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(2010) Learning through practice, Dordrecht, Springer.
Apprenticeship programmes, designed as practice-based on-the-job (OJT) learning with some classroom supplement, are key to producing high-skill workforces in the American unionised building trades . This study, which asks how learning happens in OJT, is based on interviews and focus groups with apprentices and journeymen in building trades in the Chicago, US area. Unlike classroom learning, OJT requires apprentices to construct their own learning opportunities. The overall participation structure of the community of practice is organised by the economic logic of the industry which focuses on efficiency and the bottom line, not learning, yet it encourages cross-generational cooperation by linking the retirement security of journeymen to the high skills of rising apprentices. Conditions for good apprenticeship learning as proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991), namely legitimacy, transparency and opportunities to do real work, also apply to learning about the community of practice itself.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-3939-2_12
Full citation:
Worthen, H. , Berchman, M. (2010)., Apprenticeships: what happens in on-the-job training (ojt)?, in S. Billett (ed.), Learning through practice, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 222-239.
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