Learning environment

Improving the learning environment at vocational schools is a way of improving the quality of the study programmes. The project´s overall objective is to help ensure more students enrol in and complete a vocational education and training programme by focusing on learning environmental conditions that are important for students.
Research shows that students’ perceptions of a particular vocation-specific professional identity – expressed as meaningfulness, task authenticity, goal orientation, and teachers as role models – has an impact on the learning environment. Likewise, the social relations between students and teachers – in different forms and with different content – expressed in terms of communication, expectations and caring have an impact on the learning environment.
Teacher are a significant factor in developing a supportive learning environment by instructional, professional, and social processes established and develop over time, and teachers need to support a positive learning environment.
The research question is: What are the learning environmental factors through which student-teacher interactions contribute to the development of a strong professional identity, positive relationships, and subsequently enhance well-being, motivation, and learning outcome?
The theoretical framework includes theory about motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2008), well-being and learning (Illeris, 2006), goal setting (Locke & Latham, 2013), and relational competence (Aspelin, 2020).
This project is expected to identify and characterise how a learning environment develops over time in the interaction between students and teachers. We will see how students perceive the influence of their teachers' actions, the teachers’ feedback on the students’ learning, the effect of their feeling of security in the education, and their wish to continue their studies and their motivation to learn. At the same time, we will se processes that influence this such as teachers framing of their instruction to strengthen the learning environment, their initiative to develop students’ professional identity and the nurture to constructive social relationships.