Learning Fields as a Structuring Principle of Curriculum Design of the Federal-States Commission (BLK) for Educational Planning and Research

With the KMK’s learning field initiative, a vocational education project was initiated that quickly had a considerable broad impact on educational planning and marked a deep cut in curriculum development in the area of vocational education and training. For the learning field discussion, this means examining whether and how the didactic implementation of the new guiding principles has succeeded. In the context of the learning field concept, the term “vocational action situation” is not only characterized by content-related but also by didactic considerations. The “significant vocational action situations” move to the center of the considerations as didactic reference points for vocational education and training. Significant vocational action situations are those that require a holistic grasp of vocational reality. In addition to the technical and safety aspects, the economic, legal, ecological, and social aspects of vocational action situations should therefore also be included in the educational process. The fundamental reference to the selection of “significant” vocational action situations means designing vocational education as the development of vocational action competence. Thus, those vocational work situations and tasks are to be identified which, in their didactic preparation, have a competence-developing significance. In order to apply this principle, two didactic concepts are available in addition to the occupational science concept of work design for participative workplace organizational development: the instrument for identifying “paradigmatic work tasks/work situations,” which is based on the novice-expert paradigm. Paradigmatic work situations are significant for competence development if they can be systematically inserted into competence development.