Vocational education, VET teachers and teacher trainers are experiencing constant societal change, resulting in increased individual competence needs in the future. In demanding dual positions of VET teachers, both substance specific and pedagogical competence is challenged by turbulent digital disruption in different sectors. The studies presented in this report, suggest a variety of options, technologies, and digital pedagogical approaches to be applied in vocational teacher programmes. We hope that these models, studies, and the results reported are useful for many involved in the development of VET and vocational teacher education.
A Common Professional Development Plan for VET Instructors
Vocational education, VET teachers and teacher trainers are experiencing constant societal change, resulting in increased individual competence needs in the future. In demanding dual positions of VET teachers, both substance specific and pedagogical competence is challenged by turbulent digital disruption in different sectors. The studies presented in this report, suggest a variety of options, technologies, and digital pedagogical approaches to be applied in vocational teacher programmes. We hope that these models, studies, and the results reported are useful for many involved in the development of VET and vocational teacher education.
Vocational education, VET teachers and teacher trainers are experiencing constant societal change, resulting in increased individual competence needs in the future. In demanding dual positions of VET teachers, both substance specific and pedagogical competence is challenged by turbulent digital disruption in different sectors. The studies presented in this report, suggest a variety of options, technologies, and digital pedagogical approaches to be applied in vocational teacher programmes. We hope that these models, studies, and the results reported are useful for many involved in the development of VET and vocational teacher education.
Most important of all, continuing professional development should reflect the up-to-date sum of competences required from teachers (Day, 2017). The foundation of the VET teachers’, trainers’ and mentors’ professional development should rest on competence criteria following the transparent, commonly agreed guidelines to build consensus on common goals and objectives. Based on previous findings and Dig4VET studies with respect to pan- European guidelines such as DigCompEdu, we propose the following multi-professional recommendations (Table 3). The excellent outcomes in Finnish VET allow us to propose an application of digital open badges, and competence demonstrations in practice. We seek to emphasise the possibility of applying new competences in the teaching profession of significant value for the competence-based approach. The models developed in the context of vocational teacher education and in-service training are also more widely applicable to different operating environments in the teaching and development activities of VET and WBL settings. These recommendations (Table 3) can be applied to lifelong learning, both pre-service teacher training and continuous professional development in VET.
| DigCompEdu | SELFIE Results | Supplementary Findings | Recommendations | |
| Digital Pedagogy | Teaching and learning: Managing and orchestrating the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning. | More digital skills and advancement in school’s digital pedagogy strategy planning. Appropriate facilities and devices at school premises. More synergies for remote teaching and learning with other schools and organisations. Cross-curricular training and collaboration based on common digital strategies. | Clear pedagogical models that allow even beginners to apply new tools in their own teaching in an appropriate way. More collaboration and teamwork during the trainings. | Daily VET practices employ a variety of digital tools and CPD ensures digital skills and digital pedagogical competence. Teaching agents like digital technologies, PLEs and peer-related cooperation scaffold learning processes. |
| Competence- Based Approach | Assessment: Using digital technologies and strategies to enhance assessment. | More comprehensive repertoire of assessment practices. Self-reflection and feedback in learning should be emphasised. | In-service training should provide tangible skills by doing things by themselves, and experiment new tools between meetings and then present that experience, the lessons learned, next time. | VET teachers, trainers and mentors perceive the competence-based approach as a concept and practice grounded in personal experience. Digital open badges inform and facilitate competencebased approach as a development principle for pedagogical activities. |
| Advanced Technologies | Digital Resources: Sourcing, creating and sharing digital resources. | It is noteworthy to consider options for the Open Educational Resources (OER), open databases and licensing that allows educational access (e.g. Creative Commons). | An overview of digital tools, education technologies and apps relevant and useful for VET and WBL settings is required. Easy access digital tools should be prioritised (e.g., sign in by using Google account). | Easy Access Online Materials available 24/7. Attention must be paid to data security and GDPR. All learning solutions should respect the accessibility regulation (European accessibility act). |
| Pedagogical Design Competence | Empowering Learners: Using digital technologies to enhance inclusion, personalisation and learners’ active engagement. | Opportunities to explore digital teaching and learning methods. Understanding of how to support engaging, reflective and collaborative learning processes. Opening new procedures to create digital resources. | In-depth demonstrations of digital teaching methods and platforms to use in tutoring the learning process. | VET teachers, trainers and mentors should feel capable, comfortable and confident using resources independently; in summarising the process, facilitating tasks and supporting the use of learning materials. Scaffolding and digital scaffolds for the selfregulated learning process. |
| Future CPD | Professional Engagement: Using digital technologies for communication, collaboration and professional development. | Flexible study options that allow CPD regardless of time and place. CPD should allow wider opportunities to participate and collaborate with colleagues. | Training should be based on up-to-date pedagogy that is also applicable in VET. Deep pedagogical reasoning and teamwork on topics each participant is interested in. | The CPD process allows active and collaborative learning with scaffolding that supports a comprehensive system of assessment and triggers engagement. Competence-based digital badges help to plan competence development as a continuum. |
