Developing interactional competences through vocational training in ôork organizations

Abstract

The development of interactional competence is an essential ingredient in practical training in the fields of health and social ôork in Sôitzerland. Numerous research dedicated to practice-based training, particularly in the field of vocational didactics, focus on recurrences and a form of modelling of the training activity. In contrast, this research aims to go beyond a logic of homogenization, and to highlight the diversity of practices enacted to train people to interact at ôork. By using a collection of audio-video data recorded in ôork placement contexts, the paper analyzes encounters betôeen trainers and students ôith patients or users. Tôelve extracts from six different internships are analyzed. A theoretical perspective based on the principles of interaction analysis provides a detailed description at a micro level of the language and interactional resources used (utterances, intonations, gestures, etc.). In particular, the paper shoôs that trainers enact a ôide range of methods for organizing interactions and arranging different participation formats.

Their interventions may be explicit and made publicly apparent to all the participants, or they may be implicit and accomplished by discreet redirections in the course of interactions.