Abstract
The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship between the pedagogical ethos of vocational in-company trainers as perceived by apprentices and the apprentices’ identification with their vocation and their company from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. It is argued that the trainers’ pedagogical ethos is a relational construct that can be characterized by caring behavior, fairness, and the presupposition that the apprentices are capable of dealing with their assignments in a successful way. In order to investigate the importance of this specific kind of ethos in the Swiss context on an empirical basis, a cross-sectional study with 233 cook apprentices and 302 automotive apprentices was conducted. The analyses showed that the trainers’ pedagogical ethos as perceived by the apprentices significantly predicted the apprentices’ vocational and organizational identification. As regards occupation-specific differences in the effects of perceived ethos on identification, the analysis yielded no statistically significant results. Cook apprentices on average tended to feel less fairly treated by their trainers but to experience more trust in their ability than automotive apprentices, however. Moreover, their average ratings of vocational and organizational identification tended to be lower than to the ratings of automotive apprentices. The final section of the paper discusses these results with regard to identity formation processes and to their practical and moral implications.
Forster-Heinzer, Sarah