A Design Perspective on the School-Work Boundary: A Hybrid Curriculum Model

This article proposes a model for the design of a hybrid VET curriculum across the school-work boundary. VET-curricula are designed on the basis of two main types of learning arrangements, namely, the plan for learning in school and for learning at the workplace. A challenge for curriculum development is creating consistency between different arrangements. Efforts are made to develop VET-curricula that go beyond the school-work distinction. Ideally, a well-designed VET curriculum should be hybrid in nature. It should combine the advantages of school-based and workplace learning arrangements by binding these practices together, without losing the strength of either. To gain insights into the nature of the enactment of an intended and implemented hybrid VET curriculum at the micro level and at the same time contribute to improving educational practice, practice-based research was carried out in the context of educational innovation projects. The results added two insights to the proposed model that conceptualises hybrid VETcurricula, namely, the ‘layeredness’ of a curriculum and a professional artefact to create consistency. This improved model can be the basis for systematic development of other hybrid curricula. Such developments could lead to a broader empirical base to study the effects of hybrid curricula, specifically to determine whether an intentionally designed hybrid curriculum facilitates students to successfully navigate the schoolwork boundary.