Session Information
02 SES 12 B, Learning V: Knowledge & Competence
Paper Session
Contribution
It is generally accepted that vocational education includes disciplinary knowledge which is recontextualised as applied knowledge, which in turn is recontextualised as pedagogic applied knowledge (Young, 2006: 55). This type of vocational knowledge originates with researchers (Young, 2006: 109). Vocational education also includes systematic procedural knowledge which is derived from the established rules and practices for organising work (Young, 2006: 62).
Barnett (2006: 149) asserts that the ‘varieties of situated [or practical] knowledge . . . need to be subjected to a single (possibly somewhat problematic) process of pedagogic transformation’ to be included in vocational education. This paper examines that claim by reanalysing Valleriani (2017) and colleagues’ accounts of the restructuring of artillery, ale-brewing and mining knowledge in early modern Europe. This is a fruitful source for observing the development of vocational knowledge because during the early modern period in Europe these knowledge-intensive activities were increasingly codified but without modern structures of qualifications, state regulation, and quality assurance.
The paper finds that practical knowledge is structured by the organisation of work. For example, part of the practical knowledge of ale-brewing in seventeenth-century England was embodied in the construction and lay out of the brew house. Brewing was an elaborate process that required a well established and organised production and therefore also a specialisation and division of labour. The codification of brewing thus depended on the social organisation of work and also implies that the necessary specialised knowledge was transmitted, both to those who did the work and those who organised it.
Some codifications of practical knowledge incorporated theoretical knowledge. For example, the trajectory of cannon balls could not be drawn from observation, but was derived from first principles, from Aristotelian dynamics by the Spaniard Diego Ufano. Some codifications were by learned artisans, that is, by experts in practical knowledge which was expressed in the vernacular who also knew scholarly knowledge expressed in Latin. Thus, Prussian mining was codified by the ‘technical-scientific expert’ who unified scientific knowledge with knowledge directly acquired in the field.
As the social structure of knowledge embodied in work practices was codified and transmitted it was abstracted and restructured as conceptual knowledge. This is because the means for codification such as drawing the layout of a brewhouse or writing the recipe for smelting ore required a skill of drawing or writing not required for the production of ale or metal. And when artisans explain to apprentices when to add hot water to malt, for example, they are not brewing ale; they are explaining how to brew ale: an artisan’s instructions to an apprentice is not know-how, but knowledge about know-how.
The codification of practical knowledge was rarely an individual activity, but was part of a social milieu, which was often related to or done for institutions such as schools, workshops, academies, guilds, courtly centres, ruling bodies of big production centres, or state bodies.
Method
The paper is a secondary analysis of the accounts in Valleriani (2017) of the restructuring of knowledge in knowledge-intensive enterprises in early modern Europe.
Expected Outcomes
The paper argues that in the absence of professions and other social structures which restructure the knowledge of high status occupations, vocational colleges have a role in restructuring occupational knowledge.
References
Barnett, Michael (2006) Vocational knowledge and vocational pedagogy in Young, Michael & Gamble, Jeanne (editors) (2006) Knowledge, curriculum and qualifications for South African further education. Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/, pages 143-157. Valleriani, Matteo (editor) (2017) The structures of practical knowledge, Gewerbestrasse, Switzerland: Springer. Young, Michael (2006) Reforming the further education and training curriculum: an international perspective curriculum, in Young, Michael & Gamble, Jeanne (editors) Knowledge, curriculum and qualifications for South African further education, Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/, pages 46-63. Young, Michael (2006) Conceptualising vocational knowledge: Some theoretical considerations, in Young, Michael and Gamble, Jeanne (editors) (2006) Knowledge, curriculum and qualifications for South African further education, Cape Town: HSRC Press, accessed 3 March 2016 from http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2152, pages 104-122.
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