Rediscovering Apprenticeship?: A Historical Approach.

Abstract

This paper focuses on changes necessary for apprenticeship to meet society's current needs in terms of: providing an educational environment, meeting the needs of the European economies, and matching the aspirations of young people. Section 1 provides a narrative account of an apprentice working as a coach finisher in the Great Western Railway works in Swindon, England, in the 1940s. It provides a benchmark to examine how apprenticeship has changed and what has remained. As a biographical narrative, it provides more concrete evidence about three key issues that have emerged in recent debates on work-based learning: entry into communities of practice, formal and informal work organization, and the development of work process knowledge. Section 2 considers what can be learned about these issues from such a biographical narrative. It determines that the account presents a compelling narrative of an effective transition from school to work and of entrance into a community of skilled practice and maturing into the adult world. The model confirms much recent research around socialization into communities of practice and entry into communities of practice; the model represents a rich learning environment allowing the acquisition of broad-based occupational knowledge and skills. The model questions whether technological innovation demands higher skill levels and questions the efficacy of external assessment. (YLB) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** Rediscovering Apprenticeship? : A Historical Approach Graham Attwell Institut Technik und Bildung University of Bremen Germany

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.