Apprentices, as working and learning actors, are an integral part, or rather the main protagonists, of the Swiss dual VET system (Wettstein 1987, p. 8; see also Freidorfer 2020). Despite their important key role, relatively little is known about them and apprentices have only been marginally addressed as a research object in historical VET research (see: Berner 2019, Bonoli 2017 or Wettstein 2020). In this respect, they represent a "neglected category" (Berner 2019, p. 311).

This drove me to learn more about apprentices and the development of their social representation as part of my already completed doctoral dissertation. 

How were apprentices in the cantons of German-speaking Switzerland thematized and perceived by the public? How were they judged by people involved in vocational education and what publicly or socially constructed external representations of apprentices can be derived from this?

The concern of the paper is to identify and analyze constant or changing accumulations or bundles of opinions (continuities and change) of propositional events (discourses) and to derive from them single, different apprenticeship images that constitute the core of the present paper. The focus is on the years from 1950 to 1970, the most important years for the development of Swiss vocational education and training (e.g. first revision of the Vocational Training Act, expansion of education, strong promotion of young people and rapid economic development) (Becker & Zangger 2013; Gonon & Freidorfer 2022; Rieger 2001). 

By means of historical discourse analysis, about 600 articles in the opinion and daily press as well as in the trade and trade union press in which apprentices were the subject of discussion were analyzed, as well as complementary apprenticeship studies and advice literature on apprentices. 

On the one hand, different theoretical concepts of the public sphere serve as a theoretical background. These include the deliberative public sphere (Habermas 1990, 1992), ideas about the media public sphere (Strohmeier 2004), since this article focuses on the print medium newspaper, as well as ideas about the public sphere in vocational training (Sloane 2016), which are only available in marginal numbers. It should also be emphasized that vocational education does not seem to have its own theory of the public sphere. Broken down to the present paper, this means that the public sphere emerges through the communication, the need to communicate, of those persons who participate in VET-related or apprenticeship-related questions, debates, or in a "public" discourse of VET and, more concretely, about apprentices. In addition to the various theories of the public sphere, the historical discourse analysis not only serves as an analytical tool, but also as a theoretical foundation. The focus is on the primary concern of being able to understand history. The following questions seem to be guiding - How can we know something? How do we succeed in gaining certainty about our own reality and in putting our own reality to the test?

The aim of this paper is to describe the central findings of the research project and to show to what extent the transformation of the apprentice from a conformist apprentice to a protesting apprentice, who stands in the light of publicity and is no longer perceived only as working, but above all as learning, could take place. Finally, I argue that in the digital age of the 21st century, an autonomous apprentice image will become increasingly important. 

This is a question that seems to be of utmost relevance not only for Switzerland but for all vocational education systems in Europe and beyond. Who are the apprentices? How do we perceive them? And where are they currently heading?

From a methodological point of view, historical discourse analysis was used as an analytical tool. The analysis tool focuses on the question of the emergence of different forms of knowledge and reality. Language is understood as the most important medium that allows history to be understood as action. By means of discourse analysis, the aim was to find out to what extent society wrote about the apprentice in the years from 1950 to 1970 and to what extent changes occurred in how apprentices were described at different points in time. Unchanging and changing socio-political statements or views about apprentices are combined and structured into bundles of statements. Smaller and larger text structures, in the sense of written statements, are analyzed. A total of 600 newspaper articles from different daily and opinion press of the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland (serial sources) were analyzed, which were published in the period from 1950 to 1970 on topics related to vocational training and which dealt specifically with apprentices. The following requirements were placed on the selected texts: - the text was written in German and published in a Swiss-German newspaper (daily or opinion, trade or union press) in the years from 1950 to 1970 - the author refers to young people in vocational training with regard to one or more German-speaking Swiss cantons - apprentices or young people in vocational training are referred to conceptually - primarily the apprentice (as protagonist) is reported on - the apprentice is not only a marginal topic, but is in medias of the reporting A few months after the analysis of the newspaper articles of the daily and opinion press, reports of the trade union press as well as the Swiss trade newspaper were subjected to an analysis in the sense of a control group. In addition to the daily and opinion press, the viewpoint of the trade press as well as the trade union press was included in the investigation insofar as it concerned two of the major associations and two major players in vocational education and training within the selected period of investigation. In addition, the reports in the trade and union press also partially covered the commercial and industrial perspectives of vocational education and training. The aim was to find out whether what was written about apprentices in the daily and opinion press corresponded to what was written in the trade union and industrial press, or whether differences emerged here.

By means of a discourse-analytical approach, three images of apprentices could be typified, suggesting that at different points in time, different things were written and thought about the apprentice/apprentice daughter at the interface of society and politics. In the years from 1950 to 1960, youth in vocational training were predominantly discussed as a "factor of production" or a "factor in the national economy." Apprentices were not perceived as subjects with individual needs, but, to exaggerate, were subjected to (verbal) objectification. Inconveniences and grievances were not brought to public attention in the course of protest actions, but were accepted out of a conformist attitude corresponding to the generation of the postwar period. Around 1960, at a time when vocational education was increasingly dealing with psychological and sociological findings, the tide turned and the apprentice was increasingly seen as a young person in mental and physical development who needed to be protected. In view of the lack of educational offers and opportunities, young professionals were declared to be at a disadvantage compared to secondary school students. The years from 1967 onward then represented a turning point and a kind of contrast program, insofar as apprentices now gradually broke away from structures of conformism and began to have their say in public, in the print media and on television. Protest actions and street battles that occurred from 1968 onward should consequently be seen as outlets for that discontent that had accumulated in the preceding years due to accepted grievances and inadequacies. An outlook shows that starting in the 1970s and with an increase in the proportion of school-based training, apprentices were more strongly perceived as learners and accepted in their multiple roles (working, educating and learning). The development of the apprentice from a working to a learning subject is emerging.

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