The Importance of Work Process Knowledge for Design-Oriented VET

Work process knowledge is often underestimated in vocational education. It arises from reflected work experience. It is therefore the knowledge incorporated in practical work and its importance as context-related knowledge that goes far beyond context-free knowledge. Work process knowledge emphasizes the processual aspect of work. The identification of occupational work tasks and thus also of work process knowledge must therefore take into account the normative aspects of occupational development and work design. In the vocational pedagogical discussion, special importance has been attached to the category of the action concept in recent decades. This means that a vocational action implicitly always takes place in work contexts that can also be subjectively understood as such in their manifold meanings. Work process knowledge is often characterized as the connection between practical and theoretical knowledge. Practical knowledge has a quality of its own. It is acquired contextually. It eludes explicit formulation to a considerable extent. Polanyi introduced the term “tacit knowledge.” For the connection between qualification research in the form of the analysis of occupational work processes and curriculum development, this means that the educational theoretical and curricular prerequisites must first be clarified. In essence, curriculum development is about breaking down the work process-related content according to three categories, starting from the vocational work tasks: (1) the object of (skilled) work; (2) the tools, methods, and organization of (skilled) work; and (3) the requirements for the forms and content of skilled work from the perspective of different interests and norms.