the TA has followed the ObET tradition of discarding time-serving notions of apprenticeship,
it retains an explicit recognition of the relationship between practice and context. Thus, from
the Rep’s perspective, knowledge is an integral feature of vocational practice because
knowledge is inextricably, to appropriate Dunne & Pendlebury’s phrase, ‘invested in action’,
rather than some disembedded entity that is learnt separately from and then applied to
practice. Apprentices constantly bring knowledge, that is, a mix of theoretical, technical and
operational ideas and notions into play when dealing with the ‘here and now’ situations which
they are faced with in the theatre. This is because they have to ascertain whether a situation is
perfectly standard and typical and therefore similar to those one which they have encountered
previously, or whether the situation deviates in some significant respects and therefore is not
covered by well-known and rehearsed procedures. Thus, the Rep’s model of skill formation
restores the link between knowledge, experience and judgement to vocational practice that
was eviscerated by the introduction of NVQs16.
This highly contextualised definition of judgement does not mean that the Rep is advocating
that judgement is developed through some form of maverick activity in the theatre where
individuals totally disregard existing knowledge codified in rules and protocols or advice
from their HoD, not least because without recourse to these individuals would struggle to
recognise the typicality or otherwise of the situation facing them. The Rep starts from the
premise that judgement is developed through apprentices learning to mediate the general and
particular aspects of vocational practice and bring them into some ‘illuminating connection’
with one another (Dunne & Pendlebury, , p. 198). This process of mediation to support the
development of and exercising of judgment presupposes not only that apprentices are
provided with opportunities to, and support to, develop the ability ‘read’ particular situations,
for example, the example of the electrician learning to hang a light, but also contexts where
they are able to take, under supervision, modestly acceptable risks in the workplace. Such
contexts help apprentices to gradually develop the personal resourcefulness to accentuate
knowledge with relevance, appropriateness and sensitivity to context.
Clearly the notion of acceptable risk implies that access to workplace experience where it is
less easy to predict the final result is central to the development of such resourcefulness. This
does not mean that the Rep is by any stretch of the imagination advocating that ‘raw
experience’ is a sufficient condition to develop judgement. The provision of a teaching and
learning curriculum, supplemented by John’s role as coach and mentor to the HoDs and
apprentices, provides a rich range of support to assist apprentices to apply the knowledge
which they have acquired through talking and working alongside their HoD, through their
16 By judgement we interpret the Rep to mean, the ability to recognise situations, cases, or problems, rather than
attempting to impose the procrustean application of a general rule (Guile, forthcoming).
16