Guidance as an interactional accomplishment: Practice-based learning within the Swiss VET system

This chapter analyses how apprentices in the Swiss VET system receive practical instruction within training companies and how they are being supported and guided by experts in the workplace. It does so by paying special attention to verbal and nonverbal interaction between experts and apprentices, exploring the hypothesis that a fine-grained analysis focused on language-in-interaction could profitably inform the conditions in which learning arises from a practice-based training model. The chapter commences with a brief overview of the main issues and problems challenging initial vocational education in Switzerland. It then identifies and illustrates four distinct interactional configurations through which guidance progresses in the workplace: as spontaneously provided, explicitly requested, collectively distributed, or implicitly denied. This empirical and interactional approach, based on audio-video data analysis, contributes to a reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of a practice-based training model as it is implemented in the Swiss apprenticeship system

Shaping Participation in Vocational Training Interactions: The Case of Schisming

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Conceptualising and Connecting Francophone Perspectives on Learning Through and for Work

This chapter offers an overview of the field of Francophone research on learning through work and is intended as a platform for presenting a delineation of this field. More specifically, the chapter presents a range of research traditions that have secured important places within the French-speaking research community, as illustrated in the chapters collected in the book. This overview aims at explaining the disciplinary background underlying these traditions, identifying key premises and concepts, and specific research and training methods that have emerged in that particular context. The chapter also attempts to illuminate the specific conceptions of learning these traditions are built on and have contributed to promote. To achieve that outcome, three research traditions are described, in relation to their historical and cultural backgrounds, and key ideas and methodological focuses. The first of these three traditions comprises what is referred to Francophone ergonomics and the epistemology of so-called "work analysis". The historical and disciplinary origins of emergence of the Francophone tradition of ergonomics are presented, along with its central concepts, contributions to methods and applications in the field of vocational and professional training. Second, a focus is placed on the tradition of language use in relation to work, training and learning. These issues have acquired considerable visibility within Francophone research and have developed into a specific research tradition. An overview of the main research topics that have emerged within this tradition and key contributions to vocational and professional training issues is presented below. The third tradition is that referring to learning in connection with specific organisational contexts. Here, the social dimensions of learning are foregrounded and contributions from Francophone researchers are illustrated, and their alignment with other research traditions, and particularly those widely disseminated in the Anglophone world. The final section of the chapter draws together a range of ideas which have emerged beyond and across these specific research traditions, and that can be seen as having played an influencing role on the ways questions related with learning through and for work have been addressed in the Francophone world.No Full Tex

Understanding Learning for Work: Contributions from Discourse and Interaction Analysis

In recent years, interaction and discourse analytic methods have been applied extensively in various areas of educational research and have become an important theoretical perspective for those concerned with the study of learning in social settings. Following this innovative perspective, this chapter advances two main arguments. First, it stresses the idea that adopting a discursive and interactional approach on professional practice can contribute to the body of concepts and methods applied for understanding practice-based learning. And second, it considers that there exists a strong epistemological continuity between social theories of learning on the one hand, and research methods belonging to the field of discourse and interaction analysis on the second hand. From there, the aim of the chapter is to identify and specify an interdisciplinary field intersecting linguistics methods and professional education research. It is also to show what these methods consist of, how they may be enacted and applied and what are their potentialities and practical implications for researching the field of professional and practice-based learning.Arts, Education & Law Group, School of Education and Professional StudiesNo Full Tex