19. Summary

Of the anthology: "Uddannelse, læring og demokratisering" (Education, learning and democratisation). Articles edited by associate professor Albert. A. Christensen, Danish Institute for the Educational Training of Vocational Teachers.

The amended Act on Vocational Education and Training came into force on 1 January 2000. With the reform - also called "Vocational education and training reform 2000" - the vocational colleges will get new tools so that they can tackle young people's future demands. The new tools are: individualisation of course plans, flexibility in the organisation, attention paid to the individual student, credit award, possibility of adding on study competency, possibility of achieving partial competency etc. The task for the colleges will now be to use these tools and create possibilities so that the students make use of the education system in an appropriate way.

The vocational colleges have since the establishment of an actual vocational college system often had to change and develop.

The overall issue this time is not just how the structure and organisation of the colleges change so that the students become able to choose different paths in the education system. It is also about attracting new students to the vocational colleges and retaining them in the vocational education and training system. And it is about meeting quantitative targets such as the one that 95% of a youth year group complete upper secondary education, and that 50% of the year group subsequently complete higher education.

The theme of the anthology is "education, learning and democratisation" - using vocational education and training as an example. Where not long ago the pedagogical watchwords were: determination, conveyance, relevance, uniformity and control, they are now: learning, competencies, personal development, individualisation, participation, practice learning and differentiation. The former focus on the teacher as a subject and the student as an object is changing, and the student is now becoming the subject, and the teacher has the role as the one who supports and guides the student through his or her course of learning, and the one who sets the framework of the course.

In this summary, we present and discuss some of the issues set out in the anthology in relation to the targets, aims and values, which are connected with vocational education and training, and their close links to the development of society - seen in the perspective of vocational education and training reform 2000 and the intention to create development possibilities for all students.

New didactic methods: Focus on individualisation and competencies

A general feature in the articles of the anthology is the attention paid by the authors to more fundamental reflections on the change of the pedagogic and didactic practice in vocational education and training and changes in the structure and organisation: the learning concept and the learning environment, the student's role as the subject and didactic methods, differentiation and individualisation.

This feature is recurring in the pedagogic and didactic debate which is taking place to day both in national and international environments and which is among other things linked to individualisation and differentiation. There must be offers and activities for different students. Whereas for many years it was the teacher who played the lead role in the colleges' and the teachers' own planning of activities, there is now a clear tendency to focus on the students and the structures and organisational conditions in which this learning and development is to evolve.

The interest in this renewed didactic debate is among other things caused by a new understanding of the knowledge society, which has become part of our everyday life. When for example the passenger airplane takes off from the airport, we confidently place our trust in pilots, air traffic controllers, mechanics etc. We hardly think about it. We trust that the technology used in the plane is in competent hands and that the skilled people know what they are doing. The rapid technological development means that we place our trust in a technology, which we do not entirely understand the use of. In the knowledge society, our existence depends on knowledge, which at the same time is becoming more and more difficult to access, as it is broken up and found in different practice environments, so writes Klaus Nielsen in his article "Learning in a practice environment and the knowledge society".

Therefore, if the students are to learn those competencies, which are necessary in order to operate the technology in an aircraft, they must learn them in a practice environment, where all these personal and vocational competencies and qualifications are embedded. The students cannot learn this in the old-fashioned way. It cannot be taught. It must be possible for the students to develop their knowledge and competencies themselves as a necessary prerequisite for working with complex aircraft technology. And it must take place in a practice environment.

Klaus Nielsen underlines that modern society is characterised by differentiation. It is not an organic entity, but must be understood to consist of different areas or practice environments which each develops in its own way, and which can function in a very diversified manner. A society of competencies, which is continuously differentiated into a wide variety of small and large practice environments, in which the student must learn to function in addition to also being able to function individually and independently.

Another important tendency in the period we live in is that the individual aspect has been given a greater importance during the last decades. A process, which started in the 1960s and which has continued at unreduced speed up through the 1980s and 1990s. An individualisation, which has made itself felt in particular as a tendency in the young population groups, and which is among other things about cutting loose from the very committing ties, which Church, family, communities and the society have placed on the individual's opportunities for self-expression. There is no longer only one right answer, one value, one common standard etc. The answer depends on the context and point of view displayed.

