Citizenship in prevocational education: Professional pride as a source

Citizenship education and citizenship experiences

Citizenship education goals are often rather abstract. According to Biesta et al. (2009), citizenship education generally does not connect to the citizenship experiences of young people and fails to conceptualise citizenship as a lived practice (see also Haste, 2004; Wood, 2014). Ten Dam and Volman (2007) argue for citizenship education goals to be defined in the social situations that occur in youngsters’ daily lives. It is this approach to citizenship education that we build on in this study. In this approach, students are offered the opportunity to explore various ways of participating in society, and to reflect on their personal involvement and on themselves in relation to others and society. Citizenship education is then connected with the continuous process of identity development and engagement. It concerns the development and repeated revision of youngsters’ stories about themselves, the place they want and are able to occupy in society, and the actions and behaviour that follow from this. This is an alternative to the dominant ‘deficit’ approach to citizenship education; it does not see students as ‘lacking’ citizenship and implies room for other citizenship discourses than the dominant ones (Colley et al., 2003; Biesta et al., 2009; Nicoll et al., 2013).

Developing a personal identity as a citizen requires meaningful education that builds on youngsters’ experiences of citizenship (Biesta et al., 2009; Haste, 2004). In many schools for prevocational education, the curriculum for the upper years has been innovated in the past decades. Authentic work contexts are used more and more. Students’ experiences in such contexts might pertain to citizenship. We are interested in whether and how teachers recognise, create and use teaching in these contexts for citizenship education.

Variations in citizenship education

Various types of citizenship and associated forms of citizenship education are distinguished in the research literature, both on theoretical and political grounds and on the basis of empirical research among teachers (Johnson and Morris, 2010; Osler, 2011; Pike, 2007; Veugelers, 2007; Westheimer and Kahne, 2004).

Veugelers (2007), for example, found three types of citizenship education in empirical studies among teachers that he described as adaptation oriented, individualising and critical-democratic. The adaptation-oriented type of citizenship education emphasises the development of social values through transmission and behaviour regulation. The accent in the individualising type is on promoting individual responsibility and autonomous thinking; learning to choose, for example, is emphasised. The critical-democratic type is geared to the development of both autonomy and social involvement; cooperative learning and critical thinking, with the help of research and dialogue, are considered suitable educational practices for this type of citizenship education. For vocational subjects, the first type would aim at discipline in doing one’s work well, the second at developing the willingness and ability to make own choices in doing good work and the third type would aim at striving for the public good, including values such as sustainability, democracy and equality/justice in one’s work.

Students’ understandings of citizenship might differ from those of their teachers, as is shown by Olson et al. (2015). They found three student discourses of the active citizen, namely, a knowledgeable citizen, a responsive and holistic citizen, and a self-responsible, ‘free’ citizen. Nicoll et al. (2013) propose a focus on local discourses of citizenship, in line with the approach presented in the previous section, embedded in the diverse activities in which young people already engage, and think of educating from such situated citizenship discourses.

In this study, we focus on vocational teachers’ reflections regarding citizenship. We question which citizenship (education) discourses resonate with the way they talk about their teaching. Nicoll et al. (2013) also emphasise the discursive and material conditions that support situated discourses of citizenship and citizenship activity. In our case, this points to the necessity to be aware of the backgrounds of vocational teachers (often former workers in the vocation they teach) and of the institutional roles and professional realities that could influence vocational teachers’ professional culture and their approaches (Grollmann, 2008).

Citizenship education in prevocational education

The research literature on citizenship education seems to be anchored mainly in general education. Citizenship education is characterised by an almost exclusively verbal approach and is hardly being related to professional/working life and vocations. Some small-scale studies have looked at differences in how teachers in general and vocational subjects approached citizenship.

Leenders et al. (2008) found, through conducting a survey, that prevocational teachers considered social involvement and discipline important goals for their students, while teachers in general education put the emphasis on critical thinking and autonomy. Ten Dam and Volman (2003) showed that social competence, an educational goal related to citizenship education, was interpreted differently in prevocational than in general secondary tracks. The objectives in the academic tracks appeared to be focused on learning to shape your life in an independent and critical way (the art of living), while projects in the prevocational track were aimed at providing students with a ‘life jacket’, that is, developing the basic social skills that are necessary to survive in society. Similarly, the Dutch Educational Inspectorate (Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2016) stated in its report on citizenship education that, compared with teachers in general secondary education, (pre)vocational teachers focus more on intrapersonal aims and less on societal aims.

