Designable elements of integrative learning environments at the boundary of school and work: a multiple case study

The context of this study is Dutch vocational education, which includes both senior secondary vocational education and higher professional education (De Bruijn et al. 2017; Smulders et al. 2019). Both levels of education qualify students for occupational practice. The levels correspond with Levels 3–6 of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) and of the European Qualification Framework (EQF). In the Netherlands, vocational education is part of the public education system: government, educational institutes and social partners cooperate to provide labour market-relevant vocational arrangements that also prepare students for participation in society and further study (De Bruijn et al. 2017). Although the Dutch vocational system is primarily school-based, workplace learning is a considerable part of the curriculum and continuous efforts are made to establish connective relationships between workplace learning and learning in schools (Onstenk 2017). In the last decade, this has led to a variety of learning environment designs in which learning and working are ‘merged’ (Wesselink and Zitter 2017). Even though our study was conducted in Dutch vocational education, the results are anticipated to be relevant for all education in which connectivity between the contexts of school and work is an important issue. The overall aim was to improve understanding of the variety of manifestations of vocational learning environments at the school–work boundary.

In this article, we use the term ‘learning environments’ to indicate educational arrangements or systems that are designed and managed (Goodyear 2005). These arrangements are embedded in a larger educational programme and influenced by the organisational context of the educational institution (Albashiry et al. 2015; Thijs and van den Akker 2009). By ‘learning environment’, we refer to both the socio-cultural setting and the physical/digital setting in which learners perform their tasks (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018; Zitter and Hoeve 2012). Tools and artefacts make up the physical setting of the learning environment and co-constitute a range of affordances for learners (Goodyear et al. 2014). Next to the designable elements of a learning environment (i.e. elements that can be purposefully designed; Ellström et al. 2008; Zitter and Hoeve 2012), this study took into account the design rationale for the school–work connection of a learning environment (Bouw et al. 2019). Three rationales have been identified to connect the contexts of school and work: alignment, incorporation and hybridisation (see Fig. 1).

Because school–workplace alignment has been the focus of several studies in the last decade (e.g. Akomaning et al. 2011; Messmann and Mulder 2015; Nieuwenhuis et al. 2017; Poortman et al. 2014), the present study focused on designs based on incorporation and hybridisation. Designs based on these two rationales are considered to be integrative: in designs based on incorporation, aspects of one context are integrated into another context without changing the nature of each practice; and in designs based on hybridisation, school and work contexts are integrated in such a way that new in-between practices emerge at the school–work boundary (Akkerman and Bakker 2011).

To unravel the complexity of integrative learning environment designs, we used a descriptive framework, based on the Activity Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) model (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018). The ACAD model has its starting point in the presupposition that, although learning cannot be designed, “the physical and social components of the situation in which learning activity unfolds can be designed” (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018, p. 35, authors’ italics). This presupposition acknowledges that human activity tends to be goal-directed and that a design can influence these activities by shaping the physical and social setting and by setting tasks (i.e. suggestions about ‘something worth doing’; Goodyear and Carvalho 2014). In the ACAD model, design is a way to invite learners to engage in tasks and activity is emergent and epistemically, physically and socially situated (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018). To include the temporal dimension of activity more explicitly (Engeström 2001), our framework includes time-related aspects of a learning environment design (Zitter and Hoeve 2012), leading to the framework as represented in Fig. 2. The resulting framework distinguishes five designable elements: epistemic, spatial, instrumental, temporal and social elements.

Epistemic elements of a learning environment design are the task characteristics and the task arrangement (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018). These elements are based on the ways of knowing (including skills and attitudes) that are seen as worthwhile in the relevant domain and about how this knowing can best be presented and structured within the curriculum (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018). In the context of vocational education, aimed at supporting students to learn a vocation, epistemic elements are related to the occupation for which learners are being prepared. How people engage in work practice and what that practice affords to learners can have consequences for what they learn (Billett 2001). Thus, a key step in curriculum design is to determine which practices are suited to the specific occupation (Billett and Choy 2013), what kind of tasks learners are supposed to engage in, and what kind of information they need to perform those tasks (Kirschner and Van Merriënboer 2008).

