Abstract
This article presents the use of personal professional theories (PPTs) in Dutch higher vocational education. PPTs are internalised bodies of formal and practical knowledge and convictions that professionals use to direct their behaviour. With the aid of high-quality representations of students’ PPTs teachers can access, monitor, and support the professional development of students. Two qualitatively equivalent techniques for representing PPTs are (computer-supported) concept mapping and interviewing. The article reports on a study of the effects of combining these techniques to determine whether (1) this results in higher quality representations and (2), if so, whether technique order will make a difference. The study was conducted in two very different vocational domains: accountancy with 29 participants and teacher education with 20 participants. The results of a counterbalanced quasi-experiment with two factors (i.e. domain and order) show in both domains that combining the techniques improves quality but that the order in which the techniques are applied does not matter. This order independence has practical importance as the combination of first conducting a computer-supported analysis of a student generated concept map and subsequently discussing the results with the student, fosters learning and is well suited to educational practice.
