‘Schooling is the core thematic focus of the contemporary sociology of education. In the British context, this indeed appears as virtually axiomatic…‘ (Chisholm 1996:199). ‘The absence of schooling in German sociology of education is remarkable’, but other sociologies, such as that of ‘worker/company education’, benefited (op.cit.:210). This presentation highlights findings from a study into career developments after a trainee-/apprenticeship in Germany’s ‘dual system’ of vocational education. With respect to this system, which provides an alternative to scholastic upper secondary education, the findings challenge Bernstein’s (1990:87) dictum that ‘Vocationalism… closes off their [i.e. the working class learners’] own personal and occupational possibilities’. For Bernstein, the pedagogic code positions learners to knowledge and within a community of knowers. The school code is elaborated (globalized, abstract) and implies a strong fundamental classification to the world of work (Bernstein 1990:215). This code clashes with the rather restricted (localized, intimate) code orientation working-class learners bring with them. Vocational curricula, introduced into the school as a concession to working-class learners, transmit a restricted code and so close off possibilities. Yet for working-class learners, development would be any move away from their restricted orientation. This presentation introduces a case, where in the dual system, a working-class acquirer was made safe (a precondition for the acquisition of an elaborate orientation; cf. Bernstein 1990:62) and was enabled to relinquish, at least in parts, her localized orientations. The case is a dual-system apprentice who, against all expectations and in spite of her oppositional attitude towards schooling, after graduation developed a complicated career, which nevertheless bears a relation to her apprenticeship and yet reflects the person’s development away from a restricted orientation towards intimacy and localisation. Arguably, this surprising phenomenon, encountered in a problem-centered interview (cf. Höhns 2018a), is explicable if prior Bernstein-based findings are true which concern the dual system’s specific framing relations at the micro-level of the training company (Höhns 2018a, 2018b) and the related macro-social structuring (Höhns 2016). Further explanations are provided in Zittoun’s (e.g., 2006, 2008) findings concerning social structural provisions that foster resource-building. Yet neither in schools nor in the dual system do social structurings determine learning outcomes. As a contrasting second case shows, whose labour-market dropout after his apprenticeship was not explicable with any social-structural provisions for his training, but with his use of other resources (cf. Zittoun and Masdonati 2012).

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