Formation of General Competencies in Vocational Education and Training: The Role of Teachers' Beliefs
Abstract
To investigate the process of how vocational education teachers interpret the state's planned curriculum to form general competencies in students, 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers of humanities disciplines from 7 vocational educational providers located in the Central, Siberian, and Ural Federal Districts. Analysis of the interview materials revealed that the mechanism for transitioning from the intended to the enacted curriculum, i.e., from the Federal State Educational Standards for Vocational Education to the actual educational process in vocational schools, involves interpreting the mandate for change based on two types of the teachers’ beliefs: individual and institutional. It was found that institutional beliefs are primary in the process of interpreting the mandate, as they set the range of permissible pedagogical practices. They act as a "path" that limits the implementation of innovative projects aimed at changing educational content. Meanwhile, teachers' individual beliefs determine within which part of this range of pedagogical practices—more traditional or more innovative—their teaching activity plan will fall. Furthermore, an individual teacher's orientation towards traditional knowledge-based education is associated with a refusal to implement or with only partial implementation of general competencies (GC), while an orientation towards the holistic development of students is associated with best practices for the formation of GC.
The article describes the approaches to implementing GC identified during the interviews among vocational education teachers and the relation of these approaches with different pedagogical beliefs. These findings can be used to develop measures for improving the formation of general competencies by decision-makers involved in the development of vocational education at the federal and regional levels, or by administrators of individual vocational educational schools.
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