| Practical Implications | Facilitating Learners’ Digital Competence: Enabling learners to creatively and responsibly use digital technologies for information, communication, content creation, wellbeing and problem-solving. | Development and promotion of guidance partnership models. Possibilities to communicate and reflect the present use of digital technologies. WBL tutors should be enhanced to instruct students to use digital technologies to document their expertise and competences achieved. | Scaffolding should be optimised, just-in-time guidance that can be adjusted according to entry level. | Detailed competence descriptions inform and improve professional performance. Individual development plans and achieved digital pedagogical competence are described in ePortfolios validated by digital open badges. The digital pedagogical competences and experiences can be professionally shared. |
These recommendations reflect VET teachers’, trainers’, mentors, managers and students’ perceptions about their digital competences and their awareness about EU digital policies, tools (e.g., SELFIE) and EU frameworks, suggesting awareness-raising needs and potential advancement of CPD practices. As a focus group piloting new learning solution, Dig4VET staff training participants’ experiences, views and ideas are more than noteworthy. In practice, high-quality pedagogical innovations such as digital open badges offer to inform and improve both professional development and professional knowledge constructions to develop different competences (Brauer, 2019). The supplementary results summarise our desk research findings and the varying experiences of those who participated in the piloting of the training program and international joint staff training event of Dig4VET project. These results reflect a variety of perceptions of training needs in the field of VET and WBL.
The recommendations thoroughly also highlight the importance of promoting self-regulated learning processes, such as learners’ engagement, self-reflection, collaboration and motivation in digital learning environments (Mäenpää, 2021). From the point of view of teachers, mentors, school leaders, and also in choosing the learning environment, we should always bear in mind the crucial role of student’s learning. After all, pedagogy is aimed to enhance learning and therefore the recommendations that concern pedagogical practices should be covered by the approach of learning.
Digital Pedagogy and Advanced Technologies
Teaching and learning, and digital resources represent the core areas of the DigCompEdu framework (Redecker, 2017). Together with digital assessment strategies and practices that enhance inclusion, personalisation and learners’ active engagement these areas explain educators’ digital pedagogic competence, i.e., the digital competences educators need to foster efficient, inclusive and innovative teaching and learning strategies. The widely applied framework emphasises that educators’ digital competence must reach beyond the concrete use of digital technologies within teaching and learning. Redecker (2017) explains that “digitally competent educators must also consider the overall environment, in which teaching and learning encounters are embedded. Hence, it is part of educators’ digital competence to enable learners to actively participate in life and work in a digital age” (p. 17). These sentiments are quite natural to adopt in the field of VET and WBL to full extent. Regardless of the tool or the platform, the up-to-date learning design should always consider several aspects of modern cultures in the 21st century, including digitalisation, the meaningful use of incentives such as gamification in learning and allow public sharing of expertise in order to support shared learning within work communities.
The SELFIE results pointed out that despite years of development, appropriate facilities and devices are not always available for teachers and students at school premises. Further, clear digital pedagogical models are on demand. These practical examples should guide new teachers and other novice instructors to apply new tools in their own teaching in an appropriate way. Moreover, in-depth demonstrations of digital teaching methods and platforms could benefit instructors to use new tools to advance teaching and learning.
Our findings also suggest enhancing co-operation and collaboration at different levels and stages of the development activities regarding VET and WBL. To put it simple, training should include more collaboration and teamwork. The extended concept of scaffolding may be understood to include teaching agents like digital technologies, peer-related cooperation and even the learning environment as potential scaffolds (Brauer, 2019). On one hand, more synergies could be found for remote teaching and learning with other schools and organisations – on the other hand, cross-curricular trainings based on common digital strategies could be emphasised in future development actions. Moreover, we suggest that daily VET practices should employ a variety of digital tools to support VET teachers, trainers and mentors feeling capable, comfortable, and confident using digital learning resources independently. However, different flexible options for CPD are required to ensure digital skills and digital pedagogical competence on both institutional and individual level.
Competence-Based Approach
VET teachers, trainers and mentors find it helpful to perceive the competence-based approach as a concept and practice grounded in personal experience. The study findings suggest that in-service training should provide tangible skills by doing things by themselves, and participants should be able to experiment new tools between study group meetings and then present that experience, the lessons learned, next time. Different Finnish educational institutions and training providers have been applying competence-based approach, digital pedagogy and open badges in learning processes (Brauer & Korhonen, 2022). Digital open badges allow facilitation of learning processes in diverse manner suggesting applications of gamification and massive open online courses. Similar to the visible achievements of gamers, gamification of the digital open badge-driven learning process has the potential to motivate students (Abramovich et al., 2013; Brauer et al., 2017; Reid et al., 2015).