Spatial and instrumental elements of the learning environment’s design include all physical features. Spatial elements are the location (school, work or third location), spaces (analogue or digital) and how these spaces are furnished (e.g. as professional work spaces or as traditional classroom spaces; Bouw et al. 2019; Zitter and Hoeve 2012). Instrumental features include all tools and artefacts needed to perform relevant tasks. In the terminology of the ACAD model, these affordances constitute the set design of the learning environment (Carvalho and Goodyear, 2018). In vocational education, the set design is likely to comprise artefacts that facilitate communication and collaboration between school and work, or so-called ‘boundary objects’ (Bakker and Akkerman 2014). Professional artefacts that are used in occupational practice can serve as boundary objects and also could be used to enhance the consistency between different tasks within a learning environment (Zitter et al. 2016).

Social elements are all actors present in a learning environment, the roles that they fulfil, how they are grouped and how tasks are appointed to and divided between different actors (i.e. the division of labour). This is called the social design within the ACAD model and it includes all suggestions for how actors might interact (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018). In vocational education, learning environments often involve from the contexts of school and work multiple actors who enact educational roles (e.g. coach, learner, assessor) and roles related to the profession (e.g. junior or senior colleague, or managerial roles) (Zitter and Hoeve 2012). Role descriptions can vary from highly-specified role descriptions to functions with multiple roles (Zitter et al. 2011).

In the present study, temporal elements are included in the framework to illuminate the importance of considering affordances related to time. Designable temporal elements include: timespan and intensity of the programme, nature of the time schedule, work pace (including amount of time pressure), and work interruptions to slow down, accelerate or pause the work process for educational purposes (Bouw et al. 2019; Zitter and Hoeve 2012).

Together, the designable elements influence the nature and pace of the emergent activity within a learning environment (i.e. activities in which participants engage). Insights into the variety of designable elements for different manifestations of integrative learning environments can contribute to our understanding of curriculum design in vocational education. The present study aimed at collecting empirical evidence about a purposeful selected variety of learning environments, identifying designable elements and improving understanding of “what is designable in advance, and what is not” (Carvalho and Goodyear 2018, p. 10). Therefore, the following research question was formulated: Which manifestations of integrative learning environment designs can be identified in vocational education? To fully understand the empirical differences and similarities of the two categories of integrative designs, the following related question was posed: What are the specific designable elements of designs based on incorporation and designs based on hybridisation?

The unit of analysis of each case was a learning environment (i.e. a bounded part of the curriculum). In line with the descriptive framework presented in the introduction (Fig. 2), each unit of analysis comprised the epistemic, spatial, instrumental, social and temporal elements of the learning environment. Cases were selected from a large pool of potential cases that could be accessed via the research group’s nationwide network of key figures in Dutch senior secondary and higher professional education. Information-rich cases were identified and selected by combining theory-based and stratified purposeful sampling strategies (Palinkas et al. 2015). Theory-based sampling involved identifying learning environments which might correspond with one of the design categories (i.e. designs based on incorporation or on hybridisation; Fig. 1). We aimed to select at least two cases per category to be able to make statements about different categories (Yin 2014). Furthermore, we wanted to study at least four cases in total to reach a thorough understanding of the central phenomenon (Stake 2013). Cases were selected by studying publicly-accessible information about cases in the pool of potential cases, and then interviewing a key person of promising cases. These interviews centred around school–work connectivity and were to confirm our initial conjectures. Stratified purposeful sampling was applied to improve credibility and capture patterns that cut across occupational domains, educational levels, timespan and years of existence of the learning environments:

Using these selection criteria, the selection presented in Table 1 resulted in cases that were located in six different institutions, were spread geographically over the country and included urban and rural areas.

Data were gathered about both the purposeful design and the emergent activity within each learning environment. Multiple data sources were used to ensure rich descriptions, data triangulation and validity of the results (Yin 2014): curriculum documents, an in-depth interview with a key figure in the learning environment, and site visits which included short participant interviews and observations (see Table 2). The number of site visits per case ranged from one to three, depending on the variety of physical settings and planned interactions within the learning environment. Before each visit, the purpose of observations and interviews was discussed with a key figure of the case, who informed the other participants and signed an informed consent form. During observations and before each interview, participants’ consent was double-checked orally. No personal data of the participants other than the key-figure were registered; all data were processed anonymously. During the site visits, photographs were taken of artefacts, spaces, instruments and interactions between actors. Actors were interviewed and asked to elaborate on the rationale underlying the activities in which they were (or had been) engaged and about the epistemic, spatial, instrumental, social and temporal elements of those activities. Table 2 shows details of the site visits for each case.

