A phenomenological study of the obstacles to successful implementation of formal technical and vocational education curriculum with respect to the lived experiences of technical teachers*

This study seeks to analyze the most important obstacles to the successful implementation of the formal technical and vocational education curriculum based on the lived experiences of technical teachers with a background in vocational school training. According to its purpose and nature, this study was a qualitative research with phenomenological design. Data was collected according to the principle of theoretical saturation through semi-structured interview with 18 technical teachers in vocational schools who were selected by purposive sampling. Colaizzi's seven-step method was used to analyze the data. Data analysis indicated that the most important obstacles to the successful implementation of formal technical and vocational education curriculum are in three general themes: technical barriers (inadequate academic guidance, lack of specialized personnel, lack of technical teachers' empowerment, unbalanced distribution of courses, old vocational school space and equipment, and lack of support from technical teachers), political barriers (legal barriers, lack of financial resources, unprofessional decision-making, lack of connection to the labor market, and lack of support from the other organizations), and cultural barriers (lack of cultural contextualization and the presence of a negative attitude).