted by the OECD at the German Institute of Higher education for educational research in Frankfurt, nowadays known as the DIPF. Those two conferences had a Handbook as an outcome which gathers information on the Training of Vocational Teachers in 13 countries (ILO 1964). The country reports submitted to the co-ordination team were all provided by the respective public authorities of the participating states (see overview, Table 1).
The volume is being opened with a summarising section which deals with recommendations derived from the comparative overview on the different teacher training pathways (one week, four weeks and three months up to four years of special training) and correspondingly different entry qualifications to become a teacher (skilled worker; technician and university degree).
In light of the various ways of training the study comes to the conclusion, that there can’t be standards on how the necessary qualifications should be achieved but rather what kind of qualifications should be recommended for vocational teachers. As this is symptomatic for most of the past research outcomes a summary of the results of this first study can be found in Table 2.
Some of the publications also try to develop transparency by making up comparison-based typologies of VET-Teaching profiles (e.g. UNESCO 1977). In this detailed study for example there are four basic types of teaching profiles being distinguished:
"General technical teacher: a person teaching theoretical subjects and/or the theoretical aspects of element technical subjects usually at the lower secondary level.
Vocational teacher: a person teaching theoretical subjects and/or the theoretical aspects of practical training courses in secondary educational institutions in which skilled workers are educated and trained for occupations in the trades, crafts, industry, agriculture and/or commerce. In some countries., the vocational teacher is responsible for practical workshop training as well.
Workshop teacher: a person teaching the practical skills required by technicians and skilled workers in school workshops usually on the upper secondary level, but also in the first cycle of secondary education or on the post-secondary level. Normally, the technical or vocational teacher to whose courses the practical training activities relate co-ordinates the work of the workshop teacher.
Technical teacher: a person teaching general and special technical theory in educational institutions on the upper secondary or post-secondary level the aim of which is to educate and train technicians. Usually the technical teacher is responsible for both classroom and laboratory work, but may also supervise practical workshop training to the extent required in order to integrate the theoretical and practical aspects of technical education. He may be assisted in laboratory work by appropriately qualified laboratory technicians. (UNESCO 1977, 19-20)
The typologies being used in other studies are quite similar to this one. Usually they are comprised of a combination of the necessary qualification to enter the teaching profession on the one hand and the bundle tasks of the teachers on the other. The mentioned UNESCO study for example introduces another parallel typology for teacher education programmes.
Those typology-based approaches to the topic might be helpful to gain a first orientation when entering the research field. However, they at least in their exclusive application neglect important contextual dimensions of the reality of vocational teaching as an activity and professional task which is taking place in the particular framework of a countries' or regions' educational and socio-economic system. Table 1 provides an overview on all the past comparative studies on vocational teachers. In the following section I will not paraphrase the outcomes of the more recent studies but rather put them into relation with relevant general developments from different research branches.
Recent developments in research of relevance for international studies on vocational teachers
Traps in comparative research on education and training
In a project with Cedefop on the state of the art in Comparative Research on Vocational Education within the EU we made use of a 2x2 matrix (see Grollmann, Sellin 1999, Hörner 1997) which makes an analytical distinction between four basic purposes or underpinning ideas of comparative or international research. The following paragraph provides examples of possible research questions directly related to VET teachers clustered by this matrix:
research which would look for the particular cultural understanding and conception of the vocational educators' role in their respective educational and socio-economic embeddedness would be called ideographic;
research which looks at the very fundamental laws and principles of the functions and processes of vocational education and which makes use of the empirical evidence in different countries, regions, cultural spheres as an empirical knowledge base of variable interrelations between dependent and independent variables would be called nomothetic. A possible example could be general statements on the vocational teachers' role based on research on the interconnection of the basic values and beliefs of the particular societies and their vocational teaching profession;
the so-called "best practice" research (melioristic in this connection), such as the transnational documentation of exemplary practices in different countries with the aim to disseminate them to and adapt them in other national environments;
all the activities of research and documentation which are working on a common understanding of the VET teaching profession - for example the search for standards could be called universalistic.
This distinction is based on the idea that international research can be clustered by asking if it looks for the rather specific or particular (of a culture; region etc.) or for universally observable trends on the one hand and on the other hand if it is rather academically, theoretically oriented or if it is being carried out with a rather practical aim. According to this cluster most of the research which has been carried out with a comparative or international perspective on VET teachers directly would be subordinated to the practical side of the matrix and could hence be called universalistic or melioristic.
There are other relevant branches of research, such as comparative studies on school-to-work transition to mention only one example, which are traditionally rooted in sociology and with it on the rather academic side, but which can also provide important information on teachers' professionalisation in a transnational perspective as this information might help or even be necessary to understand the particular problems of the VET Profession in a specific country. It seems to be important in this connection that traditional segmentations between so-called applied research and documentation and "pure" or "academic" research can be got away from.
