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The paper considers apprenticeship as a model of education that both teaches technical skills and provides the grounding for personal formation. The research presented is based on long-term anthropological fieldwork with minaret builders in Yemen, mud masons in Mali and fine-woodwork trainees in London. These case studies of on-site learning and practice support an expanded notion of knowledge that exceeds propositional thinking and language and centrally includes the body and skilled performance. Crafts – like sport, dance and other skilled physical activities – are largely communicated, understood and negotiated between practitioners without words, and learning is achieved through observation, mimesis and repeated exercise. The need for an interdisciplinary study of communication and understanding from the body is therefore underlined, and the paper suggests a way forward drawing on linguistic theory and recent neurological findings. It is argued that the validation and promotion of skilled practice as ‘intelligent’ is necessary for raising the status and credibility of apprentice-style learning within our Western systems of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England, half of all apprentices are now of adult age. Most of them—and many of younger age, too—worked with their training firm for some time before starting their apprenticeship. In this article, we estimate the benefit of apprenticeship completion making the distinction between groups of newly recruited and existing staff. To deal with sources of endogeneity resulting from apprenticeship completion, we exploit an exogenous change in minimum duration of training affecting apprenticeship completion. Our findings show much higher benefits for new compared with existing staff. Also, increasing apprenticeship training only creates positive effects for new entrants, but not for existing workers. Therefore, policy should aim to refocus apprenticeships to be a mechanism of labour market entry combined with education to provide access to and acquire competences required for actual occupational roles, but not as a generic mechanism to train existing staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an examination of the patterns and motivations behind parish apprenticeship in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. It stresses continuity in outlook from parish officials binding children, which involved placements in both the traditional and industrializing sectors of the economy. Evidence on the ages, employment types, and locations of 3,285 pauper apprentices bound from different parts of London between 1767 and 1833 indicates a variety of local patterns. The analysis reveals a pattern of youthful age at binding, a range of employment experiences, and parish-specific links to particular trades and manufactures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the implication of the presence of apprentices in the English society during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. According to the article, they were treated as uniform group which revolved and has been divided around wealth and poverty. In addition, it states that apprenticeship gives dependent children legal settlements and assured them of subsistence for long years as well as trainings. Furthermore, it relates that poor and charity apprentices have been known to endure poor treatment from their master since they are young and their guardians lack resources for their protection.

The article examines the careers of about two-thirds of the Bristol apprentices recorded in the apprentice register between 1600 and 1645 who failed to obtain the freedom of the town when their apprenticeship came to an end. It argues that most of them migrated away from the town, and that their migration was dominated by both 'push' and 'pull' forces, although the latter was possibly more pronounced. The article then examines the likelihood of early departure from service, and concludes that while most of the apprentices were not recorded as having been dismissed before their official seven-year term came to an end, they none the less departed after three, four or five years of training. For the majority of apprentices, the normal course was one of a relatively short apprenticeship followed by migration to the countryside or overseas. The conclusion emphasizes the impact which apprentices had on the diffusion of crafts and particularly of commercial activities in small towns and villages in the regions surrounding the town and farther afield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]