Teacher undertaking CPD

This process is called recontextualisation, and the teacher is recontextualising by:

• Selecting course content
• Selecting teaching, learning and assessment strategies
• Relating learning to occupational requirements
• Organising work experience and relating work-based and college-based learning
• Maintaining a direct "line of sight to work” whilst meeting the needs of learners.

The learner is recontextualising by:

• Recognising elements of course content in workplace practices
• Applying what they learn in college to what they do in the workplace
• Bringing workplace practice back to the college.

According to David Guile, these activities suggest four key practices of vocational learning:

• Theoretical thinking – the ability to use technical concepts and procedures
• Dialogic inquiry – the ability to ask questions of more experienced others
• Boundary crossing – the ability to operate effectively in both the education and work contexts
• Resituation – the ability to modify ways of thinking, ask questions and deploy technical skills according to the situation.

The idea of recontextualisation is also used to describe some processes which may be outside the remit of the individual teacher. These processes concern the relationship between the curriculum and broad structures in society – including class, gender and ethnicity. For example, some technical fields are still dominated by male or female learners, and in others certain ethnic groups are under-represented. Also, working-class learners are more likely to choose vocational courses than are other learners. This means that the type of knowledge made available in technical fields, compared with general academic courses and with other vocational areas, can produce indirect discrimination on the basis of class, gender or ethnicity.