Research being carried out with the aim to further "professionalise" VET teaching structures and processes on a transnational level has to widen its perspective to gain mutual understanding:
“[...] comparative social science deals with putting relationships into relation.” (Schriewer 1992);
an author rather stemming from the academic branch of the discipline of comparative education puts it. Comparative research with a too narrow perspective is always at the risk to consider things the same, which are different.
I will give an example: In a comparative project on the professional reality of vocational teachers the author is currently involved in, research was carried out in Denmark, the US and Germany. Comparing the first two countries one can see that the formal requirements and the teacher training necessary to enter the VET teaching arena are similar in length and nature. In both countries a certain range of trade experience is required and has to be added with some in-service training during the first years of the work as teacher as minimum entry requirements.
When we look at the schools the teachers are working in, the typical model in Denmark is a comprehensive vocational college, which offers different programmes in technical fields, mainly on the secondary but also on the post-secondary level.
Academic and vocational Instruction would be provided in the same institution under the same roof.
In the United States there do exist two basic types of vocational schools in the secondary system: one would be similar to the Danish type: a comprehensive vocational high school or career centre with academic and vocational courses under one roof, the other one the vocational area centre, which would provide only the vocational instruction of the programmes for the different "home-high-schools" ("second type", see Figure 1). This type of school is being attended by the students only once or twice a week for the vocational instruction, whereas they would receive their academic lessons in their different home-high-schools. In those cases, the staff of the vocational school is almost merely set up with vocational teachers. What is interesting about that?
There are quite similar postulations in both countries in terms of reform programmatics: the integration of vocational and academic learning, individualised instruction etc. Those goals usually imply a well reflected co-ordination and co-operation between different teachers, e.g. those for academic and vocational subjects. However, this straightforward example shows how different the framework for the realisation of those issues can be in the framework of different educational systems. There are also lot of similar traps reported for comparative research on teachers in general and their education (e.g. Popkewitz 2000).
Another remarkable example which is quite relevant for the domain of vocational education and the professionalisation of its teachers can be drawn from the sociological international comparative research scene: One of the important topics in connection with the professionalisation of teachers is the question about the content of teaching. The research on “Industrial Cultures” (Ruth 1995) has shown that there quite different cultural conceptions and practices with regard to the organisation of production and the shape of technological artefacts. Hence, more so than for example in the didactics of sciences such as mathematics, it is much more difficult to develop a universal curricular and didactical basis which reflected in the different modes of organising this content in the varying teacher education programmes (see also the contributions by Toth, Varga and Gombocz; Gombocz in Toth 1995). This problem is reinforced by the different functions VET takes over for the labour market as well in different modes of career building and identity formation (e.g. Drexel 1995; Evans, Heinz 1993).
Recent developments with regard to the theory and research on the teaching profession
The (comparative) research on the professions is historically rooted in functionalist theoretical approaches to society and social theory (Freidson 1994). It was one of the main research interests during this phase i.e. the beginning of the 20th century to describe and analyse the distinct features of special occupational groups which have evolved within the process of the development from the corporative state over the burgeois to the industrialised society and which took over new emerging societal functions. Generally, those approaches collected a sum of indicators empirically derived from studies on the traditional professions (such as lawyers, doctors) which made them distinguishable from other skilled work. Typical indicators which can be found in those approaches are:
high, usually academic qualification on the basis of scientific knowledge.
autonomy and professional self-regulation.
societal influence as Experts on their respective field (here: vocational education)
professional field must be considered as a basic pillar of the society
practice derived from a systematic body of knowledge and the reproduction of this knowledge
professional associations usually combining the academic as well as the occupational interests of the specific occupational group
societal monopoly of the profession fulfil those tasks, but the individual freedom of
the client to select the respective professional individual
higher-than average payment
(see the summary of Fasshauer 1997)
Consequently this approach was also used for the teaching profession. A lot of sociologists, then, came to the conclusion that teaching can at most be called a semi-profession (Etzioni 1969). Most of the past comparative approaches (see Table 1) to vocational education as a profession seem to be deeply rooted in the indicator- or attribute-approach to the profession albeit to a different extent. What comes out finally is rather a juxtaposition of different existing systems of VET teacher education and teaching profiles. Those approaches often ignore important relationships between dimensions which strongly shape the teaching reality, similar to the example given above.
The inadequacy of the traditional sociological paradigm to professions has also led to the fact that there are a lot of approaches from the educational discipline to teachers' pro¬fessio-nalisation and their education which are not making use of the term "profession" anymore or change the conceptualisation with regard to the specific purposes.
