Roles of vocational teachers and teacher educators in knowledge production and exchange

While vocational teachers and teacher educators are like higher education teachers in recontextualising disciplinary knowledge for teaching, vocational teachers and teacher educators undertake a second and different recontextualisation of applied disciplinary knowledge to practice. This reflects vocational teachers and teacher educators' stronger orientation to practice and their role as dual professionals, expert in both teaching and the practice of their vocation. Regions also include systematised practical knowledge which, in professional regions, is mostly developed by professional associations. This greatly assists the reproducibility, transferability, and analysis of practical knowledge. However, vocational associations systemise much less practical knowledge, leaving a substantial gap which vocational teachers and teacher educators are ideal to fill. This chapter describes vocational teachers and teacher educators' potential roles in systematising practical knowledge in several successively higher epistemic levels. The chapter concludes that this requires vocational teachers and particularly vocational teacher educators to be expert in both disciplinary knowledge and practice, and to be able to invest time, effort, and imagination in transforming practical knowledge. They also need the institutional conditions necessary for the realisation of strong vocational education provision.