Issues of engendering professionalism is a key subject for thise involved
in training trainers. Financial reward, although significant is not the
only factor (ask me... I am a UK academic!).
I have a simple case study. It conerns people who drill holes for
rivetting airplane wings. You get to do the job by two routes. Either you
have the intensive airplane wing hole drilling course or there has been a
route through a four year apprenticeship as an airframe fitter. If you
make a mistake in drilling a hole the material either has to be binned
(very expensive) or it may be within a tolerance that make it acceptable.
Checking the mistake is an expensive engineer exercise.
It appears that the trained people make more mistakes compared with the
apprenticed people. So much so that the money saved through closing the
apprenticeship school is exceeded by the cost of mistake rectification and
checking process from the "trained" people.
From this evidence it appears as Eva, Rose etc imply identity is a major
issue in occupational formation (to use the southern European term)
--- as a side bar issue. I have waiter trainers or my Master's programme. Is the work of a table assistant the same in my local truckstop/MacD/Friday's/swanky restaurant?It is clear that at the "top-end" of the profession it is not all stamina and manual dexterity (with smiles and great wisecracks if you are lucky). There are many rituals to be learned and practiced. There is a whole genre of foodspeak to be acquired. The ability to be knowledgeable and not patronising, attentive but not obsequious and the meld seamlessly with the background when not required , not to mention an understanding of the paralinguistic signals from the maitre d'hotel which seem to issue fifty different orders in the blink of an eyelid.
Martin Owen Labordy Dysgu- Learning Lab Prifysgol Cymru Bangor- University of Wales, Bangor
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:13 PDT