Work practice as a context for citizenship education

The work-oriented and professionally oriented practice of prevocational education is in theory an obvious context for the integration of citizenship objectives. Students learn what it is like to be an employee and explore aspects of entrepreneurship. They are also introduced to a particular occupational sector and the associated knowledge, skills and attitudes. In Dutch prevocational schools, students learn in authentic environments in both real and simulated vocational situations. On one hand, this is supposed to facilitate the integration of vocational theory, vocational practice and general subjects, and, on the other hand, to motivate students (Boersma et al., 2010; De Bruijn and Leeman, 2011). We assume that citizenship issues will occur more or less as a matter of course in authentic vocational contexts. However, because an adaptation-oriented focus on qualification tends to prevail in vocational education (Colley et al., 2003), it remains questionable to what extent aspects of individualising or critical-democratic types of citizenship education will be promoted by teachers. Also we wonder whether reflection on the students’ relations to others and society, and on their personal involvement – in this case – ‘good work’ actually occurs. It might also be expected that the type of citizenship situations with which students are confronted will vary between occupational sectors. Working with the elderly during a work-experience placement in a care home will raise different questions and dilemmas than a placement in the building industry. Nevertheless, some issues might be more general, for example, experiencing the tensions between a definition of good work informed by an instrumental perspective to a perspective on public moral values.

Citizenship as doing good work

Our perspective on citizenship education was inspired by Sennett’s (2008) approach to craftsmanship that resonates with our wish to broaden the current abstract and verbal focus in citizenship education to a more concrete focus on doing good work in a process of making and co-creation. According to Sennett, ‘the desire to do a job well for its own sake’ (p. 9) is characteristic of craftsmanship. He suggests that practising with commonality in the process of work and with material difficulties can be a model for learning to deal with frictions and tensions in social life, and that doing ‘good work’ enables people to imagine larger categories of social ‘good’. Sennett also indicates the social conditions that enable this type of craftsmanship and focus. For example, he characterises the ideal of craftsmanship that was found in medieval workshops as ‘joined skill in community’ (p. 51), and shows how quality and ethical codes of work were transmitted in these communities of masters and apprentices (e.g. care about the right choice of materials and methods of construction). He connects work with a perspective on public moral values and argues that the current economic situation works against this type of craftsmanship. Work is subjected to all kind of pressures, whereas doing a job properly takes time. Flexible work also discourages pride in craftsmanship and can create tension in cooperation with colleagues.

In line with Sennett’s perspective on craftsmanship that participating in the workprocess could be a contribution to the public good, citizenship education might be found in the way teachers are concerned with teaching their students the mores and attitudes of professional practice and guiding them in doing their work good.

Respondents

The respondents were from four secondary schools that had prevocational departments. We looked for schools that worked with authentic learning contexts. It was also a condition that the school taught all three sectors (technical vocations, care and welfare, and commerce and administration). Our aim was that at least one teacher per sector at each school would participate in the study. At two schools more teachers per sector were interested in participating, which resulted in a research group of 15 teachers. Table 1 shows how they were distributed across the schools and sectors.

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Table 1.

Respondents: distribution across schools and sectors.

	School A (N = 5)	School B (N = 4)	School C (N = 3)	School D (N = 3)	Total
Technical vocations	T1 (Building) T2 (Metal)	T3 (Electro-technical) T4 (Building)	T5	T6	6
Care and welfare	C&W1	C&W2	C&W3	C&W4	4
Commerce and administration	C&A1 (Commerce) C&A2 (Administration)	C&A3	C&A4 (Administration)	C&A5 (Welfare, information technology and economics)	5

Most of the teachers we interviewed combined their lessons with tutoring a 10th-grade class. Their years of teaching experience and the educational levels they taught varied. The care and welfare teachers were all women, with the exception of one. The technical and the commerce and administration teachers were all men, with the exception of one.

Instruments

In the interviews, we first asked the teachers about their goals and approach to the vocationally oriented subjects and situations, because we expected that implicit or explicit citizenship goals would be mentioned. (What do you want to achieve and what do you do in your lessons aimed at preparing students for vocation and working life?) We also asked whether they were satisfied with working in an authentic learning environment and why they were or were not because we hoped in this way to find out what teachers thought was important when preparing students for vocation and working life. We then specifically asked about attention to citizenship, without first defining the concept. (Do you work on citizenship education in your lessons? If so, how?)

