| This project is targeting on the relation between reflective learning on the workplace and companiesâ innovation. The project is bridging the gap between work based learning as educational research issue and innovation as research topic of evolutionary economics. Comparing educational models for the design of vocational courses and economic models for innovation management, the educational paradigm is based on certainty and the industrial paradigm is based on uncertainty. Educational science reasons from stable goal setting (based on occupational profiles) and well tested didactical approaches, while the transition form the industrial society towards a knowledge based society turns these certain fundaments into uncertainty. Eventually the quality of learning processes will turn out to be more important than specific outcomes. The central issue in this project is the question if different innovation processes (on the continuum external-linear to internal-creative) result in different forms of learning processes and knowledge creation processes; subsequently leading to more specified requirements and possibilities for the design of work based learning in the VET curriculum. |
