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Arguments for contextual teaching with learning fields in vocational IT schools: results of an interview study among IT and CS training companies

Published: 11 November 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Professional IT education and training in Germany consists primarily of two parts: students attend part time vocational school and work as apprentices and employees at their training companies. To promote learning venue cooperation between the partners of vocational education, the curricula in the fields of computer science (CS) and information and communication technologies (IT) are arranged in so-called "Lernfelder"(learning fields), which are supposed to be put into practice by using learning situations. Those are based on real-life working processes and allow contextual learning. Unfortunately, teachers are not putting this idea into practice; one reason for their non-adoption of the concept is a lack of appropriate teaching material which would support them. The interview study we describe in this paper explores the apprentices' IT/CS-related working processes and working environments in various selected training companies. Its results were used to correlate the curriculum's aims and the covered occupational working processes. This is one step further in a larger project that strives to develop exemplary learning situations and helpful tools for several learning fields to support teachers in creating lessons for vocational IT and CS training.

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  • (2024)Understanding Informatics in Continuing Vocational Education and Training Data in GermanyACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/3665932Online publication date: 19-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Investigating the Competencies and Skills of Computer ProfessionalsProceedings of the 20th Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems10.1145/3658271.3658308(1-10)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
  • (2016)Can you learn to teach programming in two days?Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference10.1145/2843043.2843063(1-7)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016

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  1. Arguments for contextual teaching with learning fields in vocational IT schools: results of an interview study among IT and CS training companies

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        WiPSE '13: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education
        November 2013
        141 pages
        ISBN:9781450324557
        DOI:10.1145/2532748
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        • Aarhus University: Aarhus University
        • GI: Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 11 November 2013

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        Author Tags

        1. CS company training
        2. IT company training
        3. computer science education
        4. empirical study
        5. interview study
        6. learning fields
        7. learning situations
        8. learning venue cooperation
        9. vocational IT education

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        WiPSCE '13
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        • Aarhus University
        • GI

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        Cited By

        View all
        • (2024)Understanding Informatics in Continuing Vocational Education and Training Data in GermanyACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/3665932Online publication date: 19-Jun-2024
        • (2024)Investigating the Competencies and Skills of Computer ProfessionalsProceedings of the 20th Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems10.1145/3658271.3658308(1-10)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
        • (2016)Can you learn to teach programming in two days?Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference10.1145/2843043.2843063(1-7)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016
        • (2015)What do I have to know and to do? Development of a Theory-based, Normative Competence Description for the Profession of Computer SpecialistsProceedings of the Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education10.1145/2818314.2818339(96-101)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015

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