Punctuated Equilibria: Three ‘Leaps’ in the Evolution of the German Vocational Training System

Germany’s vocational training system evolved into its modern form in the four decades between 1897 and 1937. This evolution did not occur smoothly, but in three bursts of activity, each under a different political regime. After the 1897 Handwerk Law established a partial model for overcoming incentives problems associated with training skilled workers, between 1907 and 1912 the German state organized a ‘coalition of the willing’ among German engineering and machine-tool firms in order to extend the same model to parts of industry. In the mid-1920s, the major Ger- man industrial groups took the initiative to standardize vocational profiles and training schemes. Finally, in the mid-1930s German industry and key national ministries cooperated to give standardized certifications for industrial vocations legal standing on par with those in handicrafts. As a result, hundreds of thousands of young Germans began entering apprenticeships for skilled work.Germany’s vocational training system evolved into its modern form in the four decades between 1897 and 1937. This evolution did not occur smoothly, but in three bursts of activity, each under a different political regime. After the 1897 Handwerk Law established a partial model for overcoming incentives problems associated with training skilled workers, between 1907 and 1912 the German state organized a ‘coalition of the willing’ among German engineering and machine-tool firms in order to extend the same model to parts of industry. In the mid-1920s, the major Ger- man industrial groups took the initiative to standardize vocational profiles and training schemes. Finally, in the mid-1930s German industry and key national ministries cooperated to give standardized certifications for industrial vocations legal standing on par with those in handicrafts. As a result, hundreds of thousands of young Germans began entering apprenticeships for skilled work

Optimizing the German Workforce : Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle

During the twentieth century, German government and industry created a highly skilled workforce as part of an ambitious program to control and develop the country’s human resources. Yet, these long-standing efforts to match as many workers as possible to skilled vocations and to establish a system of job training have received little scholarly attention, until now. The author’s account of the broad support for this program challenges the standard historical accounts that focus on disagreements over the German political-economic order and points instead to an important area of consensus. These advances are explained in terms of political policies of corporatist compromise and national security as well as industry’s evolving production strategies. By tracing the development of these policies over the course of a century, the author also suggests important continuities in Germany’s domestic politics, even across such different regimes as Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, and post-1945 West Germany

Archaeological Testing Within the Southeast Corner of the Plaza at Mission Espada, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

In October 1990, pursuant to a contract with the National Park Service, the Center for Archaeological Research, The University of Texas at San Antonio, initiated test investigations in the southeast interior corner of the Mission Espada compound. The study focused on examining structural foundations and determining the depth of Mexican and Spanish colonial ground surfaces in the area. Colonial period foundations were discovered under the south wall, as well as the probable original construction period surface and footing trench. \u27IWentieth-century foundations were found in the unit excavated under the east wall. These likely continue south to the north wall of the room where the bastion is located

Triadic scaffolds: Tools for teaching english language learners with computers

Active communication with others is key to human learning. This straightforward premise currently undergirds much theory and research in student learning in general, and in second language and literacy learning in particular. Both of these academic areas have long acknowledged communication's central role in successful learning with the exact intricacies of instructional conversations and the forms these take having been the focus of close analysis (Cazden, 1988; Gee, 2001; Nystrand, Gamoran, Kachur, & Prendergast, 1997; Tharp & Galimore, 1991; van Lier, 2000). In this examination of computer-supported classroom discourse, specific forms of instructional conversation employed by a veteran elementary teacher of beginning-level English language learners (ELLs) are examined. The focal teacher orchestrates instructional conversations around computers with children whose immediate needs are to learn the English language, specifically the "language of school" and the concomitant social complexities implied in order to participate in mainstream instructional activity. With these goals shaping language and literacy activity, their ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) teacher makes use of the computer to capture, motivate, and anchor learner attention to, and render comprehensible the target language they hear and see on and around the computer screen. The anatomy of the activity she orchestrates around the computer and the language she uses to support it -- labeled here as triadic scaffolds -- are the focus of analysis. Forms and functions of triadic discourse (teacher, learner, computer) are examined for their potential unique role in second language and literacy instruction

Test Excavations at Mission Concepcion Courtyard, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

In December 1990, the Center for Archaeological Research, The University of Texas at San Antonio, conducted limited test excavations at Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna (41 BX 12) for the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. The purpose of the excavations was to locate wall footings in the courtyard area, to increase the accuracy of maps from previous investigations so that future drainage and landscape work can proceed with greater confidence about where cultural material is located below the surface. The excavations showed the eastern arcade wall of the second con vento to apparently be an uninterrupted wall, since arcade footings were not present. The western granary wall and the associated buttress were located. The excavations showed conclusively that the northern wall of the first convento did not extend eastward beyond the eastern arcade wall of the second convento, as had been previously projected. No traces of occupation surfaces were found. Our recommendation is that since the subsurface structural remains continue to offer complicated and sometimes surprising features, additional careful testing should be conducted before any potentially damaging work is begun