Sharing knowledge and competence is not a matter of course for participants in the Vocational Teachers Strategy

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to develop new knowledge and understanding of vocational teachers who take further education.
The article presents how vocational teachers experience the research and development skills they accomplish through further education can contribute to the development of the school's professional learning community (PLC) and the school as a learning organization. Research provides good evidence of which factors promote the development of professional learning communities. The study investigates whether further education students find these factors present so that they can contribute to the development of the school's PLC. In spite that sharing is an important prerequisite for developing PLC’s in schools, we have observed that participants do not always share their experiences with colleagues and leaders at the schools they represent.
The study also highlights the question of what collaborative relationships the students establish through R&D work and how this contributes to the development of competence in the learning community. The article provides insight into what support and support development projects the students receive at university and in the school's leadership.
The study is based on further education financed within the strategy “Vocational Teacher Promise”, and the data is collected through four focus group interviews with vocational teachers. In the interviews, we ask about what experiences they have with R&D at their own school, and how they collaborate and share new competence and knowledge with the school’s leadership, colleagues, and other partners. The findings show a strong correlation between students' experiences in which factors are important for developing PLCs. In addition, we see a strong correlation with the factors that research and literature emphasize to promote the development of professional learning communities and school development. In the article, we discuss how the findings in our study are linked to findings in previous studies.