Studying Apprentice Students’ Transferring Process: The Case of a Functional Relation

In this chapter, we study the transferring process of three apprentice engineering students (as illustrative cases) who were doing their internship in a telecommunication organization. We analyze students’ interpretations of four different authentic representations (table, professionals’ explanations, formula, and graph) of a functional relation hidden behind a workplace task concerning the selection of the proper type of copper wires in the local subscriber network. By conceptualizing transfer as a sociocultural, meaning-making process of objectification, we used the theory on developmental transfer by Engestrom's theory on developmental transfer and Radford’s objectification theory. Transfer in this way was conceptualized as the development of a shared object between the academic and workplace activity systems. The above theoretical constructs helped us to zoom in on the nature of the shared object and on how it was developed. In the latter case, we identified the role of elements of both activity systems in students’ transferring process.