ABSTRACT

Students in vocational education may experience situations during on-the-job training in which power relations are strongly manifested, with considerable potential for learning about democracy that have been far from fully explored. Thus, here we analyse how Swedish vocational education and training (VET) students perceived and experienced power relations during their workplace learning periods in upper secondary education, and discuss their experiences in the context of learning democratic rights. Interviewed students perceived power relations at workplaces in various ways. Most of them did not perceive the power relations as problematic, but a substantial proportion did, and expressed a need to talk about perceived power structures. This need concerned both how they personally felt positioned in power structures, and their perceived position of the profession they aimed to enter. The findings are discussed in relation to earlier arguments that VET often focuses much more strongly on learning skills than on learning democratic rights. A conclusion we draw is that schools could advantageously use students’ experiences of power relations as foundations for democratic learning.

摘要

职业教育学生在在职培训中可能会遇到权力关系表现强烈的情况，学习民主的潜力很大，但尚未充分探索。因此，我们在此分析瑞典职业教育与培训 (VET) 学生在高中教育的工作场所学习期间如何感知和体验权力关系，并讨论他们在学习民主权利的背景下的经历。受访学生以各种方式感知工作场所的权力关系。他们中的大多数人并不认为权力关系有问题，但很大一部分人认为有问题，并表示需要谈论感知的权力结构。这种需求既涉及他们个人在权力结构中的感受，以及他们对他们打算进入的职业的感知地位。这些发现与早期的论点相关，即职业教育与培训通常更侧重于学习技能而不是学习民主权利。我们得出的结论是，学校可以有利地利用学生的权力关系经验作为民主学习的基础。