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Between Apprenticeship and Skill: Acquiring Knowledge outside the Academy in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2019

Patrick Wallis Open the ORCID record for Patrick Wallis [Opens in a new window]
Patrick Wallis*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
*
Email: p.h.wallis@lse.ac.uk
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Argument

Apprenticeship was probably the largest mode of organized learning in early modern European societies, and artisan practitioners commonly began as apprentices. Yet little is known about how youths actually gained skills. I develop a model of vocational pedagogy that accounts for the characteristics of apprenticeship and use a range of legal and autobiographical sources to examine the contribution of different forms of training in England. Apprenticeship emerges as a relatively narrow channel, in which the master’s contribution to training was weakly defined and executed conservatively. The creation of complementary channels of formal instruction was constrained by cost and coordination problems. When we consider a range of British youths who obtained advanced skills as artisan practitioners (and engaged in invention or pursued natural philosophical interests), we see the importance of individual agency over institutional structures. For these youths, training could involve rejecting apprenticeship, engaging in periods of advanced study, including time in multiple workshops after the end of apprenticeship, and parallel campaigns to access scarce books and communities of scholarship.

Keywords

Apprenticeshiptraininginventionindustrial revolutionhuman capital
Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 32 , Issue 2: Youthful minds and hands: Learning practical knowledge in early modern Europe , June 2019 , pp. 155 - 170
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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