In addition, there has been drawn more and more attention to the rather individual side of professional agency and its prerequisites, namely the skills, knowledge and competencies a "professional" teacher needs. In this connection there have to be mentioned approaches which stress the importance of what the American Educator Lee Shulman called "pedagogical content knowledge" (Shulman 1984). This is especially relevant for vocational teaching as that has to deal with the following unique problem in terms of content:
"[...]the professionalisation of the education of vocational teachers for the teaching of non-professional skills and knowledge."(Bannwitz, Rauner 1993, 10-11; emphasis and translation by the author)."
Shulman proposes that for the development of occupational competence of teachers there are different types of knowledge. The one he labels "pedagogical content knowledge" is the knowledge which enables the teacher to find out the best mode of conveying a specific content to a particular individual person. This knowledge can best be acquired by the study of pedagogical cases, he argues. Here, he comes full circle with the underpinning ideas of professions, because he also mentions the tradition of law education (a traditional course of professional education) which has made use of case-studies since its existence. The shift to a rather micro-level or interaction-based model of professional agency can also be seen in branches of the general sociological research (e.g. Oevermann 1996) the professions and goes in line with the often stated international trend of a pressure to individualise educational programmes.
Another development we can see in the research on teacher education is that it increasingly merges with the perspective of school-development . The prominent idea of "reflective practice" brought into the discussion by D. Schön (Schön 1983) or books such as the "Meaning of Educational Change" by the Canadian Educator Michael Fullan (Fullan 1999) are only a few examples of this trend. What they have in common is that they are also in favour of a rather process and interaction oriented model of Teachers' professionalisation which sees the teacher as an individual learner as well as a member of collective learning processes and the development of socially shared cognitions and conceptualisations. This research also suggests fundamental implications for the shaping of the institutional environment of teaching, namely the schools and their relationship to the surrounding community (see the summarising article by Hopkins and Stern 1996).
A lot of those recent trends were reflected in the design as well as in the outcomes of the LEONARDO-project EUROPROF, which aimed to develop a pan-European Master-level qualification for VET-professionals. Beside a huge number of articles surrounding the idea of common "cornerstones" by members of the project (e.g. Attwell 1997), one of the substantial outcomes of this project however was the insight that for a pan-European process of professionalisation of vocational teaching it is an important precondition to get the involvement of the "professionals" themselves, e.g. through their professional associations. Another outcome was, that the project showed once again how difficult it is to develop a common framework or set of standards taking into account the vast differences between the different ways in which vocational education and training is being organised through Europe. The development of cornerstones, however, seems to be quite a promising way of finding a common basis.(Attwell 1997a).
International comparative research on teachers in vocational education and its relationship to the development of standards
The preceding sections have very briefly summarised the development of international comparative studies on vocational teachers starting from the early sixties. A comprehensive international or pan-European piece of research which entails all different relevant aspects is still overdue. A project like this would have to widen its perspective from the pure aggregation and description of single discrete indicators (which are of course an important part) to a perspective which takes into account the interrelations between those indicators themselves as well as to neighbouring domains within the triangle of education and training; technology and economy and work and employment. With regard to a possible research design it might be sensible to cluster the field horizontally by rather static aspects, such as institutional factors, existing professional profiles etc. and vertically by process variables which take into account the dynamics, such as the relations between different institutions; institutional changes, innovation modes etc. This scaffold could additionally be fleshed out by a number of qualitative case-studies. The older research approaches provide useful information for the horizontal layer, whereas more recent contributions, such as the EUROPROF cornerstones, provide useful starting points for the vertical layer of such an endeavour.
The increasing number of relevant "cases" in Shulman's sense going along with the internationalisation of the educational business could lay an interesting fundament for the further conceptualisation of the meaning of "professionality" also on the very micro-level, as long as cases are re-embedded to their cultural or national origins as well as examined on their potential for innovation transfer.
What could this imply for the development of European standards?
Past research and documentation measures and previous experiences suggest that the development of standards is quite a challenging task due to the complexity of factors influencing the actual performance of a profession. This is especially true, when the proposed standards should be of transnational validity. This is reinforced by current developments in the field such as individualisation of learning processes, increasing institutional autonomy, curricular flexibilisation, gaining importance of work-placed learning which lead to a rethinking of possible role models for vocational and which make the objective of standardisation even more unclear.
This implies that beside a number of common standards, which in an international or European setting at first can merely be more than minimum standards, there would have to be some set of rather process-oriented statements which entail attributes of the profession itself as well as to the circumstances of their professional agency, such as institutions and relation to other neighbouring domains.
In one of the German volumes on the problem I found the following sentence:
"A homogenous Profession can only be achieved and maintained when it finds a common set of realistic tasks and a common understanding of its function as well as its significance for the society!"
