The Role and Nature of Knowledge in Vocational Programmes

Abstract

An important issue in the design of vocational education is the positioning of the knowledge component of occupations in the curriculum. The underlying question here is what knowledge contents students come across during their education in order to develop their personal knowledge base for professional performance. The knowledge contents of occupations are not unambiguous. In the literature, a distinction is made between different types of knowledge. The first type is codified knowledge that is related to disciplinary knowledge such as language and mathematics but also mechanics, physiology, nutrition, economy, et cetera. Occupational knowledge refers to the specific manifestations of this discipline knowledge. The second type of occupational knowledge refers to distributed and embodied knowledge that can be partly explicated in procedures. In this contribution, we address the positioning of occupational knowledge contents from the perspective of the curriculum, in particular the intended curriculum. Points of attention are the delimitation, alignment and sequences of content, as well as the tasks and contexts whereby, to which and in which students learn and are assessed. Looking back over the past decades we can observe a pendulum movement of attention to knowledge in the form of school subject knowledge to an approach in which skills and attitudes received more attention. In recent years the importance of different types of knowledge related to professional behaviour is acknowledged. This chapter provides a more detailed story of this movement in time and analyses. current examples of how occupational knowledge is positioned in the intended curriculum.