Vocational literacy as part of carpentry knowing

• When it comes to upper secondary vocational education there still is a societal understanding of vocational knowing as related to manual work that has noting to do with literacy work. However, New Literacy Studies, as introduced by e.g. Street (1982) Barton (2001) and others, has shown that there are different kinds of literacies - what people read and write, how they do it, and for what purposes - that are socially constituted. Within this research tradition, several literacy practices related to work have been explored and analysed. Also various school subjects have been subject for research. However, less attention has been paid to the literacy practices in vocational education. Although there are some studies this is still a field of research that needs further attention. The issue of this paper is firstly to describe the different literacy options present in a school workshop within the Swedish Upper secondary Craft programme specialising on carpentry, and secondly to exemplify the kinds of discussions about vocational text that are part of didactic situations in students' problem solving. Fort this paper, a visit guided by the vocational teachers through the carpentry workshop reveals the kind of literacy that the students encounter on daily basis. The teacher-student-conversations are examples from classroom study of the carpentry programme. Together these materials illuminate what kind of vocational literacy a future carpenter must be able to manage as part of the vocational knowing.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

vocational knowing

literacy

vocational content

Subject Learning and Teaching

ämnesdidaktik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)