Description:

This paper focuses on initial vocational training and apprenticeship in the technical fields of automotive mechanics, masonry and electronics in a dual learning environment, alternating periods in school and in the workplace. In these fields, trainers often mobilize analogical reasoning to explain technical gestures (filing, welding, mixing, rendering), positions or abstract notions linked to professional practices. Our interest is in probing the role of this analogical reasoning in educational situations by 1) studying when and to what extent apprentices are exposed to analogical discourses both at school and in the workplace in their trajectory of apprenticeship, 2) establish the formal and functional characteristics of these analogical registers from the point of view of a multimodal approach to discourse analysis, and 3) more generally, show the relevance and usefulness of a discursive approach for the study of educational situations and VET learning environments in general. The research thus presents a double-take on the issue of "knowledge transformation" by considering 1) how analogical rhetorics is itself a form of discursive translation of knowledge, and 2) by comparing how analogical discourse differs according to the learning environment : what is the rhetoric of analogy found in vocational schools ? What is the rhetoric of analogies developed in the business environment of the workplace ?

Methodology or methods/research instruments or sources used:

Drawing methodologically from metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1991), situated approaches to learning (Lave et Wenger 1991) and multimodal approaches to discourse analysis (Goodwin 2000, Scollon & Scollon 2004, Kress et al. 2001), we base our discussion on the analysis of audio-video material gathered in the course of ethnographic fieldwork in two VET programs in the Geneva area. Data analysis includes 1) identifying analogies and analogical sequences in the corpus ; 2) producing a multimodal description of these analogies (including discourse, gestures, objects involved in the analogical description), 3) identifying differences across these sequences (are analogies implicit or explicit ? what are the most salient analogical modes ?), 4) sketching out an interpretation of these differences in relation to the activity being performed, 5) reflect, at the epistemological level, on the relevance of discourse analysis in the field of educational research

Conclusions or expected outcomes or findings:

Our hypothesis is that :

1. analogies are not produced only through linguistic mechanisms, but are complex activities linked to situated practices
2. analogical discourses found in the domain of professional schools pertain more to the "comparison-type" (it's as..., it's like...) whereas in the workplace more to the "metaphorical type" (it's X)

The difference between the two analogical regimes can be explained by taking into account the properties of the activities taking place on both sites : explicit teaching in the school environment vs. more implicit instruction in the work environment.

References:

• Goodwin, C. 2000. Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. In: Journal of Pragmatics, 32 (2000) 1489-1522.
• Kress, G, C. Jewitt, J. Ogborn and C. Tsatsarelis. 2001. Multimodal Teaching and Learning : The rhetorics of the science classroom. Continuum, London and New York.
• Lakoff, G and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Pres, Chicago.
• Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning:legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Scollon, R and S. Wong Scollon. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the emerging internet. Routledge: London and New York.