Principles, practices, and forms of guidance in vocational education

Competence goals No.2: You understand the principles, practices, and forms of guidance in vocational education/higher education.

 Notes:

-Prepare and look for sources etc. research articles, news, school guidelines, interviews
-Your references and sources must be visible and clear
-Make sure your own field is presented as an example.

I will reflect on the following questions according to my internship at OSAO.

 

1. What are the most typical guiding and tutoring situations in your field and educational level?

During my internship at OSAO, I had the opportunity to work with different language teachers in the vocational business program. I found that their everyday work does not only involve the traditional teaching in the classroom but also guiding and tutoring of students. The typical situations include:

·       Talking to students individually who seem to be falling behind in completing their studies. The teacher tries to find out what the reasons are behind each case. Meetings are arranged with the students. After that, teachers discuss and come up with certain solutions.

·       Guiding the students to use the digital learning platform, making sure that students understand what they need to do and submit.

·       When some students seem to have difficulty in understanding or following, give extra guidance to help clarify the situations, for example, giving examples or showing where the student can find information that could help them.

·       Tutoring students before they go to on-the-job learning. Explaining the competence goals for the students. Making students aware of the process through which they complete their studies.

 

2. What is the purpose of guiding/tutoring/scaffolding – and how is it different from "traditional" teaching?

Guiding/tutoring/scaffolding is more closely related to students’ working life situations. Instead of structured teaching in schools, teachers or tutors provide support and give advice to students, to prepare them for the working life, to help them grow both pedagogically and professionally. Guiding is also involved in everyday teaching situations. Its purposes are to increase engagement with activities and participation (Mikkonen, Pylväs, Rintala, et al., 2017).

For us as language teachers, we prepare the students with field-specific language for working in the field of Customer Service and Sales. Instead of asking the students to read Shakespeare, we help them practice for example job interviews, serving customers, closing deals, coping with challenging customers, and dealing with complaints in English. We advise students to use formal language in formal situations such as interviews and sales. We also explain situations where they may come across some challenging customers and discuss with them how to react to those situations.

 

3. How does one prepare to guiding situations?
a) as a teacher?

·       A teacher needs professional training for doing guidance work.

·       A teacher should know the guiding methods, such as listening and observing, dialogues, and explaining.

·       A teacher can check on the student’s/students' personal study plan(s) and get to know what guidance does the student/do the students need. Prepare for the contacts, resources, and information that could help the students.

·       If a student needs guidance but the teacher does not know what help he or she is looking for, the teacher should prepare for some questions and apply skills such as listening and questioning to get to know the student’s situation better.

b) as a student?

·       Understand that the teacher is trying to help.

·       Book a time with the guiding teacher or tutor.

·       Inform the tutor what kind of help is needed. For example, do you need to plan for on-the-job learning? Or are you having trouble finding a workplace?

·       If you do not know what your questions are, be prepared to answer the teachers’ questions.

4. Name at least three guiding methods and elaborate when they are most useful!

There are direct guidance and indirect guidance (Mikkonen, Pylväs, Rintala, et al., 2017). The social environments, physical environments, and pedagogical arrangement provide indirect guidance. For example, making learning resources accessible is indirect guidance. On-the-job learning is also indirect guidance. Direct guidance means direct interaction between the tutor and the student. It includes group tutoring, individual tutoring, dialogues, questioning, listening and observing, and explaining.

 

Indirect guidance is most helpful when students are limited to resources, such as digital devices, information, experienced workers, experts in their field of study, workplace learning. For example, at OSAO, students can go to Yelppi to lend laptops to help with their studies. In the entrepreneurship course, the teacher invited a successful entrepreneur to come to the class and talk to the students. Students got to talk to the experienced expert. If a student cannot find a workplace for on-the-job learning, he or she can work at the school’s own food min-market called Oppipuoti.

 

Group tutoring is most useful when a group of students is going through a similar process and the problems that they are facing are similar. For example, the teachers at OSAO organized a group tutoring day for the 3^rd-year international student group who will be graduating this summer. Teachers visualize the whole graduation process, reminding students of what they need to do to be able to graduate on time.

 

Individual tutoring is more useful when it comes to students’ personal study or development plans. For example, the teacher at OSAO organized individual meetings with each one of the students from the 3^rd – year international study group and helped them make the personal development plan, to support their continuing education or professional development. The teacher used the questioning technique to help students think about what they want to do after graduating from OSAO.

5. Discuss the challenges of guiding and tutoring - are there ethical, practical, personal, or institutional issues that should be considered?

There were quite a lot of challenges already during the one-day tutoring session. Some students did not attend the session and the tutor has been having trouble contacting some students. When I asked if the tutor could call the parents and the tutor said that she could not because the students have turned 18 and they did not give permission to the tutor to contact their parents. This is both ethical and practical. On one hand, the tutor needs to respect the students’ privacy and decision. Whereas on the other, those students are lagging and cannot graduate if they do not complete the required studies.

 

It was also challenging in the sense that an international student who is not a Finnish citizen needed financial support for her continuous studies in the universities. However, scholarships and fundings information is so limited that the student was having trouble finding the right fit. The tutor had to reach out to the higher education institutions and counselors from other vocational colleges or high schools to get the information. I think this is practically challenging as well as institutionally. Accessibility to resources and information is often a barrier to equality. When the financial support to an international student is limited, the effect of guidance is affected. Even though the tutor wanted to help and tried to help, it was also time-consuming and tiring for her to get all the information, let alone if there is actually the financial support that could specifically help the student in need. The student wanted to apply to different universities to increase her chance of being admitted. Does that mean the tutor would have to contact all those universities? Institutionally, is there such a resource bank where such information could be made transparent and more accessible?

6. Why do you think that the role of guiding and tutoring has increased? (Consider learning trends, shifts in educational system, changes in working life, globalization...)

·       Instead of traditional learning in the classroom, more and more students are going to on-the-job learning. They need more guidance to transform from being a student to becoming a worker in a real-life work situation.

·       Many things are happening at the same time in a student’s life. In a lot of cases, learning subjects at school is just a very little part of a student’s everyday life. Some might be having personal problems, such as familial instability, health problems, or motivation issues. Therefore, they need a lot of support in overcoming the difficulties. Guiding and tutoring will serve this purpose well.  

·       Vocational schools prepare students with the competence needed for the constantly changing working life. Students need guidance to understand what competence they need and how they could achieve the competence goals. They also need indirect guidance. They need authentic social and physical environments where they could learn by doing. The pedagogical arrangement should be made to let students develop in their own ways as they are individually diverse.

 

Sources:

The reflection is mostly based on my experience as a teacher trainee at OSAO. It included my observation, participation in the tutoring sessions and some informal unstructured interviews with the teachers.

Research article:

Mikkonen, S., Pylväs, L., Rintala, H. et al. Guiding workplace learning in vocational education and training: a literature review. Empirical Res Voc Ed Train 9, 9 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40461-017-0053-4