Simulator-Based Teaching and Learning in Vocational Education

About the Project

Despite more than 20 years have passed since the first IT initiative in Swedish schools, digital tools are still seen today as a "solution" to various problems, from making teaching more efficient, to increasing individualization and serving as a tool for documentation. Digital technology and the digitalization of schools continue to be presented in rhetorical, dichotomous, and overly simplified terms—for instance, digital tools are either described as a support for teaching and learning or as a problem that should be set aside or banned.

Sometimes, digitalization results from the school leadership’s vision and collaboration with private, profit-driven ed-tech companies, which now play a dominant role in pedagogical initiatives related to the implementation of digital technology in education.

Simulators Bring Both Opportunities and Challenges

The creation of a simulator environment to allow students to practice their driving skills using simulators has been a key initiative in the participating schools of this project. This has involved processes of adaptation and translation of previous pedagogical practices. Our studies show that teachers’ work and competence play a crucial role in such a transformation, which not only brings opportunities but also certain challenges for student learning.

Technology alone is not sufficient. How, for example, can interaction between students and vocational teachers contribute to students’ understanding of context, risks, and decision-making?

Digital driving simulators provide a safe environment where students, individually or in groups, can practice selected tasks. Simulator-based teaching can serve as an introduction to training in real-world environments or as a way to process and refine learning after hands-on practice. The use of driving simulators is also motivated by safety, environmental, and economic considerations. However, simulation as a teaching method alone is not enough to guarantee an improved learning environment.

Technology alone is not sufficient. How, for example, can interaction between students and vocational teachers contribute to students’ understanding of context, risks, and decision-making? How can teaching in an authentic learning environment realize, complement, and deepen vocational knowledge acquired through simulator-based teaching? How can a combination of simulated and real-world learning environments be related to vocational competence?

YRKSIM aims to study these questions and tensions, which we believe need to be explored from a critical perspective—one that does not take for granted the assumption that digital technology automatically enables more adaptive and flexible teaching methods. Instead, the project examines the relationship between subject content, users (both teachers and students), and digital technology, as well as how technology influences social practices.

Practice-Based Research

The project is practice-oriented, focusing on mapping, testing, and developing teaching methods in vocational education that support students’ vocational competence, employability, and future-oriented knowledge in an industry shaped by demands for sustainability, innovation, and rapid technological development. The project is conducted in different learning environments within vocational education—both in schools and workplaces—specifically in relation to teaching about driving and the use of various types of machines and vehicles (digital simulators, real vehicles, and machines in school and at the workplace).

Furthermore the project, due to its practice-based nature, sheds light on how systematic development efforts can create conditions for students' development of vocational knowledge from both short-term and long-term perspectives.
 

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