Organization of cooperation between school and working life in VET
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7577/sjvd.4889Keywords:
Vocational education, collaboration between school and working life, collaboration structures, loosely coupled systems, meaning makingAbstract
Norwegian and international research reveals challenges in the collaboration between school and working life in vocational education. Because vocational education is twofold between two years in school and two years as an apprentice in a workplace, collaboration between school and working life is required. A lack of collaboration can lead to students receiving less relevant vocational education, that drop-out rates increase, and that the education does not provide working life with the skills they need. The article examines how a school owner and an upper secondary school choose to organize the collaboration between school and working life, and how these collaboration structures can contribute to a closer collaboration between the two learning arenas in the school part of the education. A qualitative approach has been used with a case with two levels of education represented by a county municipality and a secondary school in the same county. We analyze and discuss how this school owner and the local upper secondary school organizes collaborative structures between school and working life, and what these arrangements lead to. The analysis shows that in the work of creating closer collaboration, the school owner must balance between the desire to create binding collaboration structures and the schools 'and companies' tradition of self-determination. The school owner's intentions to establish close collaboration on vocational education and training have resulted in three formal collaboration structures. Using the theory of school leadership understood as collaborative activity in a system with loose connections and meaning making, it is revealed that all three collaboration structures contribute to increased understanding between school and working life, while two of collaboration structures at school level contribute to both increased understanding and support for a more common collaborative practice.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Merete Chatrin Rekdahl, Marit Aas, Brit Bolken Ballangrud
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