Education and Conventions

How you value shapes whom you value: The contribution of apprenticeships to sustainable development goals

“…Finally, in line with Boltanski and Thévenot (2000: 218), we reconstructed the nature of valuations and the role of conventions involved in identified situations. We reviewed our empirical material of the situations and valuations for actors’ utterances focussing on grammars or objects of a particular convention, in other words, vocabularies and grammars of conventions (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Imdorf and Leemann, 2023). Actors’ use of grammars ensured that we understood the dynamics of coordination and outcomes from the their perspective.…”

“…A convention is a set of established principles that allow individuals engaged in collaborative projects to agree on the characterisation of situations and (judge the quality of) things and people involved in these situations (Chiapello and Gilbert, 2019: 119). For vocational training, where a plurality of ways to act fairly and evaluate programmes’ quality are possible, a convention constitutes a set of internally consistent components, that is, principles and valuations (Imdorf and Leemann, 2023). A principle defines the nature of quality and justice and instantiations of this principle, such as knowledge relevant to realise the principle, the nature of relationships between actors, and appropriate forms of learning and training.…”

“…A combination of the apprenticeship convention and HR actors characterises the initial conditions for the apprenticeship programme. The apprenticeship convention represents the appropriate features and requirements (established rules) that underpin coordination for executing apprenticeships (Imdorf and Leemann, 2023). It informs the HR actors in the realisation of the programme.…”

“…According to Beer et al (1984), HR actors consider their choices and how these could affect the programme's desired outcomes. We recognise mechanisms of reasserting, contesting or introducing an alternative convention, resulting in the strengthening or weakening the convention (Imdorf and Leemann, 2023). We classify mechanisms of maintaining a convention, consolidation, and altering a convention, conversion.…”

“…We apply a convention theory approach to vocational education (Imdorf and Leemann, 2023). This approach conceptualises conventions as principles that allow actors to agree on the classification and interpretation of situations and enable the valuation of actions taken in those situations.…”