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This article explores the continuing professional learning of Swedish hairdressing and floristry teachers, based on semistructured interviews with six experienced female teachers. The research question that guided the work asks what continuing professional learning do experienced floristry and hairdressing teachers undertake in relation to their vocational field and to pedagogy. The analysis applies concepts from the theory of practice architectures, and focuses upon the sayings, doings and relatings that surface in the interview data. The findings indicate that the VET teachers handle their learning relatively independently of the schools at which they are employed. Furthermore, more personal agency was required from the floristry teachers, than from the hairdressing teachers for whom organised business interests provide ample education and training opportunities. The article argues that the VET teachers who rely on themselves and their colleagues can control their own continuing professional learning at their place of work.

This article explores how craft practice is theorised through sketching, by comparing narratives about the role of sketching from interviewed Swedish upper secondary textile design and floristry education teachers, and aiming to discern connection to curriculum. The theory and methods used in the article are influenced by Ivor Goodson’s work on subject knowledge and curriculum change (1998). Empirical data was obtained from multiple sources, including interviews with four teachers. The findings reveal that, while sketching has been intrinsic to textile design and seamstress vocational knowing for considerable time, sketching is a relatively new phenomenon within floristry vocational knowing and education; essentially dating from the 2011 Swedish educational reform. The discussion claims that sketching provides means to theorise craft practice, through providing an intermediary level between the abstract (theory) and the concrete (objects) within the practice

This article investigates how expressions of vocational knowing regarding colour and form changed in Swedish upper secondary floristry education between 1990 and 2015. An analytical approach is used which falls within the framework of a sociocultural interpretation of educational activity. During the period studied, subject matter related to colour and form became increasingly formalised. Empirical data was obtained from multiple sources, including two interviews with an experienced senior teacher, which helped to reveal the local history of a leading Swedish floristry school. The findings of the article are as follows: (i) conceptualisation, verbal analysis and reflection have gained prominence in Swedish floristry education since the 1990s, and (ii) these tools have increasingly served to help participants in education make and express aesthetic judgements. Through a discussion of various aspects of contemporary Swedish floristry education, the article illuminates the complexity of long-term changes in vocational knowing.

This article is about vocational knowing in a school context, focusing on teachers’ inter- action and assessment actions. The empirical data consist of audio-recorded episodes from the assessment of a professional certificate exam, describing how five teachers to- gether assess floral arrangements. The study examines the assessment of a bouquet, and contributes to a discussion about (i) the botanical material’s importance in the assess- ment, and (ii) changes in the assessment conversation’s organisation in the form of ne- gotiations; aiming to visualise the vocational knowing and ‘dual roles’ of the teachers. The analysis highlights how aesthetic abstractions form the content of the conversation, related actions, and what aspects of professional knowing that are expressed relationally between teachers in situ. Results from the study show that respect for the material is an important part of vocational floristry knowing.