Apprenticeships and Changing Skills Requirements

• In Event: 31.089 - Knowledge Is Not Enough: Problem-Solving Competence and Innovative Skills for Modern Workplaces

Abstract

Following the central European model, Finnish government has issued clear plans for the future to reduce the number (and grow the size) of the secondary level vocational education institutions. As the new financial model increasingly rewards education that is provided outside the school buildings, vocational education providers have a growing pressure to bring learning closer to the real-life learning environments, that is, workplaces. Apprenticeship education is an obvious answer to this problem, but its current volume in the Finnish context is modest at most. In this paper, we analyze the factors that help or hinder the application of apprenticeship education in the context of Finnish vocational education. We start by describing the apprenticeship education system in the Finnish context, and analyze why it has not established a stronger position. We then proceed to reviewing Finnish research on workplace learning to extract factors that support or hinder learning at workplaces. Thirdly, by using these factors as a framework, we report the results of an interview data from Finnish apprenticeship education providers.

Authors

• Petri J. Nokelainen, Tampere University of Technology

• Laura Pylväs, University of Tampere

• Heta Rintala, University of Tampere