The programmes must therefore be organised so that they benefit the individual. The activities are to be individualised. The students have different needs, and they must learn to develop their competencies in different contexts and practice environments. They therefore do not need to participate in a wide variety of teaching, which has been planned in advance, and which the school wants all to go through. The vocational education and training programmes have so far been structured as if we were all alike and as if the context, in which the students are to use their knowledge, is the same.

The vocational education and training reform 2000 is as a matter of fact focusing on the custom-made learning formulated and decided by the student with support from the contact teacher. This is the basis for individualised courses of learning, where each individual student can as far as possible follow his or her own agenda for the development of competencies.

It is therefore important that teachers, students and college can cooperate when it comes to creating the prerequisites that are necessary for the student so that he or she can acquire competence and be given the opportunity for independent learning and development. The college must give more room for the students' individuality, their experience of being different from the other students. Individualisation and flexibility therefore also become necessary, if the vocational colleges are to attract and keep students.

In this perspective, we will in the following briefly discuss some of the authors' reflections in relation to the following themes:

• Change of the structure and organisation of the colleges - focus on the individual.
• Development and challenges for all.
• Open learning centres and the new teacher role.
• The values of the vocational colleges.
• The agent of change as a reformer.

Change of structure and organisation of the colleges - focus on the individual

Vocational Education and Training Reform 2000 is synonymous with a great number of new demands placed on the vocational colleges. In his article "Choice, dropout and the new area of opportunities", Finn Christensen illustrates how the vocational education and training system is in a latent crisis. Unless the vocational education and training programmes lead the way and are able to point at new ways and possibilities for young people, they must realise that the intake of young people to the sector will decline in the coming years, and this may give rise to a number of societal problems of a serious nature in the future.

The vocational education and training programmes must be prepared for a much more flexible organisation so that the uncertainty, reluctance and approaches to the final choice of education are not unilaterally a liability or cost, but that these elements are actively considered as conditions which the system must adapt itself to. Individual education plans and a sensitive credit award system is when considered from the point of view of society a prerequisite of decisive importance as a reaction to wrong choices, dropout and waste of resources. But it requires great readjustments at those vocational colleges, which are to be subject to the restructuring

In his article "The vocational college as flexible competency units", Hans Jørgen Knudsen discusses how these new expectations to the vocational colleges must be translated into a new understanding of vocational pedagogic professionalism. In the light of this, it is being studied how the vocational college can - organisationally and pedagogically - take up these new challenges.

The question is how the colleges can in their practical organisation and in their organisation of the work of the teachers and management create the framework for the current weighting of the individualised learning patterns. The article discusses these challenges and present concrete proposals as to how the colleges can take on this task.

The background for this apparently extensive individualisation is described in Birgitte Simonsen's article "Young people's conditions and expectations with regard to education and work".

The article discusses how the increasing individualisation lead to new expectations and requirements with regard to education and work in young people, and how the education sector and working life are to contribute to the young people's work with their identity and to their democratic education. The demands from these "new young people" are not just huge, but of a totally new nature, because they apparently take their point of departure in the young people's basic values and understanding what a good working life is all about.

Finland and the Finnish upper secondary education system constitute a good example of the fact that it is possible to carry through very extensive readjustments with a view to making a system more flexible and adapted to individualised learning. In his article "No classes - what can we learn from Finland?", Ole Dibbern Andersen describes how the Finns have throughout the latest decade placed the concept of "no classes" on the agenda and thus created a new upper secondary education

In his article "The vocational college as flexible competency units", Hans Jørgen Knudsen discusses how these new expectations to the vocational colleges must be translated into a new understanding of vocational pedagogic professionalism. In the light of this, it is being studied how the vocational college can - organisationally and pedagogically - take up these new challenges.

The question is how the colleges can in their practical organisation and in their organisation of the work of the teachers and management create the framework for the current weighting of the individualised learning patterns. The article discusses these challenges and present concrete proposals as to how the colleges can take on this task.

The background for this apparently extensive individualisation is described in Birgitte Simonsen's article "Young people's conditions and expectations with regard to education and work".

The article discusses how the increasing individualisation lead to new expectations and requirements with regard to education and work in young people, and how the education sector and working life are to contribute to the young people's work with their identity and to their democratic education. The demands from these "new young people" are not just huge, but of a totally new nature, because they apparently take their point of departure in the young people's basic values and understanding what a good working life is all about.

