I study students in VET-programs in the Swedish municipal adult education-program (MAE) and their experience of what it takes and what it means to become a part of a vocational community through their educational process. 

I will give a presentation about my researchplan and some preliminary results; about how students in a MAE geared towards health and social care experience their first time as students, their way to the MAE, how they view assistant nurses as a vocation.

The overall aim of my thesis is to understand how students vocational identities is formed and enacted during their education and their transition to working life and what meaning the vocational identity has for the students during and after this process. The plan is to follow students from two different MAE, firstly a program that educates assistant nurses and secondly a program that educates towards a vocation with a post-school-education apprenticeship 

My theoretical framework is based on Lave and Wengers (1991) and Wenger (1998). To better understand the social aspects of vocational identity formation and vocational learning in a school-context I will also use concepts borrowed from Goffman (2004) alongside concepts from Bourdieu which has been expanded upon by Broady (1989, 1998).

The data is based on semi-structured interviews with the students from when they start, in the middle of and at the end of their education but also one year after their education has ended. A contextual understanding is generated through interviews with the teachers and Classroom observations observation.

The health and social care-program is chosen because it is the most widespread VET in Sweden within the MAE and also because the female dominated vocation (assistant nurses). The “journeyman-program” because of the post-education apprenticeship as a requirement for a professional certificate and also because the tendency for more male dominated vocations.

In the presentation I will present the first preliminary findings from the interviews with teachers and my first interview with students at a assistent nurse program.

The teachers emphasise the importance of personal aspects and language vocational requirements, alongside educational content, in the process of becoming an assistant nurse. The students, being a diverse group both in regards of age and background, differ in their use of a vocational language but notable similarities in how they view vocational and socioal expectations.