This study explores vocational didactics and embodied knowledge in hairdressing
education by studying how perceptive sensoriality is used by teachers and students in
creating shared understandings of vocational knowledge. Among multiple actions,
touch is distinguished as a central resource in learning the vocation, as it emerges in
interaction between teacher and student related to the ongoing teaching and its
assignment. The data is based on video-recordings displaying how touch is used in
manipulating objects and material, or in assessing qualities and defects. In such
instances, touch becomes a diagnostic criterion (Goodwin, 1997) to investigate how the
material worked with can be evaluated and handled. To bridge the gap between
individual and collective vocational knowledge, metaphors are of use. The results show
two approaches to the teaching of perceptive sensoriality. In order to learn the vocational
subject content the teaching need to provide for and practice the individual’s embodied
sense of touch as well as the vocation’s verbalised collective feel. This is the core of the
didactical challenge.