(Fasshauer 1997, translation by the author)
The standards themselves can only be developed by practitioners or their representatives themselves, because they have to be build on a basis of shared cognition and mutual understanding. All different strands of international and comparative research as described in the first section can be valuable for this process:
"I believe that comparative and historical comparison of the professions needs guidance not by a mere checklist of attributes, but rather by a systematically developed model that eschews over-concrete attributes important only in one historical time and place, instead employing abstract concepts that can embrace a variety of concrete circumstances. Properly articulated into a series of interconnected concepts, such a model can serve as a template to guide the collection and organization of information by students of different professions in both past and present, and in many places . This does not prevent the analysis of unique circumstances and different cultures, while facilitating the discovery of commonalities and their importance. And it could prevent the degeneration of scholarly discourse into a Babel of anecdotes and case studies, and debates that talk past each other." (Freidson 1994).
In the international setting the development of common professional visions has to struggle with problem of achieving a balance between the necessary abstractness on the one hand, which makes the statements valid for all the individuals in each of the different contexts they refer to, and the necessary concreteness on the other, which make them relevant and meaningful for the individual practitioner. To achieve this, a close co-operation between the relevant fields of research and the practitioners themselves is indispensable. Forums such as the TT-Net can play an important part in this connection.
Finally, one important problem remains:
If "life-long learning" takes more and more place at other venues than those genuinely designed for processes of learning, a lot of professional assistance to learning will be necessary out of those traditionally tangible institutional settings. Who assures the quality of this emerging field?

Philipp Grollmann
May 2001

Tables and Figures

Table 1: Chronology of past international research and documentation measures on Vocational Teachers
Study/Publication/Project Length Region(s) or countries covered Content: Focus/Methodology/Aims/outcomes
ILO 1964 250pp. 13 industrially developed countries country reports by national authorities; comparative synthesis; Recommendations for standards
Geminard 1971 247pp. France; United Kingdom; Germany; Italy individual study by one author with comparative overview; academic study
Mitter et al. INTERAGLA country reports à 40pp. 9 industrialised countries from the eastern and western block descriptive country studies by national researches or team of researchers;
UNESCO 1977 250pp. examples from industrialised countries and developing countries (over 30 altogether) country reports by national authorities; Questionnaire; two stages; expert opinions; typologies of teachers and trainers and of teacher education institution; knowledge transfer to developing countries
Tarrou 1993 78pp. 10 EU-countries and Norway Working group 3 of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) Focus on in-service education and training; comparative volume based on national reports
Toth 1995 89pp. 8 EU countries and Norway One chapter on comparative questions; based on a questionnaire and the other articles in the Volume
UNEVOC 1997 107pp. different socio-geographic regions Commonwealth; Caribbean; Asian Pacific; Africa; Poland round table report; contributions by single authors; summarising and comparative introduction
Cedefop 4 Volumes à 130pp. EU Member States country reports by experts or groups of experts; reciprocal review
EUROPROF Several publications in Journals 14 EU countries national reports on selected topics by the involved researchers; common project cornerstones for collaboration; steps to the development of a European master programme for VET-Professionals
TT Net Website/dossiers EU Member States case studies and country reports;
EUROFRAME Follow-Up of EUROPROF with the aim of the establishment of a European Master Degree/University Institute; selected country level reports and memorandum will be finished in 2001

Table 2: Outcomes of the ILO Study
Recruitment
Vocational Teachers should be given the same status and the same remuneration commensurate with those accorded to staff in general education;
Not possible to suggest a specific line of training universally applicable
But the following qualifications should be achieved:
Training programme and Content
a). Level of general education should be considerably higher than that acquired by the average vocational school student
b). technical education and scientific instruction corresponding to that of a higher technician
c). considerable practical experience of working conditions, safety measures, ergonomics and the organisation and practices of industrial production and maintenance operations
d). knowledge of philosophy and principles of education as well as general and applied pedagogy: planning training programmes; general and industrial psychology; physiology and sociology; special regard to the youth at work and social institutions of industry;
e) advanced training in the didactic methods of teaching technical subjects with special emphasis on teaching based on experimentation
Because of shortages there should be in-service measures to get those qualifications
Continuing Training
Keeping up-to date with developments of theoretical aspects of their subject; industrial practices and teaching techniques
Measures proposed:
Release for work in industry or special courses
Facilitation of distance learning and participation in conferences
Research
Research should be carried out by teaching staff qualified in the scientific and technical specialisiations
Research should be result of teamwork of persons from industry, education and persons concerned with the theoretical side of the technical subject and the psychology of learning
Measures of co-ordination
Better integration of the theoretical and practical learning has to be gained
Teacher education has to be articulated with other policies of general and technical education
More extensive use of combined training in school workshops which blurs the difference between practice and theoretical teachers


Figure 1: Different types of institutional settings for similar qualified VET-Professionals

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