How Matter come to Matter in VET-teaching – Materiality as Teaching Aids and Possibilities for Boundary Crossing Learning in Practice-Based Teaching in Vocational Education and Training (VET)

The quality of training has been identified as a challenge for vocational education and training (VET) in Denmark, and specific the recurrent challenge that the students’ have difficulties in identifying coherence between the theoretical school-based parts and the practical training parts (Aarkrog, 2020). The aim of this article is to explore the role of materiality in VET pedagogy of practice-based school training: How does materiality intra-act with students’ opportunities for learning, and how can teachers use materiality as an active asset for boundary crossing learning in VET-teaching? At the VET-craft-colleges you sense matter all over: tools, craft workshops, noises from machines and teachers and students in work clothes. Even though materiality is an ingrown part of many VET-teachers professional identity and they use materiality as teaching aids and scaffolding every day, this study finds a number of opportunities for enhancing the learning potential of practice-based teaching by the use of materiality as deliberate curriculum assets in VET-teaching. This paper has a material cultural approach to educational theory and curriculum studies and builds on the material theoretical framework of Karen Barad’s understanding of agential realism that foregrounds entanglements of materiality (Barad, 2003, 2007), and learning theory of boundary crossing learning and boundary objects (Akkermann & Bakker, 2011ab). The paper will present findings of an empircal research study conducted at four food production VET’s (chef, nutrition assistant, butcher and baker), and a training course for in-voice VET-teachers in ‘Pratice-based Teaching in VET’. The empirical inpuiry is based on sensory ethnography fieldwork (Pink, 2015) of teaching situations that has been documentet by photos, field notes and students’ products. The analysis has an posthumanist approch to material cultural curriculum studie and the analysis is based on agential realist ‘phenomena-grafing’ (Juelskjær, Plauborg, & Arian, 2020), and the materiality of the empiric identifyed learning situations is ‘captured’ in ‘photo-collage close-ups’. The analysis is work in progress from a material cultural curriculum studie perspective. The expected outcome is empirical findings of practice-based VET teaching in the analysis of intra-actions of materiality, the learner and what is learned (Plauborg, 2018). The result is expected to be about, how materiality can create opportunities for boundary crossing learning (Akkermann & Bakker, 2011ab), how materiality can be used as semantic teaching aids (Hansen, 2014) and how VET-teachers can improve their teaching practices by transforming practice-based teaching using materiality inspired by a pedagogical design matrix for boundary crossing i DUAL Vet (Rasmussen, Riis, & Brodersen, 2021). References Aarkrog, V. (2020). The standing and status of vocational education and training in Denmark. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 72(2), 170–188. Hentet fra http://10.0.4.56/13636820.2020.1717586 Akkerman, S. F., & Bakker, A. (2011a). Boundary crossing and boundary objects. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 132–169. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311404435 Akkerman, S. F., & Bakker, A. (2011b). Learning at the boundary: An introduction. International Journal of Educational Research, 50(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2011.04.002 Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321 Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. North Carolina: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388128 Hansen, J. J. (2014). Læremiddellandskabet : fra læremiddel til undervisning. (1. udgave.). Kbh: Akademisk. Juelskjær, M., Plauborg, H., & Arian, S. W. (2020). Dialogues on agential realism : engaging in worldings through research practice. (H. Plauborg & S. W. Adrian, Red.). Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge. Plauborg, H. (2018). Towards an agential realist concept of learning. Subjectivity, 11(4), 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-018-0059-9Aarkrog, V. (2020). The standing and status of vocational education and training in Denmark. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 72(2), 170–188. Hentet fra http://10.0.4.56/13636820.2020.1717586 Juelskjær, M., Plauborg, H., & Arian, S. W. (2020). Dialogues on agential realism : engaging in worldings through research practice. (H. Plauborg & S. W. Adrian, Red.). Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge. Pink, S. (2015). Doing sensory ethnography (2. ed.). Los Angeles, Calif: Sage Publications. Rasmussen, C. L., Riis, M., & Brodersen, A. (2021). Development of a Pedagogical Design Matrix for ICT-based Boundary Crossing in Dual VET. (under udgivelse), 1–8.