Analysis of Real-Life Working Processes, Competencies and Operational Fields for the Usage in Vocational IT Education - Results of an Empirical Study Based on Job Offers

Abstract : One part of professional IT (information and communication technologies) and CS (computer science) education in Germany takes place in vocational schools. For deeper interlocking of theory and practice, the curriculum is oriented towards the concept of learning fields (“Lernfelder”) which are based on real-life working processes. As this concept differs from traditional curricular concepts, teachers only seldom put this concept into practice due to a lack of appropriate teaching material and deeper and valid knowledge on possible underlying working processes. For this reason, the following question arose: What are these working processes? To answer this question, we conducted an empirical study and analysed 100 job offers for computer specialists from online job agencies to explore their task descriptions and the demanded requirements. These descriptions have been assigned to a specially developed categorisation system which made it possible to reference these real-life operational fields and demanded competencies to the curriculum and its learning fields. As a result it appears that most of the described tasks are directly related to the technical aspects of IT Systems. The most demanded requirements have been social skills and good skills in English language. On this basis, a next step in this project will be the development of a general description of all competencies to be gained for the profession of computer specialist during vocational training.