Working One's Way Into Professional Practice: Expanding Practices, Ethos, and Bodily Orientation in Vocational Training Interactions

• In Event: Roundtable Session 51
  In Roundtable Session: Situating Learning and Becoming in Practice

Abstract

OBJECTIVE & THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The past few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the study of “apprentice-style,” “embodied” forms of learning. Some view this apprentice-style learning as “a new paradigm for learning about learning,” providing “the basis for a more general theory of learning” (Ainley & Rainbird, 1991, p.1, p. 112, in Marchand, 2008, p. 247). Others consider it as a basis for revisiting our theories of communication (Kress, 2013; Atkinson, 2010), so that they make more room for “practice,” the “body” and the “senses” in addition to language. In this paper, I will focus on data drawn from a 6-year research project carried out in the Geneva area of Switzerland (Filliettaz, de Saint-Georges, & Duc 2008). As part of this project, we observed, videotaped and analyzed how discourse and other modes of meaning-making (gestures, diagrams, bodily orientation, etc.) contributed to learning professional practices in the field of car mechanics across two sites of learning crucial in the Swiss “dual system”: vocational schools and workplaces. Using a blend of interactional, multimodal and nexus analysis approach the project focused on a domain hitherto under-studied in the study of vocational learning and education: the in situ experience of teaching and learning professional practices as they occur in concrete circumstances for the actors engaged in it. We argue that studying such experiences provides an entry-point for addressing issues that are not easily captured by other research methods. In particular, it allows for exploring little studied pedagogical questions such as: what are modes of teaching professional practices, in particular in technical professions? How is technical knowledge presented, produced or shaped by teachers and trainers? Is it done in the same way in vocational schools and in workplace settings? What “counts as signs of learning” (Kress, 2012) in technical professions, and what roles do verbal and non-verbal practices play out in learning and constructing new professional practices?
For the purposes of this paper, two sequences from the original data set will be analyzed. Both focus on learning how to diagnose a breakdown by a fourth year trainee in car-mechanics. While one sequence is organized as part of the curriculum of the vocational school, and resort to a simulator, the second is more akin to on-the-fly problem solving in the real-life conditions of the car-repair shop where the apprentice is doing his apprenticeship. Contrasting the learning and teaching conditions in the two settings serves as a springboard to answering the following question: how do the different contexts and interaction play out conveying how to perform the diagnosis practice? What is being learned in each situation in terms of “knowing” and “practical doing”? What values are transmitted about the trade through the participation framework allowed in both settings? By answering these questions, we seek to understand better how different learning configurations can contribute to expand, or on the contrary restrict, the learning of professional practices, work ethos, and the formation of new habits and competencies in vocational training interactions.

Author

• Ingrid de Saint-Georges, University of Luxembourg