Data analysis codes were developed with the aid of a template, which is a thematically-organised table with textual data from the cases and which was verified and modified through data collection and analysis (Cassell et al. 2014). A priori codes of the initial template were based on the presented theoretical framework (Figs. 1, 2) and were related to:

Codes that arose from the data during analysis (e.g. to code experienced ‘bottlenecks’ mentioned by the actors) were added to the template. The template was discussed within the research group (i.e. together with the second and third author) until consensus was reached.

During within-case analysis, data from the different data sources were combined (audio, documents, photographs) to create case reports. Interviews were the primary data source, corroborated and expanded by findings from other data sources, thus deepening our understanding of the designable elements of the learning environments. Data triangulation took place by coding designable elements across several data sources. For example, a finding about a spatial element (e.g. based on a photograph) was compared with interview excerpts about how the space was being used (audio) and with a curriculum document that explains the design rationale relating to the use of spaces. Thus, findings were based on the convergence of evidence from different data sources (Yin 2014) and processed into case reports, which were enriched with photographs and excerpts from the documents and interviews. The case reports were member-checked with the key figure of the case and consequently adapted. Minor revisions to the case reports resulted from these checks.

Cross-case analysis entailed aggregating findings across the six cases with tables (Yin 2014) and worksheets (Stake 2013). The tables displayed data from the six cases according to categories, thus capturing the findings for each case for each designable element (see “Appendices A–E”). Analysis of the characteristics presented in the tables enabled us to draw cross-case conclusions about the two design categories (incorporation and hybridisation). Stake’s worksheet approach was used as a complementary analysis method to determine each case’s uniqueness among other cases and to establish the prominence of relevant themes.

All six integrative designs are built around real-life work tasks. A difference between the incorporation cases and the hybridisation cases is that occupational tasks in the three incorporation cases are relatively low-risk, while occupational tasks in the three hybridisation cases are characterised by a higher fidelity level (see also “Appendix A”). As a consequence, the task arrangements within the incorporation cases are less complex: all students can perform tasks from day one with limited instruction. The hybridisation cases require a more refined design in which students can perform both basic and complex tasks in a way that minimises the risk of compromising patients’ health and safety (Oral Healthcare), the risk of technical problems with a website (ICT and Media) or the risk of potentially-wrongful legal advice (Legal Consultancy).

There is no one-on-one relation between the design category and the physical location: both incorporation and hybridisation cases can be school-based, work-based or a combination of both. Sometimes third locations are visited to meet with a client (Agriculture, Urban Studies) or as a field trip (ICT and Media). However, a difference between the incorporation and the hybridisation cases is that, in the incorporation cases, no special physical elements are intentionally added to the learning environment; spaces and artefacts pertain to either the school or the work contexts. In contrast, the spaces in the hybridisation cases are purposefully furnished to look more like, respectively, an office (ICT and Media, Legal Advice) and an oral treatment practice (Oral Healthcare) than a school, while also providing spaces and instruments suited for instruction and teacher consultation. Regarding the instrumental elements in all six integrative cases, boundary objects are found that facilitate communication between school and work actors. These objects are instrumental to both school-purposes (e.g. grading) and work-related purposes (e.g. reporting on the work process): they serve to negotiate the tasks to be executed, monitor students’ development and the work progress, and showcase the results (see also “Appendix B”).