Prior to each interview we observed a lesson given by the teacher. A report was made of the lesson, describing the teachers’ and students’ activities. The observations offered the interviewer a glimpse of the context that the teacher would be talking about. They were also used as a basis for specifying questions during the interview. (For example: ‘We just saw that . . . What did you want to achieve by this with this student?’)

Analysis

Complete transcripts were made of the interviews. We then selected relevant fragments. In the part of the interview on preparing for vocation and working life, we selected fragments in which the teacher made comments about the students and their development in relation to other people and/or society. We interpreted these as implicit statements about citizenship education. The second part of the interview in which citizenship education was discussed explicitly was analysed completely. These fragments and parts of the interviews were then coded in two rounds:

In this round of analysis, the two authors identified patterns independently. These were discussed until consensus was reached.

Focus on citizenship

With our first research question, we wanted to investigate to what extent the teachers focused on citizenship. Not a single teacher spontaneously mentioned stimulating aspects of citizenship in the part of the interview on preparing students for their vocations and working life. Most of them, however, did name goals connected to the development of the student in relation to other people and society.

The answers to the explicit question about whether and how teachers spent time on citizenship education differed greatly. One teacher thought it was a self-evident aspect of education – ‘Citizenship, that’s what all teaching is about’ (c&a5) – and explained how citizenship and working in her sector were connected: ‘They are all students who will later have to survive in society; how do you get on with each other and with other people . . . to be a good person in this . . .’ Other teachers said they had never thought about citizenship education (c&w4), while some said they knew more or less what was meant but did not do anything about it (c&a1).

Citizenship goals

With our second research question, we wanted to find out which citizenship goals teachers aspired to, also when they did not see those goals as citizenship goals themselves. Both in their answers related to their goals in preparing students for a vocation and working life and in answers to ‘attention to citizenship’ questions, the teachers mentioned educational goals that pertain to the relation of the student to others and/or society. While citizenship education scarcely featured in most teachers’ vocabulary, they did clearly consider their students’ upbringing to be part of their social and societal task. Most of the teachers saw it as their mission to ‘help their students find a place in society that suits them’. In addition to subject knowledge and skills, they thought this required the development of self-knowledge and self-reflection, and the development of an attitude to working life and to a vocation. They discussed with their students the place in society to which they aspired and their actions and behaviour following from this, conversations that we consider to be aimed at identity development. We will discuss the main themes the teachers brought up.

Self-knowledge and self-reflection

In the context of preparing students for their vocations and working life, the teachers mainly saw their task as helping students to discover what was suitable for them so that they could make a wise choice for the future. They thought it was important for students to choose an occupation they enjoyed and that suited their aspirations in life. This involved questions such as: Do I want to do this for my whole life? Are there career opportunities? How can I combine this occupation with my personal life? In view of this, the teachers wanted their students to develop self-knowledge and, in particular, insight into their capacities and interests, and to relate this to the expectations of a specific sector. In the construction trade, for example, you must be able to measure meticulously and have spatial perception. ‘Speaking clearly, explaining things well, fitting in and taking the initiative’ are necessary in an occupation in the sport and recreation sector, according to teacher c&w4. In the metal sector, shift work is required, and the electro-technical sector involves direct contact with the customer. Teachers encouraged students to think about whether they want to and are able to do this.

Three teachers had a broader view of reflection. One of the commerce and administration teachers (c&a3) indicated that he tried to broaden students’ horizons:

I want them to know that the world is bigger than the town in which they live and the road to school and the TV and the computer. I want to convey to them that they can influence their lives, that everything doesn’t just happen to them, which is how many students at this educational level experience their life.

A care and welfare teacher (c&w1) wanted to make students a little more ‘worldly wise’. Finally, a commerce teacher (c&a1) emphasised a critical attitude towards oneself and being able to justify choices, for example: ‘Why do you always want to have the very latest fashion?’

