AERONET – Bottom-up Development of a Transnational Occupational Profile

Airbus is building planes and parts for the Aeronautic and Space Industry in four European countries: France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Traditionally the apprenticeship and training systems in these countries take very different course directions. A basic difference can be found already on the systematic level: whereas in Germany training regulations are understood as common standards, in the UK there are set minimal requirements or general conditions, which means that the margins for the training companies are bigger.

The question of how apprenticeships in aerospace professions - besides systematic differences - are organized at the sites Toulouse (F), Bremen (G), Getafe (E) and Broughton (UK) was one of the first issues to be answered in the LEONARDO-pilot-project AERONET. Not only the empirics of duration, learning locations, degrees and other “hard facts” were collected. Also the purpose of the project and expected results were defined or shaped to the final cut.

The spectrum of tasks performed in the observable industrial processes, this means the requirements for experienced, skilled work define in fact the practical objectives of apprenticeship and training. In the AERONET-project this generative, core aim of any apprenticeship was formulated in lists of TPTs, Typical Professional Tasks. At the German site of Bremen and the UK site of Broughton for example the performed work of aircraft mechanics in production technology contains 9 of the 12 professional tasks determined by all aircraft mechanics (in the specializations production technology and maintenance) with a clear demarcation to the tasks of the specialization turbine technology and electronics for aircraft systems. In Toulouse training center, 10 of these 12 TPTs are taught in an equivalent four years apprenticeship. But only 5 of them are performed by these skilled workers, the other 5 TPT are part of the job of young workers, who gone through only two years of training. The vertical division of labor thus is very similar in Germany and France, although in the latter country a horizontal division has been added.
 
These 5 basic-TPTs might be a first approximation towards a transnational core-profession, Spanish results are expected by the end of this week. According to the resulting TPTs, describing holistic work processes, the smallest tangible unit in the sense of competency fields is detected. A further differentiation, for example in actions, knowledge and partial competencies would shorten the characteristic of a task in a non-acceptable way.

Combining the two approaches (the concrete process of apprenticeship and the TPTs of the skilled work) two questions arise:

• Which of these TPT are not only objectives, but also components of apprenticeship and training at the four sites?
• And: how is the successful compliance to one of these components by an apprentice measurable?

In order to work on this second topic we have developed an instrument, orientated at the concrete TPTs. The tool will be presented and discussed in the presentation. It is called "evaluation tasks" and confronts the apprentice with a real work task. The solution an apprentice is able to find and describe, gives an account of the level of competency he has been able to achieved up to this point of training.