Fredrik Dahl
About Fredrik Dahl
Collaborative Doctoral Student in Pedagogical Work at IPS/University of Gothenburg. My research interest is practice-oriented and concerns the development of teaching practices within upper secondary vocational programmes, drawing on action research as a methodological foundation.
Working title (in translation): Vocational Subject Teaching that Builds Vocational Knowing (Yrkesämnesundervisning som bygger yrkeskunnande)
In my dissertation project, I seek to understand and describe how vocational subject teaching contributes to students’ development of vocational knowing. A further ambition is to examine what vocational teachers consider essential to address (identified teaching challenges) and to collaboratively test (in the form of actions) as they engage in action research with me as the researcher, with the aim of developing teaching practices. The theoretical framework of the dissertation is grounded in Deweyan pragmatism and Wittgenstein’s language games, which together offer a lived-experience or first person perspective on teaching and teachers’ meeting practices. The study involves first-year students enrolled in the Building and Construction Programme, along with their vocational teachers, at a municipal upper secondary school in western Sweden. The relevance of focusing on first-year students lies in the fact that they have not yet participated in any workplace-based learning (WBL/APL), meaning that their vocational teachers and the school-based instruction they provide are central to the students’ development of vocational knowing within the programme. This concerns not only the qualification of a craft—its materials, tools, and techniques—but also socialisation, whereby the norms and values of the vocational community are made visible in teaching and thus contribute to vocational person formation (identification and subjectification).
During the first part of the study, video observations of teaching were conducted and complemented with interviews. Here, Practical Epistemology Analysis (PEA) is used. A preliminary finding is that it is crucial for students to develop a sense of quality while working on authentic, vocationally relevant tasks, such as building a playhouse, performing ground preparation, painting a wall, or laying façade bricks. Through the use of aesthetic judgments (“Nicely screwed in!”), students become aware of qualitative distinctions—poor, mediocre, or good results—which then serve as reference points for assessing further development of vocational knowing and a proficiency.
The second part of the study follows vocational teachers’ discussions in meetings where they plan and reflect on various actions (didactic improvement initiatives) they try out in their teaching. The analytical work is still in its early stages, but the teachers frequently discuss the importance of a functional vocational language and of creating coherence and authenticity in teaching. These aspects present both opportunities and challenges.
The dissertation is written as a monograph and is expected to be completed by the end of 2028.