Inclusive teaching and learning situations in vocational education - Department of Wood Technology
Vocational schools are places of learning with an extremely heterogeneous student body. Not only do pupils with sometimes considerable age differences learn together at them, but they also have fundamentally very different educational biographies and motives. The heterogeneity of learners is therefore nothing new. However, the challenges resulting from this are expanded by the fact that people with disabilities or special educational needs (can) now also participate in lessons due to the changed educational policy requirements and the demand for participation and equal opportunities. The idea behind this - an inclusive school - can only succeed if all learners participate in lessons. This implies that possible barriers resulting from the individuality of the students are overcome in order to ensure equal opportunities.
The demands on an inclusive vocational school and the resulting questions and conclusions require a further development of the theory of didactics of vocational subjects. Based on the concept of task-based teaching and learning, inclusive teaching concepts in the Department of Wood Technology are being developed in cooperation with student teachers and teachers in the project "Designing an inclusive school - SING".
In vocational education, work tasks are the reference points for the design of teaching and learning processes. The didactically induced analysis of work tasks in terms of their objective teaching and learning potential is therefore indispensable and precedes the design of vocational teaching and learning situations. In this respect, work tasks are functionalized from the world of work for vocational training processes. This means that the vocational work task becomes a didactic tool, a learning, working and design task.
learning, work and design task (Niethammer 2006, 236f.). To this end, vocationally relevant content and actions must be selected, arranged and processed in an exemplary manner (didactic transformation) (ibid., p. 234) and the scope for methodological design must be explored. The factual and action-logical analysis and structuring of the content therefore not only reveals potentially possible "approaches" and learning paths for pupils, but also potentials and thus conceivable forms of (digital) representation of the content.
In parallel to the didactically induced work analysis and the structuring of the objects of appropriation containing learning content, the anthropogenic (learning) prerequisites are determined in the planning process alongside the socio-cultural conditions. For example, existing knowledge, skills and abilities from work placements or (extracurricular) interests, the pupils' self-concept with regard to school and teaching issues and special educational needs are investigated.
The aim of the project is to link both perspectives (subject- and object-related) in such a way that both the demand for participation and the achievement of curricular objectives are made possible. Suitable indicators are to be determined to demonstrate the participation of learners in the teaching process, which can be used as a basis for evaluating the teaching-learning arrangements. Learning progress and the perceived quality of teaching are also determined.