Finland and the Finnish upper secondary education system constitute a good example of the fact that it is possible to carry through very extensive readjustments with a view to making a system more flexible and adapted to individualised learning. In his article "No classes - what can we learn from Finland?", Ole Dibbern Andersen describes how the Finns have throughout the latest decade placed the concept of "no classes" on the agenda and thus created a new upper secondary education  system. Students do no longer attend classes according to age and in uniform sequences but are presented to an extremely differentiated education system, which in fact places the individual young person and his or her choice on the agenda in a very radical way. At the same time, the Finns have eliminated the distinctions between general and vocational upper secondary education. The contours of a totally new way of practicing upper secondary education are now appearing and thus also the possibilities of finding good inspiration for the development of the Danish upper secondary education system.

Development and challenges for all

The vocational education and training reform does however also have another perspective. Since the adoption of the programme "Education and training for all", it has been an objective to get 95% of a youth year group to complete a programme at upper secondary level. If one looks at the figures, as they have developed through the 1990s, one can see that this objective has drawn closer, but it has not been fully realised.

Mogens Hansen points at one of the reasons for this in his article "The school of trade and the many forms of intelligence".

In spite of a lot of good will and a lot of adjustment, the vocational colleges have not yet succeeded in adapting themselves fully to the fact that many of the young people, who do frequent the vocational college, have other learning preferences, other forms of intelligence than for instance those young people who attend general upper secondary education. For the pedagogic-didactic activity, which the colleges work with, the recognition of "the pedagogics of the many forms of intelligence" is rather decisive, if the central educational policy target is to be fully attained. Students acquire learning in different ways, and the modern school must in its activity work with this, if it is to create challenges for all young people.

Parallel to this, Sten Clod Poulsen illustrates how the learning methods of individuals differ a lot and thus also the prerequisite for good learning in his article "Learning competency and the development of teacher teams". A student, who is to be successful with his or her course of education, must in reality command a variety of learning methods in order to be able to cope and absorb from a modern learning environment. How can a teacher team work with this? How can the colleges' new flexible possibilities be used in this respect?

Open learning centres and the new teacher role

Flexibility and openness when it comes to the students' individual learning styles and learning methods do not emerge from nothing but require thorough considerations and carefully prepared readjustments.

Some vocational colleges have gradually gained a lot of experience with an interesting new way of organising learning processes: the open learning centre.

It is the idea that the learning environment is to be organised so that the students' individual qualifications can determine the learning activities which are to be organised. But on the other hand it is also required that a lot of things are changed at the vocational college so that proper prerequisites can be organised for the didactic methods which are to be the point of departure for such learning activities.

In his article "From the class room to open learning centres", A. Neil Jacobsen discusses how this readjustment can take place. What does it take to establish an open learning centre? At the practical level - organisation and resources? At the level concerning teacher competencies? To all intents and purposes a new challenge for the colleges, but with a perspective which points clearly ahead.

The teacher competencies and the learning perspectives are also discussed in Steen Høyrup's article "Pedagogical management and democratic learning processes". Høyrup perceives vocational education and training reform 2000 as a reform which quite basically opens up for new perspectives of learning and democratisation. With the basic ideas of the reform about individualisation and inclusiveness, the foundation stones have been laid for a pedagogic and didactic approach which can open up new ways and create a democratic understanding and educational differentiation which should be able to include many (more) young people. But the prerequisite is that the professionalism of the teachers is also developed so that the possibilities do not remain theoretical but are translated into practical reality.

The values of the vocational colleges

The many possibilities for development and change contained in vocational education and training reform 2000 however are dependent on one decisive prerequisite, viz. that vocational education and training can identify and update the values which the young people can turn into an adequate point of departure for their meeting with the world of education. The value issue is - when looked at in this way - perhaps the most fundamental issue for the vocational colleges to give an answer to, for unless it happens, the likelihood that the young people will settle down is not big.

In the Ministry's publication "Values in Practice", Minister of Education Margrethe Vestager gave her view on how this discussion on values in the education system can take place, and the minister has launched a set of fundamental values which all educational institutions must reflect on.

The vocational colleges are special in this context, as the colleges are organised differently and form part of other interactions than the other upper secondary programmes - also as the students attending the vocational colleges bring other values and have other value-based expectations than students in the other upper secondary programmes.

In their article "Values in vocational education and training - observed from the vocational college", Erik Findalen and Birger Hørning discuss this problem complex and illustrate how the students in vocational education and training meet a (value) universe which is unique, but on the other hand they must also be prepared to take the young people's values seriously and use them in the continued development of the system.