Work attitude

In prevocational education, according to the teachers, much attention is paid to developing a positive basic attitude to work. The teachers work on this in the vocationally oriented lessons. Regardless of the sector, they named goals such as developing motivation for work and reflecting on the importance of working and earning money. Working neatly, taking responsibility and showing initiative were also mentioned across the sectors. The same holds true for daring to stand up for oneself, being willing and able to collaborate, and more specific attitudes and skills such as ‘accepting the authority of a manager’ and ‘not losing your temper when people tell you what to do’. Some of the teachers made a connection between students’ attitudes in work situations and in society in a broader sense. They connected a decent work attitude with, for example, behaving decently in traffic, or made a connection between communicating at work and communicating in everyday life. For others, such as one of the care and welfare teachers (c&w1), reflecting on one’s own behaviour during a work experience placement should be explicitly restricted to the attitude to work. She believed that students of this age were still so focused on themselves that a broader type of reflection was not possible.

Professional attitude

Besides this general work attitude, the teachers in all the sectors emphasised that students should learn to respect some specific occupational norms. They needed to know the norms, for example, regarding appearance, language use and attitude towards the client. As a mechanic, one takes out one’s earring. As a caregiver, one always stays pleasant and friendly, even if one is angry, and one always tells the person one is caring for what one is going to do. Commerce and administration teachers work on motivation and appropriate behaviour in the work environment of a shop or office. A technical teacher (t5) emphasised that students must develop the skill of deliberating in a team. Another teacher (t3) explained that students must be able to deal with conflict situations at work (‘daring to say something about an unsafe situation in the workplace’). Goals that can easily be interpreted as citizenship education goals were thus seen by the teachers as professional goals.

Goals related to acting in a socially responsible way were also mentioned. The technical teachers mentioned environmental awareness: knowing what the consequences of using tropical hardwood were (t1); taking energy saving into account (t3); using materials economically and separating and disposing of rubbish properly (t5). Teachers in the technical sector in particular emphasised that it was important that students could and wanted to carry the responsibilities associated with the occupation in connection with one’s own and other people’s safety (when working with dangerous substances or with machines), planning (completing work on time) and collegiality (clearing up your own mess, working in a team and helping each other). One (t5) said, ‘They set off with a mechanic in a van and don’t come back until half past four and have to spend all day with that person’. Another teacher related how he taught his students that they must be prepared to tackle everything and ‘not stay sitting in the van when it needs unloading’ (t1).

The care and welfare teachers also mentioned that they taught their students to be careful about safety and the importance of collegiality. In this sector, hygiene at work and the confidentiality of sensitive information (c&w3) were specific forms of acting in a socially responsible way. The commerce and administration teachers mentioned environmentally aware behaviour, such as separating waste paper and dealing with confidential information, such as not revealing to the outside world the knowledge that one has about a company as a bookkeeper and in the human resources department guarding staff privacy (c&a2). Taking general responsibility for the work was also mentioned, with the idea that the quality of one’s work has consequences for the company one works for (c&a1, 2, 4).

Some teachers who had worked as craftsmen or women before they went into teaching emphasised that it was important for students to learn to enjoy doing their work well. These were mainly technical teachers. For these teachers, ‘professional pride’ was an element of the professional attitude they wanted to instil in their students. An important aspect of professional pride concerned quality norms for the work in that particular occupation. The teachers wanted to develop those norms in their students by reflecting with them on the quality of their work. Their students were invited, for example, to give their work a mark and to give their reasons for the mark. The teachers and sometimes fellow students were then involved in determining the final mark. One teacher (t6) said about this collective development of quality awareness:

They learn about their own qualities by first looking at their neighbour and copying what the neighbour has done, realising that the neighbour has also made some small mistakes. Then from the compliment while the other boys are there, ‘that they weld well’. Or you hold up the welding to a small group of students and ask, ‘what mark would you give him?’ And then take it further by saying, ‘I think it’s a magnificent piece of welding for someone who hasn’t ever really welded before. He gets an 8 from me’. Then they run off in all directions with ‘yes, we want an 8 too’.

The teachers wanted their students to learn what ‘doing well’ was in a vocation or profession, and which values, knowledge, skills and attitudes were involved. Reflection was often mentioned as a goal, with which teachers referred to the development of self-knowledge in relation to work and occupation and to reflection on the quality of one’s work.

Adaptation-oriented citizenship?

