This thesis describes and analyses vocational learning in school and workplaces, particularly the vocational learning involved in becoming a construction worker in Sweden. This includes learning the trade in upper secondary school education and a subsequent apprenticeship. An underlying argument is that activities in these contexts enable a diverse vocational learning outcome. However, there are potential tensions and contradictions, especially between production- and education-oriented aspects of the learning activities in these settings. To address these and associated issues, two research questions were posed. First, how do work-based activities enable vocational learning? Second, what forms of learning are enabled in school and work life settings and how are these forms of learning constituted? These questions were addressed using information drawn from observations, interviews and a survey. Analyses of the data, using a theoretical framework based on activity and forms of learning theory, show that the school and workplace settings enable different types of learning that form a joint constructed object. Further, the contexts provide diverse tasks that, with guidance from more experienced persons, can enhance the learning outcomes. So, vocational learning is enabled through tensions in the activity systems that form a learning outcome. In project-based vocational education and training (PBVET) provided in upper secondary school, vocational learning is enabled through basic training and opportunities to learn key techniques. In subsequent apprenticeships, the transformation of basic knowledge into specialized knowledge is enabled through close guidance and by the apprentices performing complex tasks. There are also clear differences in the freedom allowed in the performance of tasks between the PBVET and apprenticeships. The PBVET does not allow students to develop and apply their own solutions, while apprentices are encouraged to discover and implement solutions that enhance the performance of tasks. So, different forms of learning are enabled in the two contexts; the PBVET largely promotes reproductive learning and the apprenticeships largely promote productive learning. Scope for improvement was detected, as the PBVET does not appear to provide knowledge that fully meets criteria in the syllabuses, and the apprenticeship does not fully meet the learners’ educational needs. However, the settings provide complementary vocational learning opportunities. Thus, tensions and contradictions can be identified in the activity systems in the school and workplace settings that collectively form the boundaries of a learning outcome that largely corresponds to what the learners need to know and (hence) become construction workers.

Thesis (MEd)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: With the coming of a new education and training dispensation in 1994 came the idea that equal opportunities for all learners could be created within different learning institutions - via the creation of new institutional and qualifications framework - and in so doing encourage equal opportunities through proper articulation, portability, and mobility within the different phases of the various education bands. As education and training provision and learning is complexly intertwined with its appraisal, assessment was regarded as one of the main processes to find out whether learning had taken place, on the goal and quality of that learning, as well as pointing to the kinds of ways in which teaching and learning could be further improved. In my study I focused on how educators and trainers within the differentiated Further Education and Training (FET) Band spoke about and understood assessment, with the aim of the study being to analyse how assessment is understood in three different sites of provision within the FET band. The main goal was to better understand challenges at the ground level of policy implementation. A further goal was to explore some of the ways in which the role and function of assessment in our contemporary society was understood, and whether, in its present formulation, it served the purposes that much of the policies and reform statements claimed. The study’s main claim is that educators and trainers in the FET Band in South Africa mainly experience assessment processes, criteria, and frameworks as a form of jargon, and that they translate ‘the jargon’ into ‘judgements of value’ about learning and knowledge that lead to quite different approaches being followed at different sites. It is argued that this scenario would be acceptable in terms of different work settings - producing different kinds of skills for the economy- were it not that the education and training infrastructure in South Africa remains perhaps too preoccupied with achieving a principle of similarity across the FET Band.