Competence-based approach is often focused on the development of assessment practices. DigCompEdu Framework (Redecker, 2017) suggests using digital technologies and strategies to enhance assessment. This is in line with our SELFIE study findings that a more comprehensive repertoire of practices is required. Further, selfreflection and feedback in learning should be emphasised. Instructors as students appreciate professional evaluation, and peer reviewing, and automatic solutions remain elusive (Brauer, 2019). The metadata included in badges describe the principles of judgement (e.g., defined in accordance with DigCompEdu) and explain how the competence in question should be demonstrated in the form of a tangible task. Requirements within the badges may vary from practical skills demonstrating rather technical knowledge to demanding strategic planning (Brauer, 2019).
In general, digital open badge-driven learning seems to enhance VET teachers’ perceptions of the competencebased approach in practice (Brauer, 2019). However, teachers’ assessment competence is so important that developed badges should correspond to the areas of assessment to a greater extent (Kullaslahti et al., 2019). Kullaslahti et al. (2019) also note that learner empowerment and the facilitation of digital competence should be emphasised in future development efforts. Digital open badges offer to promote professional development within working communities as the competence-based approach supports identification and recognition of the different competences achieved (Casilli & Hickey, 2016). In addition, statistics (Brauer et al., 2018) indicate that competencebased digital badges help teachers to plan competence development as a continuum. Public sharing of achievements (McDaniel et al., 2016) may be one reason also for the positive outcomes of the Finnish success story of “Learning Online”. In “Learning online” in-service teachers did consider publicising badges to be significant in their professional development (Brauer, 2019).
Digital open badges have become an effective criterion-based learning solution that couples different learning communities and alternative ways of acquiring competences (Knight & Casilli, 2012). However, it is essential that the standards and guidelines are developed on a national and European level (Kullaslahti et al., 2019). To serve the students, trainers need to learn how to apply the competence-based approach in practice and further develop their digital pedagogical competences and practical applications. Moreover, digital open badges offer to inform and improve competence-based approach as a development principle for pedagogical activities.
Future CPD and Practical Implications
The on-going changes in the paradigm of continuing professional development (Kools & Stoll, 2016) necessitate supportive technological and digital pedagogical models. The current development and research related to digital open badge-driven learning (e.g., Brauer, 2019; Korhonen et al., 2020) contributes to the educational discourse on competence-based approaches, assessment and professional development. Moreover, recent initiatives suggest viewing micro-credentials as the means to explore new forms of short-cycle educational provision.
The transformative practices of digitalisation is both collegial and collective challenge for VET and WBL. This is the focus of Area 1 on the DigCompEdu Framework too, expressing educators’ digital competence “in their ability to use digital technologies not only to enhance teaching, but also for their professional interactions with colleagues, learners, parents and other interested parties, for their individual professional development and for the collective good and continuous innovation in the organisation and the teaching profession” (Redecker, 2017, p. 19). It is an important task for an instructor to facilitate learners to use digital technologies creatively and responsibly for information, communication, content creation, wellbeing and problem-solving. Our SELFIE study findings promote the development of guidance partnership models. Moreover, WBL tutors should be enhanced to instruct students to use digital technologies to document their expertise and competences achieved.
Future CPD for VET teachers, trainers and mentors should be based on up-to-date pedagogy that is also applicable in VET. According to recent studies (e.g., Brauer, 2019; Kilja 2018), this requires diverse practices, such as flexible study options that allow CPD regardless of time and place, and different possibilities for learning, as well as understanding of the individuality of the learning process. As a practical implication we also suggest that in CPD, scaffolding should be optimised, just-in-time guidance that can be adjusted according to entry level. CPD should allow wider opportunities to participate and collaborate with colleagues. Deep pedagogical reasoning and teamwork should be emphasised on implementations. The CPD process is required to allow active learning with scaffolding that supports a comprehensive system of assessment and triggers engagement. Detailed competence descriptions offer to inform and improve professional performance. Thus, competence-based digital badges could help to plan competence development as a continuum. As the actual outcome, individual development plans and achieved digital pedagogical competence could be described in ePortfolios and validated by digital open badges.
To conclude, we suggest focusing digital strategies on CPDs that allow managing and orchestrating the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning in synergy with other educational institutions and in solid partnership with working life. The role of WBL tutors should be emphasised when planning CPD. The implementations must allow wider opportunities to participate and support flexible options for participation to meet unique professional needs of VET teachers, trainers, and mentors.
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