The three incorporation cases have a shorter time span within the curriculum and a lower intensity (in terms of the number of hours per week) than the hybridisation cases. Furthermore, the hybridisation cases have different modalities, depending on the level of the students. For example, in their second year, students can work for 56 h at the Legal Consultancy office while, in their third year, they usually work there full-time for up to 10 months. Although all cases have fixed weekdays in a weekly schedule, the nature of the schedule differs not only between the two categories, but also within the categories. For instance, while all three hybridisation cases follow a work-like schedule (office hours and shifts), the ICT and Media case also has collective (school) breaks. Work pace is regular in most cases and intentionally slower than regular work pace (in professional settings) in two of the three hybridisation cases. Only in the Agriculture case, time pressure is intentionally added to the design by having project groups interact with different experts in 15-min rounds. This is done to make the expert meetings more exciting for the students and to ensure that they interact with a large diversity of experts. Work process interruptions for instructional purposes are foreseen in all designs. In the incorporation cases, such interruptions do not have consequences for the work process. In the hybridisation cases, work interruption can be obtrusive when clients are present and have to wait as a consequence of the interruption. Nevertheless, frequent purposeful interruptions are an intentional part of the design to safeguard the correct execution of tasks or to engage in collective problem solving (see also “Appendix C”).

All six cases have multiple actors fulfilling a variety of roles in the learning environment, but the role diversity and role complexity differ, as do some features related to grouping and division of labour. Students fulfil roles as peer-learners and as (junior) colleagues in all integrative designs. However, peer coaching is most evident in the three hybridisation cases, for which students are supported to work side-by-side or in an explicit junior-senior hierarchy. For instance, in the Oral Healthcare case and the Legal Consultancy case, it is part of the design that less-experienced students observe and perform simple tasks as junior employees. These junior employees are introduced to the work by students in a managerial role. In all three hybridisation cases, students fulfil such managerial roles, being partly responsible for the organisational structure and daily functioning of the learning environment (e.g. concerning the nature of the services and decisions about work templates).

Teachers have roles as coach, assessor and expert in all the studied cases. Within the three hybridisation cases, they concurrently fulfil a role as senior colleague who can intervene in the work process if the need emerges. In the Oral Healthcare case, for instance, a teacher-dental-hygienist or a teacher-dentist needs to be able to take over and finish a treatment after a complication has arisen. In the ICT and Media case, a teacher-senior colleague might perform tasks that are too complex for the students, but needed to proceed with a client’s assignment. In the Legal Consultancy case, a senior teacher colleague might step in during a consultation with a client, for example, when the student-junior colleague has difficulties handling clients’ emotions. In the incorporation cases, teachers might be consulted on their expertise, but they do not intervene or participate in the work process as senior colleagues.

In all cases, work field professionals have varying roles such as workplace supervisor, senior colleague, expert or client. In the work-based incorporation case (Sport and Recreation), supervisors are needed at work to give instruction about the tasks, while the school-based incorporation cases (Agriculture, Urban Studies) need workplace professionals to provide an assignment. The client role is similar in the three hybridisation cases in which work field professionals are clients who are ordering specific products, such as a website (ICT and Media). In two of the cases, citizens have the role of clients and the work field is represented through partners in the chain, such as the patients’ dentist (Oral Healthcare) and legal aid organisations (Legal Consultancy).

As to grouping and division of labour, in all cases, students are grouped in dyads, triads or (project) groups with a teacher as coach (in the incorporation cases) or as workplace supervisor (in the hybridisation cases). Furthermore, all six designs have some kind of kick-off meeting at the start of a project or stand-up meeting at the beginning of a working day. These meetings are guided by a teacher-coach, student-project leader or teacher-workplace supervisor. Teachers have a role in the division of labour in all learning environments but, in the hybridisation cases, they share part of these tasks with students in managerial roles.

Overall analysis of the social design of the six integrative cases showed that hybridisation cases are characterised by a larger number and variety of actors involved (see also “Appendix D”). In all cases, actors fulfil several roles but, within the hybridisation cases, actors switch more frequently between roles. Also, students in these cases change roles both horizontally—focusing on a different task—and vertically—adopting a senior colleague role or one of the managerial roles (see also “Appendix E”).

Regarding the context of the study, a limitation of the presented research is that all studied cases were part of the Dutch education system. Transferability of the findings is enhanced by providing contextual information about the Dutch education system and detailed descriptions of the selected cases. Moreover, the universal nature of connectivity issues when educating or training for vocations leads us to assume transferability of the findings. Nonetheless, transfer of findings to other educational systems (e.g. Asian and African countries) always requires taking into account the “institutional provisions, infrastructure, and social sentiments” of those countries (Billett 2011, p. ix).

