Learning a trade: becoming a trades person through apprenticeship

This research project develops guidelines for apprentices and their workplace trainers to assist with workplace-based learning derived from apprentices' experienced curriculum. In this project, apprentices' perspectives on how they went about learning a trade are collated, studied and appraised. Guidelines for apprentices and their workplace trainers to assist with workplace-based learning are then derived from apprentices' experienced curriculum. The framework used to understand how apprentices learn a trade and become trade persons is informed by socio-material learning theories. Apprentices' learning is understood to include individuals' identity formation through embodiment of knowledge as revealed through skilled practice; incorporating learning through inter-relational or co-creation with other learners and experts and through interaction with materials and tools and machines be they hardware or software. In learning a trade, apprentices learn the social and cultural practices of their trade as they become trades persons by learning how to do, think, feel and be.

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