ERIC Number: EJ1460845
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Dec
Pages: 35
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1874-785X
EISSN: EISSN-1874-7868
Available Date: 2025-01-27
On the Role of Role-Theoretical Concepts: Determining Dimensionality or Difficulty in Cross-Occupational Collaboration
Aldin Strikovic1; Philine Krebs2; Eveline Wittmann1
Vocations and Learning, v18 n1 Article 6 2025
In vocational education and training, it can be assumed that the digital transformation increases the relevance of individuals' cross-occupational collaboration competency (COCC) across vocational and professional sectors, thus improving and reorganizing processes across time and domains on the basis of available information. This poses a challenge to instruction and diagnostics in VET, which can be supported by thorough, empirically grounded theoretical modeling. In Strikovic and Wittmann (2022), we suggested a role-theoretical approach to modeling COCC involving five role-theoretical dimensions: knowing one's own occupational role, knowing the occupational role of one's collaboration partners, latent processes of role distance, role-taking, and object-oriented role coordination. In the present study, we evaluate this role-theoretical model empirically using the example of nursing, specifying and operationalizing the model with a computer-based situational judgment test and using a data set of 328 nursing students to carry out an in-depth analysis of (1) dimensionality and (2) role-related task features thought to influence item difficulty. While model comparisons showed the superiority of a unidimensional vector compared to five- and two-dimensional structures, linear additive regression analysis revealed that the role-related task features on the basis of the five dimensions showed significant effects, as did the number of collaboration partners and the test subjects' subject-matter competence, which can also be linked to the nurses' situational role. These findings are in line with our theoretical reasoning in the COCC model. We discuss their limitations as well as their theoretical and educational significance, outlining needs for further research--also in other professional and vocational domains.
Descriptors: Career and Technical Education, Occupations, Cooperation, Grounded Theory, Models, Interprofessional Relationship, Competence, Situational Tests
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Data File: URL: https://doi.org/10.5159/IQB_EKGe_v1
Author Affiliations: 1TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, Department of Educational Sciences, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany; 2University of Göttingen, Chair of Business Education and Human Resource Development, Göttingen, Germany