A methodological limitation is that, although a systematic case-study approach was used, site visits were relatively short and spread over a maximum of 6 months. An approach that was more longitudinal would have enriched understanding about how a design develops over the years and which designable elements are more likely to be adjusted. Furthermore, a consequence of our focus on cases in secondary vocational and higher professional education is that potentially rich cases in other educational contexts were excluded. In addition, although several actors from the work context were interviewed, our study was largely informed by actors from the school context. Validation of the findings by actors from the work context is called for. In general, studies combining school and work perspectives could contribute to a common language and thus potentially to a stronger school–work connectivity (Wesselink et al. 2010).

The focus of our study was generating design knowledge about learning environment designs as a product, not about design as a process. Nonetheless, insights into design categories and designable elements can be of added value to the design process because reflection on, and decisions about, the product being designed impact the design process and vice versa (Reymen et al. 2006). An interesting direction for further research would be the characteristics of a design process when there is involvement of actors from different contexts (school and work), as is often the case with learning designs at the school–work boundary. Such studies might also take into account the ongoing and increasingly-collaborative nature of design processes (Buus and Georgsen 2018; Muñoz-Cristóbal et al. 2018).

The presented insights into learning environment design at the school–work boundary extend current knowledge about the facilitation of work-related learning. Integrative designs seem to potentially compensate some of the limitations of workplace learning mentioned in the introduction, such as limited task complexity and difficulties with work interruptions. An intentionally-designed integrative learning environment can facilitate students in performing a large variety of tasks (from simple to complex, including managerial tasks), afford access to tools and expertise, and allow more time for the tasks. However, providing these settings does not guarantee that students perceive them in the way in which they were intended: the function of a design is to make recommendations about tasks, spaces, artefacts, actors and temporal elements that might be useful and about roles that should be adopted, while recognising that learners can ignore these recommendations and not identify the affordances provided or regard them in ways other than intended (Markauskaite and Goodyear 2014). In fact, the emergent activity in the implemented curriculum is bound to deviate from the intended design (Zitter et al. 2016). How learners engage in the tasks and settings arranged for them largely depends on their interests, capacities and cognitive experience (Billett 2014).

Nevertheless, findings from other studies lead us to presume that careful attention to the design of learning environments can have a positive effect on the competencies that are developed (Oonk et al. 2017). Furthermore, specific design features of integrative designs appear to have a positive effect on learners’ engagement and appreciation. For instance, a study in initial vocational education showed that, in learning environments that allow students to collaborate in life-like vocational activities with increasing complexity, students perceive themselves as learning in a more shared, meaningful, reflective and transfer-oriented way than in more traditional learning programmes (Boersma et al. 2016). Students’ appreciation has also been reported about hybrid learning environments which promote self-directed learning and working on real-life problems (Cremers et al. 2016). Similar findings have also been reported in a study in an academic setting in which problem-based learning environments were valued by the students as powerful for enhancing learning (Dochy et al. 2005). However, although learning environment design seems to influence learners, further studies are needed for a deeper understanding of the relation between the design and the learning processes generated by the design (Thompson et al. 2013).

This present research contributes to such further studies by offering empirical support for the theoretical categorisation presented in the introduction between designs based on alignment, incorporation and hybridisation (Fig. 1). Furthermore, the study provides additional foundations for the design of learning environments by presenting specific epistemic, spatial, instrumental, social and temporal designable elements of each type of design. Thus, we have shown that our framework, based on the ACAD model and extended with temporal elements, is useful as a descriptive framework for vocational learning environments and can serve as a basis for future learning environment research. Further operationalisation could be advisable in future studies, such as adding insights from more-elaborate task-analysis methods (Jonassen 2014; Van Merriënboer and Kester 2008) and from recent scholarly work on epistemic artefacts (Markauskaite and Goodyear 2017).

Practically, this study contributes to insights into integrative learning environments in vocational education and how they can be designed, as well as possible variations in the design of learning environments, depending on the design rationale for the school–work connection. These findings might serve as a hold for educational designers when considering and discussing the possibilities for designing or adapting vocational curricula. By improving the school–work connection of learning environments and carefully selecting the designable elements, educators can contribute to better support for vocational students that strive to connect the two contexts of school and work. With the examples presented from the cases, designers can be more sensitive to the possibilities of adapting epistemic, spatial, instrumental, temporal and social elements of integrative learning environments at the school–work boundary.