Relational pedagogy in a vocational programme in upper secondary school : A way to make more students graduate

In Sweden, many students start but do not graduate from upper secondary school despitepreventive efforts. The reasons for students dropping out of school have been examinedand opposed, but there is still more to be done. The overall aim of this study wasto contextualise and understand teachers’ and students’ experiences and perceptions ofrelational pedagogy in a vocational upper secondary programme in Sweden. The theoreticalframework was relational pedagogy to investigate theoretical knowledge of pedagogicalrelations. The data for this qualitative study was collected through two focusgroup interviews with 10 teachers and 10 individual student interviews. Directed contentanalysis was used to analyse the data in order to pay attention to the core conceptsof relational pedagogy as a theoretical encoding scheme. The findings show that teachersand students find their working and learning atmosphere much safer and more securecompared to earlier; both groups mentioned relational pedagogy as promoting studentparticipation, engagement, and motivation in school. This study contributes withknowledge of how vocational teachers and students perceive working with relationalpedagogy to promote learning and school attendance, but there is still a need to find outmore about how teachers’ relational competence is acquired