PERFORMATIVE LEARNING METHODS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING TO IMPROVE SOCIAL AND PERSONAL SKILLS

In the vocational training, students are prepared to accomplish the professional skills, who are related to their working field. But beside the professional expertise, the young people also need a huge range of social and personal skills, because they are working in a team, have to interact with clients or communicate with the colleagues. These skills also need to be trained at school. In my presentation, I want to explain, how performative learning methods can be used to develop important social and personal skills. They offer an action-oriented learning approach, where the students have time to work together and check out possibilities how to interact with other people. Methods of drama in education, role-play or simulations can create a safe area, where the students can test different attitudes.During the vocational training, they often work already in the professional field and make the experience, that it is quite difficult to communicate adequate, react to the exigences of superiors, colleagues or clients, or to apply the professional knowledge in a concrete situation. At school, these experiences can be discussed with the other students and through performative working, they also can discover new possibilities to react or learn other strategies how to interact in the professional field. I want to present, which performative learning methods are really applicable in the vocational training because they respect the needs and capabilities oft the students. Beside this, I want to show, how the training of social and personal skills are part of the curriculum of the vocational training and performative learning methods could be integrated in the courses of instruction.