Negotiation of meaning in vocational education: How students make meaning and sense of the body of knowledge of the vocational community

Negotiation of meaning is a crucial part of students’ professional knowledge development, since it contributes to both, socialisation in a vocational community, and personalisation of knowledge, values and beliefs of that specific community. This study aims to gain insight in what occurs when students in vocational education acquire meaning through negotiations with significant others. Negotiation of meaning is conceptualised as a cyclical process of collective meaning and individual sense making of the professional knowledge of the vocational community. Within this process three activities of meaning and sense making are distinguished. A multiple case study in the domains of sports, social work and ICT, was conducted to examine whether and how the activities of meaning and sense making occur in the context of vocational education. Therefore, discussions between students, teachers and peers were analysed. The results show that teacher-student discussions on vocational issues consistently start with an activity of ‘immersion in the professional knowledge’. Only when a student make sense of the professional knowledge explicitly, i.e., is willingness to share personal beliefs in relation to the discussed issue, there are opportunities for the activity of ‘collaborative reflection’. Furthermore, the results show that the activities of meaning and sense making do not necessarily occur sequential. Hence, we redefine negotiation of meaning as a dynamic and continuous process. Finally, the results show that many discussions do not reach an activity of ‘collaborative reflection’ at all. Therefore, this paper concludes with discussing possible causes from an individual, group and organisational point of view.