The agent of change as a reformer

A general feature in the articles of the anthology is change. The vocational colleges are subject to dynamic transformation processes, because society, students and the expectations to the colleges change. The vocational colleges must learn to live with this constant pressure of change, if they are to follow the current.

Pushed to its logical conclusion, it may be said that the colleges are to work professionally with changes, be prepared for their coming, have an organisation, which is ready to meet them and a pedagogic-didactic way of thinking which is flexible enough to be able to take this pressure.

In his article "Agents of change in an age of reform", Jørgen Bakka discusses how organisations can adapt themselves to these new conditions - by working professionally with the development of organisational cultures which are prepared to meet the possibilities of change, take them up and use them as a driving force for development. Such organisational cultures require thorough strategical considerations, if they are to function. The central elements in these considerations are presented in Bakka's article.

In certain cases, changes must take place in an interaction, which extends beyond the organisation itself.

To give an example, vocational colleges must seek new inspiration and new drive for development in an interaction with external consultants, who look at the college with fresh and unbiased eyes. Only by doing so, is it possible to break down those routines and self-evident truths which may constitute a barrier to the development.

In their article "Changes in an interaction - between the college and external consultants", Susanne Tellerup and Niels Henrik Helms describe how the work as an external consultant in relation to a vocational college may function. How do the consultants see their task? Which challenges are they facing, and how can they tackle the tasks? Both authors have extensive consultancy experience from concrete interactions with vocational colleges - both before and in connection with the reform and are therefore able on this background to set out how this - at best - vital meeting between the vocational college and the consultant can function.

In other cases, the colleges themselves or college cooperation consortia are however the dynamic point of departure for change. This has been the case with the college cooperation consortium Tekniske Skoler Østjylland (technical colleges of Eastern Jutland), where management and the implementation of the vocational education and training reform 2000 have lately been the central task.

In the article "Management experience from the implementation of the reform", Annette Lauridsen and Tim Rydstrøm give their view of how such a largescale transformation and development process can be tackled. How is a school organisation geared for such great changes? What is required from management, and how do they work with the implementation of the reform intentions in the "furthest away parts of the system".

The article is some sort of account from the current reform work at the vocational colleges, and it excellently illustrates how many dimensions and layers must be included, if and when the vocational college system is to readjust and attain the targets formulated by the political decisionmakers.

The student as a didactic

All the themes and topics which are discussed throughout the anthology, i.e. individualisation, the knowledge society, network culture, value debate etc., reflect the development trend which all agree to attach importance to and which is therefore also wanted included in connection with the formulation of the education and training of the time. So writes Finn Christensen in his article "The current three crises as far as our didactic methods are concerned".

The problem is however that standard solutions, when you wish to supplement the contents of the programmes, i.e. to introduce a new topic or theme in the curriculum, obviously are not enough anymore. We therefore have to look for other means. If we take a look around at the didactic methods, we do not get much further. It becomes difficult to make allowances for the new trends within the framework of traditional classroom instruction - also if it is now and then pepped up with project work.

The didactic methods are in a crisis, Finn Christensen writes, and he finds most of the current didactic methods too primitive, because they are connected with an outdated teaching concept and a confined perception of how learning activities should be organised for the students.

The didactic methods have to a far too great extent been focused on helping the individual teacher to plan his or her teaching. The organisation and design of the student's learning situation have been left to the convention of "we do what we usually do": Divide the students into classes, divide into lessons, the room is the class. It is about time that the didactic methods are turned into metadidactic methods which deal with the principles for organising the resources - not only in practice, but which in general reintroduce theory as prescribing for the substance in the learning activities.

As the intention behind vocational education and training reform 2000 is to individualise the courses of education with the students themselves as active designers of their respective courses and learning, new metadidactic methods must place the student in the role of a didactic - with authority and competence to act didactically. Forms must be developed whereby the development of the student's competencies as a didactic in relation to his or her own learning becomes an integrated part of what is being learned.

This summary is a slightly edited version of the final chapter 18 of the anthology: "Vocational colleges - change, innovation and departure for a new start" by Ole Dibbern Andersen and Albert A. Christensen.

Denne side indgår i publikationen "Uddannelse, læring og demokratisering" som kapitel 19 af 19
© Undervisningsministeriet 2001