The Work-Oriented Turn in the Didactics of Vocational Education and Training

In the work-oriented turn in the didactics of vocational education and training, the “significant” vocational work situations and the work process knowledge are regarded as the foundation for the design of modern vocational education and training. This replaces the tradition of subject-systematically structured education plans with a vocational education concept that is oriented toward the development process from beginner to reflected mastery (novice-expert paradigm). For the identification of professional development tasks, expert-professional workshops were established, which identify the objective conditions for the respective professions—the object of professional work, the tools, and the methods as well as the competing requirements for professional work. For trainees, new tasks and situations at the beginning of their vocational training mark the starting point of a development of vocational identity and professional competence, for whose development-theoretical unfolding three concepts become necessary: (1) the concept of vocational learning; (2) the concept of vocational working; and (3) the concept of vocational cooperation. The development tasks are considered to be of central importance for competence development in expertise research. To identify the knowledge and skills incorporated in occupational work, the basic methodological concepts of the “Studies of Work” (Garfinkel) and expertise research are transferred to domain-specific skills research. The work-oriented turn in the didactics of vocational education and training presupposes a functioning learning location cooperation in dual vocational education and training. This is based on two prerequisites: (1) the complementarity of didactic-methodological instruments and (2) the complementarity of the educational and training content of the two learning locations.