Qualification Research and Curriculum

There are three tasks in particular that occupational-scientific qualification research has to address: (1) In a design-oriented perspective, the criteria for occupational development are to be identified and developed. (2) The occupational science work process studies take up the knowledge incorporated in practical occupational work. (3) The occupational science task analyses pursue the question of which are the occupational tasks that support current and future occupational development. The turn in the didactics of vocational education towards work process knowledge and towards design-oriented vocational education and training has the consequence that vocational education and training and curriculum research must deal with research into vocational work process knowledge. The theories and methods of expertise research can be applied here in a domain-specific way. However, how the relationship between situated and systematic learning and the didactic guiding idea of the science orientation of all education is to be justified and designed in the context of a work- and design-oriented didactics of vocational education and training requires further clarification. The dilemma of expertise research is that although it has decisively established the theory of domain-specific competence development and has the corresponding research methods at its disposal, it can only apply them in a very limited range of general domains. The occupational sciences each have a domain-specific cognitive interest in the knowledge and skills incorporated in the practical occupational work of specific professions.