Exploring the vocational identity of Slovak in-company trainers: Validation of a new concept

Purpose: In-company trainers are company employees who are responsible for planning and teaching vocational skills to young people. They also teach them about the company's values, thus fostering a sense of belonging and alignment with company goals. However, there is limited understanding of what constitutes their vocational identity. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to a) theoretically and empirically develop a concept of the vocational identity of in-company trainers, (b) transpose this concept to a newly developed tool, The Vocational Trainer Identity Questionnaire, and (c) assess its construct validity. Beyond the focus on the validity, the study provides descriptive data on how in-company trainers rate the vocational identity components and how their ratings relate to demographic factors. Methods: The Vocational Trainer Identity Questionnaire was developed and validated through a multi-stage process. This included workplace visits, interviews with trainers, a literature review, and analyses of existing vocational education and training questionnaires. To ensure validity, three rounds of factor analysis were conducted. The study involved 300 in-company trainers from a wide range of companies across Slovakia, who participated as respondents. Results: A four-components model of vocational identity resulted from the data, comprised of self-efficacy, company values, professional improvement, and task perception. They correlate positively, which indicates that they create a consistent unit, albeit with components that are still conceptually independent. Self-efficacy, accounting for 19.4% of the total variance, emerges as the strongest component in the vocational identity model for in-company trainers. The other three components contribute to a lesser extent: Company values account for 11.3%, professional improvement for 11%, and task perception for 8.5%. Combined, these four components explain 50.2% of the total variance. With regard to the descriptive data, on average, in-company trainers scored above the midpoint of the five-point scale across all four identity components. The relatively high mean scores suggest that self-efficacy, company values, professional improvement, and task perception are strong elements of their vocational identity. Conclusion: Data were collected from in-company trainers across a wide range of vocational fields, making the resulting model an empirically validated step towards clarifying the construct of the trainers' vocational identity. The Vocational Trainer Identity Questionnaire addresses a gap in the literature and provides opportunities for conducting longitudinal studies and exploring the reciprocal effects between perceived vocational identity and related concepts. The questionnaire is available for validation and use in other countries.