Vad är väsentligt för att lyckas i arbetet som yrkeslärare? En studie av yrkeslärarstudenters berättelser

This article explores VET teacher students’ understanding of success and failure in VET teachers work. A theory-driven analysis, employing the theory of practice architectures is used for analysis of empathy-based stories from VET teacher students in Sweden and Finland. This approach, with its focus on practices and practice architectures, complements earlier research. The focus on complex and inter-related practices reaches beyond research themes such as competence, identity, and structural factors, and offers a multifaceted understanding of VET teachers’ work. The theory of practice architectures focuses on interconnected actions undertaken in a practice and the material-economic, cultural-discursive, and social-political arrange-ments that prefigure and hold the practice in place. The results reveal that vocational teacher students focus on the teaching practice and that they emphasise, both in stories of success and failure, similar actions. Teaching practice rests on didactical and pedagogical doings that are closely intertwined with various aspects of relatings to students. The stories also show how successful vocational teacher practices are prefigured by an inclusive and permissive work environment. Favorable cultural-discursive arrangements are characterised by a culture of collaboration and support and a trustful and affirmative school leadership.