Let's Vary the Travel Speed - Interaction and Critical Aspects in Welding Education

Learning to weld in vocational education is an action research project and its purpose is to meet the demand of research regarding the relation between teaching and learning in technical vocational education. In the research project the welding education at an upper secondary vocational school in Sweden is video-recorded in iterative cycles. The two theoretical perspectives conversation analysis and variation theory are combined and a new didactic approach is formed – CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach). CAVTA permeates the complete process of the study, where analytic tools deriving from the two theoretical perspectives have been used in the design of the teaching and in the data analysis. Learning to weld in vocational education is inspired by the learning study method but the traditional pre- and post tests have been removed. This paper focuses the second year of Learning to weld in vocational education, developing previously published material. The systematic implementation of CAVTA into welding education is in focus. The research question is formulated: How can the didactic approach CAVTA be implemented in TIG welding education? Preliminary results of the second year of the study confirm the results of the first year. The implementation of CAVTA affects the design of the welding lessons and the evaluation of the lessons. The vocational teachers’ discussions concentrate on subject specific issues. There is an increased focus on the object of learning with its critical aspects. The discussions about how to design the teaching to make the critical aspects discernable result in adjustment of the welding lessons. The systematic teacher and student interactions, including other semiotic resources than verbal language, gradually increase throughout the cycles. The main implications of the paper concern the forms of teaching subject specific contents within welding education. Nevertheless, the results of the second year of Learning to weld in vocational education, may spur development of the teaching of other objects of learning. The project also contributes with knowledge in other fields, such as theoretical framework and methodology, with its combination of conversation analysis and variation theory. The collaboration between researchers and a team of vocational teachers might be of interest to anyone interested in professional development