Vocational Orientation and Cultural Matching in Inclusive Classroom Settings

A Qualitative Study with Prospective Social Science Teachers

Abstract

Vocational orientation as a matter of social science education is about the topics of personal development and a self-determined lifestyle, although inclusive education contains many challenges for teachers with regard to vocational guidance (Euler & Severing, 2014). As a matter of inclusive education, it is the teachers’ task to ensure that all students have the pos-sibility to enable their personal way of professional guidance, including interests of every indi-vidual. On the other hand, teachers bring their own personal ideas and
opinions into the class (Berg, 2017a; Budde, 2011; Kunter, Klusmann & Baumert, 2009). This article deals with these ideas and opinions of teachers with regard to inclusive education. Therefore we con-centrate on the topic of ideas and views of prospective teachers and their handling of hetero-geneity, regarding the
professional orientation. Our main questions are:

• How do the ideas influence the class in an inclusive setting?
• Do prospective teachers show ideas of professions and education for their

students, and does that lead to advantages or disadvantages? Therefore we are combining the topics of (I) inclusive education and vocational orientation, and (II) the theoretical approach of cultural matching (Kramer, 2011). We are concentrating on the class and on the challenges that result from the problems of personal points of views and vocational orientations. The empirical part (III) shows the results of interviews with social science students. These results (IV) are discussed and related to “reflexive pedagogy” (Bremer, 2009; Rieger-Ladich, Friebertshäuser & Wigger, 2009) to show references to teacher training.