Students' views on constructivistic learning in vocational training

The aim of this thesis has been to describe and analyse the students'views on the effects of constructivistic indicators in a learning environment of vocational training. The indicators concerned here were activity, authenticity, holism, context and multiple perspectives. The thesis focuses futher on the differences between traditional and constructivistic vocational training in its practice-of-skills aspect. The work consists of two sections, of which the first is a theoretical survey of cognitive constructivistic learning in which the views of various researchers are presented, analysed and compared. By designing a learning method with the highest possible number of constructivistic indicators, it has been possible to record students opinions of these in three different ways, by using questionnaires, interviews and video recordings. The pupils' experiences of various learning situations have then been described and analysed. Data have also been gathered using a fourth method, by recording spontaneous comments from the teachers concerned. The information has then been collated, and the results compared with the views of those researchers already presented. The results indicate that the effects of cognitive constructivistic indicators are felt as favourable by the pupils, who make it clear that it is of great value to be able to "think for oneself' as they put it, in the course of acquiring professional skills. Among other things, what the pupils consider specially valuable for the learning process is the personal activity and authenticity involved in creating usable products. No noticeably unfavourable pupil experiences of the constructivistic learning have emerged, while the spontaneous comments of the teachers express both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include increased motivation on the part of pupils as a consequence of learning through creating usable products; pupils feel that what they do is more meaningful than would be the case in traditional vocational training. They also become independent learners more quickly: the teachers feel that the pupils learn more efficiently, and that the training period for some of them could be reduced by one-third. The major disadvantage is that the teacher has to learn to play a partly new role, since the teaching material does not consist of rigidly specific written instructions. Initially a greater amount of work is demanded of the teacher until pupils have become accustomed to the mainly constructivistic learning method. The learning environment that is presented in conclusion includes among other things features of business economics, product design and innovation, as well as certain conditions for the establishment of small-scale industry. Judging from the results, these components may be considered as further reinforcing the learning effect from a cognitive-constructivistic point of view. Vocational training thus acquires a new qualitative dimension when constructivistic indicators integrate instruction with the subsequent situation of working and earning a living, instead of concentrating simply on the content of the syllabus with no relation to the situation of pupils after completion of their training.digitalisering@um