Ammatillisen opettajan näkemykset työelämäyhteistyön uudistamisen mahdollisuuksista ja haasteista
Keywords:
vocational teacher, working life collaboration, reform, cultural historical activity theoryAbstract
Vocational teachers’ practices of the working-life collaboration were changed by the law reform of 2018, when learning at workplaces gained greater importance in vocational education and training. The article explores the views of vocational teachers regarding the possibilities and challenges of the education-work boundary activity in the working life collaboration as required by the education reform. Vocational teachers’ open answers of an online survey were analyzed in the framework of the cultural-historical activity theory. The results show that the expansive possibilities of teachers’ boundary activity were manifested as the teacher’s new roles in working life, the pedagogical implementation of working life orientation, the consolidation of working life collaboration practices and tools, the strengthening of the reform’s student orientation, the creation of communal practices at school and the workplace, and boundary crossings of the division of labor. On the other hand, the tension-laden challenges of the boundary activity appeared in the questions of maintaining the competence of teachers, the scarcity of guidance resources, the division of labor at the interface of collaboration and the pedagogic reorientation of working life. The activity- theoretical method provide a systemic approach to the renewal of the education-working-life collaboration. The expansions and tensions of activity deepen our understanding of the developmental challenges faced in the vocational teachers’ work in the 2020s.
