Learning venues in apprenticeship as a key to sustainable development

The contribution discusses the design of learning venues in apprenticeship programmes with a view to the development of sustainable-oriented professional competence. This term is used as an umbrella term for the knowledge and skills that are needed in the world of work in order to enable a sustainable way of life on the basis of an eco-friendly ‘green’ economy. Like any other aspect of professional competence, sustainability-oriented competence or green skills for the world of work need to be developed in the course of VET programmes such as apprenticeship, which begs the question how the relevant learning venues, especially at the training enterprise, should be organised so as to facilitate the acquisition of the skills in question. The aim is that learners are able to think and act responsibly in the sense of sustainability, which of course also requires appropriate scope for action.

The paper presents the findings of recent research on the sustainability-oriented design of learning venues in Germany against the backdrop of the European and international discourse on education and training for the green economy. The paper is based on the results and findings from the pilot projects and scientific monitoring on ‘Vocational Education and Training for Sustainable Development’ (BBNE) which were supported by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) with funding of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The results on sustainable learning venues, including a proposal for indicators for the description and design of the latter, are based on the work of the scientific monitoring by the Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (f-bb). The analysis takes the characteristic feature of German apprenticeship programmes, namely the duality of learning venues (training enterprise and VET school) as point of departure. It is argued that the sustainability-oriented design of learning venues requires a holistic organisational development approach. A four-level framework for the design of sustainable learning venues is presented, and potential indicators for each of the levels are suggested.