Viestintä ammattiosaamisen ulottuvuutena

Abstract

Nykyinen työelämä edellyttää yhä useammilta työntekijöiltä monipuolista viestintäosaamista. Mutta mikä merkitys sillä on ihmisen ammattiosaamisen kirjossa? Mitä tämä viestintäosaaminen on? Entä millaisella opetuksella sitä voisi kehittää? Emma Kostiaisen tutkimuksen perusteella näyttää siltä, että viestintäosaamista tarvitaan erityisesti silloin, kun toimitaan ammatillisen osaamisen äärirajoilla, haasteellisissa tai ongelmallisissa tilanteissa, tai ammattiin oppimisen alkuvaiheessa.- Viestintä on usein ratkaisevassa asemassa sekä ongelmallisten tilanteiden syntymisessä että niiden ratkaisemisessa. Työyhteisöissä huomaamme ja tiedostamme esimerkiksi eriävät mielipiteemme ollessamme vuorovaikutuksessa toistemme kanssa. Niin ikään voimme ratkaista ongelmia ja konflikteja yleensä vain vuorovaikutuksessa toistemme kanssa, Kostiainen selvittää.

The main purpose of the study is to examine both the relationship of communication to vocational competence, and the vocational orientation of communication instruction in higher vocational education, as practised in Finnish polytechnics. The study examines teachers’, students’, and polytecnic graduates’ experiences and perceptions. Altogether, 28 communication teachers and 64 students, in 13 groups, were interviewed from the two main disciplines, technology and commerce. The teachers were interviewed in individual, and the students in focus-group interviews. Surveys were distributed to polytechnic graduates, and a total of 277 out of 600 surveys (46,2 %) were returned. The results seem to indicate that there is a strong tendency in working life to move towards a work culture in which work is mainly based on creating symbols and meanings. Although a transition is taking place from function-based work culture to meaning-based work culture, the meanings workers give to communication do not support this transition, as it might have been assumed. In a meaning-based work culture, workers still use communicative “tools” and concepts typical of function-based work culture. Even though the demands of working life for workers’ communicative competence are very insistent, the meanings workers attach to communication tends not to change in step with the changes in working life. Central issues in communication instruction oriented to vocational development are knowledge of working life, integration of formal and informal learning environments, profession-specific teaching and learning, and the integration of theory and practice. It is important that communication instruction is linked up with vocational image and identity – and not only with particular communication practices and situations.