Developmentally Logically Structured Vocational Curricula: From Novice to Reflective Mastery

Vocational education and training is understood in the tradition of training regulation research as a process of adapting training content to existing and changing work structures. The alternative is a development-logical structuring of the teaching content. This is an attempt to integrate a model of curriculum development that fits into the concept of design-oriented VET. The concept of development-logical curriculum structure assigns central importance to the work process knowledge of skilled workers and orients the arrangement of teaching and learning content to the development from novice to reflected mastery. The first level of vocational education and training and task performance is characterized by the acquisition of vocational orientation and overview knowledge. Vocational competence at the second level of advanced vocational education and training enables the entrant to process vocational tasks in the context of systematic task performance. Vocational competence and professionalism at the third level of vocational education and training enable the person to process and solve specific work tasks involving problems. Professionalism at the fourth level of vocational education and training sets the course for reflected mastery. Reflective mastery enables one to act responsibly in a given situation without having to calculate all the preconditions and consequences of this action in detail. Vocational education and training, which according to this concept is based on the developmental-logical structuring of a learning path to reflected mastery, is dependent on the close interaction of learning and working.