Exploring recontextualization of didactic ability and vocational teacher students’ professional learning through video analysis

Abstract

This article explores how vocational teacher education (VTE) students experience professional learning through the use of video analysis, their reflection among peers and their meaning-making of the ‘didactic ability’ concept during the beginning of their education. The empirical data consists of an online survey and semi-structured interviews with five vocational teacher education students. Bernstein’s concept of ‘pedagogic discourse’ and a conceptual framework of recontextualisation in vocational education and training developed by Evans, Guile and Harris guide the research. The findings strongly support observations from previous research that emphasise that the use of video promotes and supports teacher students’ professional growth. The VTE students develop a new understanding of how to organise content and to analytically handle the relationship between theoretical aspects and professional action. The emerging meanings of didactic ability are a new discursive understanding of work-knowledge and the teaching content, as well as a strategic structuring of the content for sense-making, transcending the theory and practice divide through visual artefacts and practical tasks and the ability to use different teaching strategies. Language, actions, content and meanings in terms of workplace codes tend to ‘move’ and to be recontextualised from the school’s pedagogic discourse.