Verkstaden som skola eller skolan som verkstad: Om produktion som pedagogisk praktik i svensk yrkesutbildning [The workshop as school or the school as workshop: Production as educational practice in Swedish vocational education and training]

• Main Author: �sa Broberg
• Format: Article
• Language: Danish
• Published: Linköping University Electronic Press 2016-12-01
• Series: Nordic Journal of Vocational Education and Training
• Subjects: Workshop school, production, pedagogical practice, history of VET, materiality of schooling
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3384/njvet.2242-458X.166246

The workshop school was a particular form of education in the Swedish vocational education system of 1918. It was established and developed over a period of 50 years before it disappeared in the upper secondary reform of 1968. The workshop school differed, in many respects, from the kind of school workshops of today where students attain most of their vocational practice. It was not unusual that the workshop schools operated as small business enterprises on the local market, even when the municipality was the organizer of the education. The wide scope of this article is about this historical phenomenon. The aim is to investigate the production as a pedagogical tool through the artefacts and spaces of the workshop school. This is done within the theoretical framework materiality of schooling, a perspective that can be described as school archaeology. City- or municipal archives hold a treasure trove of photographs and narratives from the era of workshop schools in Sweden. They reveal how production shaped the content and relations to society in a very different way from the vocational training that takes place in the modern school workshop.