In Swedish higher VET so-called programme managers have responsibilities like those of VET teachers. They are responsible for organisation and management of the daily work in programme provision, collaboration with employers as well as for continuous development of the programme and its syllabi. A programme manager is by regulation to be appointed in every programme. However, there is no corresponding regulation on qualifications for being appointed as a programme manager.

Presented here is a study investigating how these so-called programme managers in Swedish higher VET take part in selecting knowledge for locally created course syllabi, what that knowledge is and how these programme managers organise teaching and learning of this knowledge in their programmes.

Five programme managers responsible for five higher VET programmes have been interviewed and syllabi of the programmes have been examined. A theoretical thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) is based on a Bernsteinian theoretical perspective (Bernstein, 2000) which considers both the interviewees and syllabi as intrinsic to recontextualisation of knowledge for pedagogic discourse.

Findings show that programme managers have differing positions as recontextualising agents in creation of syllabi related to their own work experience in the field of training. The knowledge that they, together with locally involved employers, recontextualise for the programmes is a broad variation of knowledge of how to ‘do’ and ‘act’, vocationally specific theoretical knowledge and academic disciplinary knowledge. Also, the findings show how programme managers organise the teaching and training differently with regards to their own experience and knowledge. This study thus shows great differences in higher VET programmes within the same national system.

Bernstein, Basil. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. Theory, research, critique. Revised ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2):77-101. doi: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.