The teachers appeared to focus mainly on types of citizenship that conform to what Veugelers (2007) calls ‘adaptation-oriented citizenship’. Offering students a ‘life jacket’ so that they could survive in their future profession appeared to be central to their lessons. The teachers emphasised that the students had to learn what was expected in work situations and in the specific sector they were learning about. To do this, students needed to develop the will to participate and the necessary competences to do the job, and learn to adapt to the existing norms, such as: collegiality, taking safety into account, helping prepare materials and clearing up, working in an environmentally aware way, handling confidential information responsibly and working hygienically. Goals such as autonomy in the sense of learning to think critically regarding democracy on the workplace and learning to view one’s work in a broader perspective of social relations societal issues such as sustainability were not mentioned. Reflection on the societal meaning of the sector or the vocation scarcely occurred.

Yet, these teachers did not consider themselves to be engaged in ‘disciplining’ or ‘adapting’ their students. To begin with, they guided their students in an informal and personal way stemming from personal interest in the student. They wanted to teach them how to be good employees, but also to work on students’ self-insight and art of living, for example, how to balance personal life and work. At the same time, acting and behaving in a socially responsible way was an important theme. Working on real-life assignments in authentic learning environments offered opportunities to give substance to this aim, and it was also addressed through activities that were organised by the school, such as assisting elderly people with using a computer or solving technical problems in their household. However, the right to good working conditions, the ethics in doing good work and a critical stance towards efficiency when it threatens quality and the natural environment were not emphasised in this respect.

For the technical teachers who had themselves worked as craftsmen in particular, the desire to teach the students to ‘adapt’ to the norms of the profession could also be interpreted differently than in disciplining. The way they spoke about their profession expressed their love of it and enthusiasm for the fine items a craftsman could make. They wanted to convey this professional pride, their desire to make beautiful things and to do that well to their students. That professional pride appeared to go further than the quality of the product; it also included the way in which that product was made in collaboration with others and in a socially responsible way. To ‘do it well’ required discipline, team spirit and collegiality, and the teachers also wanted to impart these to their students. Emphasising discipline, which at first sight seemed to be an adaptation-oriented approach, was on reflection more than that. In addition to (and even instead of) discipline in the sense of ‘doing what you are told’, it was about learning ‘not to give up, even when something is difficult or requires effort’. It was about becoming engaged practically but not necessarily instrumentally. This is the craftsman’s norm, which students had to master to become fully fledged members of the professional group. The aspects of pride in professional work that the technical teachers spoke about resonated with Sennett’s (2008) ‘desire to do a job well for its own sake’. Interestingly, very few care and welfare or commerce and administration teachers mentioned this kind of professional pride in relation to work in their sector. Although in these sectors professional pride might be found in the idea that ‘you can mean something to people if you do your work well’, we found no comments by teachers indicative of this. These teachers might have got used to a certain adaptation-oriented view of a ‘good worker’.

Teachers’ approach to working on citizenship goals

With our third research question we wanted to find out in which way the teachers worked on citizenship education. The teachers said they worked on citizenship goals mainly by being an example in authentic work situations and through informal individual conversations about students’ future place in society. They did not consciously create or explicate situations that facilitated working on citizenship goals. ‘Citizenship themes’ crop up in work situations in the (simulated) workplace and in conversations about students’ work placements, and teachers respond to those. They also address students’ behaviour in specific situations. When there is reason to, they correct them or mention what the norm is. The extent of this and the way in which it is done, however, depends on the individual teacher. One teacher (c&a5) named aspects of the relationships with classmates as relevant to learning citizenship: ‘School is about associating with classmates; you’re there for each other and make contact when someone is ill, you do something when someone is bullied, you let someone finish what they’re saying and listen to each other’.

A striking characteristic that was specific to the approach of teachers who themselves had worked in the vocation was apparent in the interviews. These teachers found it important to address their students as future members of the vocation as ‘one of them’. In the way they spoke about their approach to teaching vocational knowledge, skills and attitudes, they almost as a matter of course made a connection between the vocation and social responsibility. While working in an authentic work context, they aimed at the development of students’ identity from student to colleague.

In the literature, discussion and dialogue, room for reflection and participation are named as suitable ways of working on types of citizenship goals. The teachers in our study focused on preparing for adult life through real life assignments. They emphasised (self) reflection and correcting individual students in an adaptation-oriented way. The technical teachers, additionally, used instilling professional pride and reflection about the quality of the work produced together with the group of students.